Sexual violence as a weapon of war has been used in a myriad of conflicts throughout history. For example, it is estimated that the Soviet Army raped around 2 million women in Germany during World War II

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) suffered from civil war from 1998 to 2003. This war mostly centred on the control of natural resources, and cost millions of lives. Whilst this war officially ended in 2003, violence remains part of the political environment in the country, mostly in the Eastern DRC where various rebel groups and the Congolese national army still engage in armed confrontations

Over the past few years, the world has witnessed the biggest refugee crisis since WWII. While some European countries initially accommodated this mass flow of refugees, it took a photograph of the body of a small child on a beach to finally humanise these stories and bring public attention to these initially distant and disembodied experiences.