384 CHAPTER TEn ■ Human Riht
women and other abuses in all arenas were identified as breaches of both human rights
and humanitarian norms.
Co ahRaHRainVRo leaCenmimRathn Wouea
In 2015, the UN reported that vio lence against women and girls “persists at alarm-
ingly high levels”— more than one in three have experienced physical vio lence. Two
examples illustrate this widespread and often controversial prob lem.
Rape is a prime example of vio lence against women. In Chapter 2, we discussed
the massacres in Nanking by Japa nese soldiers in 1937. Those atrocities included
the systematic rape of thousands of Chinese women. Several con temporary events
highlight the extent of this unique form of vio lence against women: the rape of
2,000 Kuwaiti women by Iraqi soldiers during the 1991 Gulf War, of 60,000 Bos-
nian women in 1993 by Serb and Croat forces, of 250,000 women in Burundi’s and
Rwanda’s ethnic conflicts in 1993–94, of an estimated 200,000 women during the
vio lence in the Demo cratic Republic of Congo, and of over 200 women and girls in
Darfur in 2014. At earlier wartime trials, rape was not brought up as a war crime,
In Afghan i stan under the Taliban, women risked death by meeting clandestinely to receive
education. Discrimination against women in education is prohibited under the Un Declaration
of Human Rights and CEDAW. Af ghan i stan signed CEDAW in 1980 but did not ratify the treaty
until after the Taliban was overthrown.