Wartime sexual violence in the context of "Enhanced interrogation techniques"

The Generalplan Ost (German pronunciation: [ɡenəˈʁaːlˌplaːn ˈɔst]; lit. 'Master Plan for the East'), abbreviated GPO, was Nazi Germany's plan for the settlement and "Germanization" of captured territory in Eastern Europe, involving the genocide, extermination and large-scale ethnic cleansing of Slavs, Eastern European Jews, and other indigenous peoples of Eastern Europe categorized as "Untermenschen" in Nazi ideology. The campaign was a precursor to Nazi Germany's planned colonisation of Central and Eastern Europe by Germanic settlers, and it was carried out through systematic massacres, mass starvations, chattel labour, mass rapes, child abductions, and sexual slavery.

Generalplan Ost was only partially implemented during the war in territories occupied by Germany on the Eastern Front during World War II, resulting indirectly and directly in the deaths of millions by shootings, starvation, disease, extermination through labour, and genocide. However, its full implementation was not considered practicable during major military operations, and never materialised due to Germany's defeat. Under direct orders from Nazi leadership, around 11 million Slavs were killed in systematic violence and state terrorism carried out as part of the GPO. In addition to genocide, millions more were forced into slave labour to serve the German war economy.

The Nepalese Civil War (1996–2006) was a protracted and countrywide armed conflict in the then Kingdom of Nepal between the Kingdom's rulers and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), with the latter making significant use of guerrilla warfare. It began on 13 February 1996, when the CPN(M) initiated an insurgency with the stated purpose of overthrowing the Nepali monarchy and establishing a people's republic. It ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord on 21 November 2006.

The conflict was characterized by numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, including summary executions, massacres, purges, kidnappings, and mass rapes. It resulted in the deaths of over 17,000 people, including civilians, insurgents, and army and police personnel; and the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly throughout rural Nepal. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has received about 63,000 complaints, as reported by commissioner Madhabi Bhatta, while the Commission for Investigation of Enforced Disappearances has received around 3,000.

Genocidal rape, a form of wartime sexual violence, is the action of a group which has carried out acts of mass rape and gang rapes, against its enemy during wartime as part of a genocidal campaign. During the Armenian genocide, the Greek genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the second Sino-Japanese war, the Holocaust, the Genocide of Serbs in Croatia, the Bangladesh genocide, the Yugoslav Wars (particularly the Bosnian and Kosovo Wars), the Rwandan genocide, the Tamil genocide, the Circassian genocide, the Congolese conflicts, the War in Darfur, the South Sudanese Civil War, the Yazidi Genocide, and Rohingya genocide, mass rapes that had been an integral part of those conflicts brought the concept of genocidal rape to international prominence. Although war rape has been a recurrent feature in conflicts throughout human history, it has usually been looked upon as a by-product of conflict and not an integral part of military policy.

In scholarly literature and criminology, gang rape, also called serial gang rape, party rape, group rape, or multiple perpetrator rape, is the rape of a single victim by two or more violators. Gang rapes are forged on shared identity, religion, ethnic group, or race. There are multiple motives for serial gang rapes, such as for sexual entitlement, asserting sexual prowess, or punishment.

Gang rapes often occurs during warfare, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

The Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia (Serbo-Croatian: Genocid nad Srbima u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj / Геноцид над Србима у Независној Држави Хрватској) was the systematic persecution and extermination of Serbs committed during World War II by the fascist Ustaše regime in the Nazi German puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (Serbo-Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska / Независна Држава Хрватска, NDH) between 1941 and 1945. It was carried out through executions in death camps, as well as through mass murder, ethnic cleansing, deportations, forced conversions, and war rape. This genocide was simultaneously carried out with the Holocaust in the NDH as well as the genocide of Roma, by combining Nazi racial policies with the ultimate goal of creating an ethnically pure Greater Croatia.

The ideological foundation of the Ustaše movement reaches back to the 19th century. Several Croatian nationalists and intellectuals established theories about Serbs as an inferior race. The World War I legacy, as well as the opposition of a group of nationalists to the unification into a common state of South Slavs, influenced ethnic tensions in the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (since 1929 Kingdom of Yugoslavia). The 6 January Dictatorship and the later anti-Croat policies of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav government in the 1920s and 1930s fueled the rise of nationalist and far-right movements. This culminated in the rise of the Ustaše, an ultranationalist, terrorist organization, founded by Ante Pavelić. The movement was financially and ideologically supported by Benito Mussolini, and it was also involved in the assassination of King Alexander I.

During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, members of the Pakistani military and Razakar paramilitary force raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women and girls in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape. Some of these women died in captivity or committed suicide, while others moved from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to India.

Both Bengali Muslim and Bengali Hindu women were targeted for rape. West Pakistani men wanted to cleanse a nation corrupted by the presence of Hindus and believed that the sacrifice of Hindu women was needed; Bengali women were thus viewed as Hindu or Hindu-like. These rapes apparently caused thousands of pregnancies, births of war babies, abortions, infanticide, suicide, and ostracism of the victims. This is often asserted to be one of the severest occurrences of wartime sexual violence. The atrocities ended after the December 1971 surrender of the Pakistani military and supporting Razakar militias.

During the ongoing Gaza war, Israeli male and female soldiers, guards and medical staff have reportedly committed wartime sexual violence against Palestinian women, children and men including rape, gang-rape and sexualized torture and genital mutilation. In February 2024, UN experts reported at least two cases of Palestinian women being raped by male Israeli soldiers. Palestinian boys and men have also been reportedly raped and subjected to torture, and in some cases, the impact of rape and torture has led to death of the victim.

In its June 2024 investigative report, the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (CoI) concluded,