In Darfur, after interviewing several women who told of having been raped when leaving their camps to get firewood, we asked the obvious question: “If women are raped when they get firewood, then why don’t they stay in the camp? Why don’t the men collect firewood?” “When men leave the camp, they’re shot dead,” one of the women explained patiently. “When the women leave, they’re only raped.” In almost every conflict, mortality is disproportionately male. But whereas men are the normal victims of war, women have become a weapon of war—meant to be disfigured or tortured to terrorize the rest of
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