Does war facilitate rape? If so, what causal mechanisms make sexual violence prevalent during wartime? The Hidden War tracker documents how sexual violence manifests in times of conflict. It begins with the Nuremberg Trials, which notably failed to confront German and Soviet wartime rape, and ends with the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), where a historic precedent linked sexual violence to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. The tracker recognizes that anarchic conditions of war, or genocidal and ethnic conflicts contribute to creating environments ripe for sexual violence. As Rhonda Copelon writes, war intensifies the “brutality, repetitiveness, public spectacle and likelihood” of rape. But this tracker complicates the universalist view by demonstrating the role of historic contingency -- time, context, and circumstance alter the scale and scope of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV). For example, while both the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) and the Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001) saw civilian suffering and ethnic strife, the LTTE never pursued a systematic campaign comparable to the Serbs’ institutionalized Bosnian “rape camps.” Rape is not simply a ‘by-product’ of war. But it is also not an inherent and inevitable condition of war. Military imperatives, social taboo, and overwhelming wartime suffering have long obscured a full reckoning with CRSV. The tracker unveils the historically hidden war against women in the violent 20th century. Sexual violence in today’s wars – from Ukraine to South Sudan – are not one-off anomalies, but a failure of the international community to reckon with CRSV throughout history. 

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