Iraq's Yazidis and ISIS: the causes and consequences of sexual violence in conflict

Preventing sexual violence in conflict is not possible without tackling the underlying structural factors that foster this form of violence. Militant radical groups such as ISIS use specific gender norms in connection to perceived religious/sectarian identities in order to morally justify and organise violence. ISIS reinforced gender norms that perpetuate patriarchy and men’s control over women to organise the lives and behaviours of its recruits and the people under its control. ISIS’s attacks on the Yazidis showed again that gender (and gendered violence) is a key component of the politics of violence and cannot be reduced simply to an outcome of conflict.