Rape in conflict has long been a reality, and has long been accepted as almost inevitable. Now, finally, change is occurring in how the international community recognises and confronts this violation of law and of human rights. It is important to track this change, to understand how it has been achieved, to identify best practice in advocacy, and to understand how such practice can contribute to ongoing work to deal with what remains an ongoing issue. It is important because while there has been significant progress in recognising and confronting rape in conflict, there remain serious and continuing challenges.

In 1992, after visiting refugee camps and women's groups in and around Zagreb, as a member of a team from international aid agencies, I reported a representative of a local church saying that women from conflicting parties were, ‘of course’, being raped by opposing combatants, and I heard, many times, ‘that's war’, with accompanying shrugs. It was a comment indicative of the chilling acceptance frequently exhibited to this reality of abuse in war. My report of that visit noted two types of rape that refugee women and women's groups had been highlighting in the conflict between Serbs and Bosnians: rape as a by-product of war, and rape as a weapon of war. The response from some observers in the international organisation that had assembled my team was to dismiss the term ‘rape as a weapon of war’ as merely provocative or as an attempt to be clever or strategic in attracting attention to what they deemed as ‘just’ a women's issue. These workers in humanitarian organisations did not take seriously the reality that rape could be and indeed was a weapon, deliberately planned and systematically implemented. They failed to recognise that such rape was an issue, not only for women, but also for communities including children and men. This was not an uncommon response.

In 1999, I presented another report to humanitarian organisations and to a cross-party group of women senators in the Australian government. The report highlighted that widespread rape was occurring in the conflict in Kosovo. In 1996, widespread sexual violence had been defined as sexual violence ‘committed on a large scale’ and directed against a ‘multiplicity of victims’.