Undercounting, Overcounting, and the Longevity of Flawed Estimates: Statistics on Sexual Violence in Conflict

Sexual violence has been associated with several recent conflicts and their aftermath, including – but not limited to – conflicts in Bosnia, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , East Timor, Liberia, and Rwanda. Recent efforts by the international community have sought to address wartime sexual violence. In March 2007, the United Nations Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict body was launched to coordinate efforts across 13 United Nations entities and increase efforts to end sexual violence during and in the wake of armed conflict. In January 2010, United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, appointed Margot Wallström as his Special Representative on sexual violence in conflict. Further, in December 2010, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1960, which called for commitments to “enhance data collection and analysis of incidents, trends and patterns of rape and other forms of sexual violence” to improve targeting and policy response. These coordinated efforts to influence policy and the call for rigorous research including enhanced data collection on wartime sexual violence are long overdue. Although standard reporting and data collection efforts of any kind are compromised in situations of civil unrest, our understanding of sexual violence dynamics is particularly poor. Despite this acknowledgement, flawed estimates are often perpetuated by well intentioned actors because of the desire to provide numbers to illustrate the magnitude of violence. Citation of secondary sources with little understanding or explanation of methodology and limitations of the estimate is rampant. Sources of bias and limitations specific to research on wartime sexual violence are numerous but can be broadly categorized into macro-level [or institutional] and micro-level [or individual] constraints. Among the macro-level constraints, as previously mentioned, are logistical barriers to collecting large-scale nationally-representative surveys and the break-down of routine reporting systems during conflict. As a result, the majority of available databases of estimates from conflict areas come from reports to law enforcement authorities or record reviews at health facilities. Estimates from these sources are typically lower than the true prevalence of sexual violence because they capture only cases that were reported or where medical attention was sought, which are often only a fraction of the true incidence. Readmore