Rape during the Bosnian War was a policy of mass systemic violence targeted against women. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ICTY declared that "systematic rape" and "sexual enslavement" in time of war was a crime against humanity , second only to the war crime of genocide. Although the ICTY did not treat the mass rapes as genocide, many have concluded from the organised, and systematic nature of the mass rapes of the female Bosniak Bosnian Muslim population, that these rapes were a part of a larger campaign of genocide, [ 8 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ] and that the VRS were carrying out a policy of genocidal rape against the Bosnian Muslim ethnic group.
The trial of VRS member Dragoljub Kunarac was the first time in any national or international jurisprudence that a person was convicted of using rape as a weapon of war. The widespread media coverage of the atrocities by Serbian paramilitary and military forces against Bosniak women and children, drew international condemnation of the Serbian forces.
The Bosnian War was the first time that mass rape was recognised and prosecuted by an international tribunal. Genocidal rape is a feature of campaigns which involve ethnic cleansing and genocide , as the objective is to destroy or forcefully remove the target population, and ensure they do not return.
The second aim is to reduce the likelihood of return and reconstitution by inflicting humiliation and shame on the targeted population. Historians such as Niall Ferguson have assessed a key factor behind the high-level decision to use mass rape for ethnic cleansing as being misguided nationalism. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was not at its inception a platform for internal nationalist sentiment.
Individuals who sought to ignite tensions risked imprisonment, torture or execution. Serb propaganda suggested that Bosniaks had Turkish ancestry. Before the conflict began, Bosniaks in Eastern Bosnia had already begun to be removed from their employment, to be ostracised and to have their freedom of movement curtailed.
