Rape in the Bosnian war pertains to the characteristic elements of sexual assault in the ethnic clash between Serb, Croat and Bosniak factions in the Bosnian War. While on a lesser scale, women of all ethnic groups were affected, more specifically, rape was used as a systematized instrument of war by the Bosnian Serb forces of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) predominantly targeting women and girls of the Bosniak ethnic group for physical and moral destruction. Estimates of the total number of women raped during the war range from 20,000 to 50,000. This has been referred to as "mass rape", particularly with regard to the coordinated use of rape as a weapon of war. 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. The Kunarac case was the first time in judicial history anyone had been found guilty of these crimes.
According to Margot Wallström, U.N. Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, only 12 cases out of an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 have been prosecuted as of 2010.
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