Gender-based violence and sexual crimes against women are endemic to war and conflict and not unique to the African continent. With the myriad communal and state-sponsored conflicts in Africa, however, these crimes have inflicted vast devastation on immediate and extended victims.Rape and other forms of sexual violence are not only a by-product of war, but are often used systematically as weapons in war and genocide. While legal statutes address these crimes, they have only marginally been addressed in criminal tribunals, as legal systems and prosecutors have proven to be impediments to full justice in these situations. Charges of gender-based violence and sexual crimes have been prosecuted before the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda, and the
International Criminal Court has accepted cases from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, but all of the cases faced a number of challenges in advancing the cause of justice in cases of sexual violence during conflict, war, and genocide.