A new article presents the Repositories of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (RSVAC) dataset.

This data source gathers reports from 1989 to 2015 on forms of sexual violence committed by government / state forces, insurgent / rebel organizations and pro-government militias for each conflict and each year, as well as numerous qualitative notes. The new data package helps to disaggregate “sexual violence” into its distinct forms and will therefore allow analysis of the reported presence of forms of sexual violence across time, conflicts and organizations.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00223433211044674?icid=int.sj-full-text.citing-articles.1

Academics are increasingly calling for documentation and analysis of specific forms of conflict-related sexual violence. In addition, responsibility for crimes is higher when specific patterns of victimization are documented.

RSVAC separately compiles the reported prevalence of eight forms of sexual violence – rape, sexual slavery and forced marriage, forced prostitution, genital mutilation, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization and abortion, sexual torture without penetration and sexual abuse (as well as that of intercourse). multiple authors of each form).

The dataset also includes detailed qualitative notes on reported incidents, as well as “conflict manuscripts” that include relevant parts of the source documents.

Disaggregating “sexual violence” into its distinct forms allows analysis of the reported presence of forms of sexual violence across time, conflicts and organizations. The article illustrates the usefulness of thinking about repertoires of sexual violence by highlighting the hitherto neglected global models it suggests, and also discusses the limitations, potential biases and underreporting that users should take. into account. The authors also describe several research questions that the data can help answer and suggest how the dataset could inform policy efforts to address sexual violence and its consequences.