n 2006 I was visiting war-torn Darfur, a region of Sudan where tens of thousands of people had been displaced by war and taken refuge in makeshift camps. It was a distressing spectacle of women and children driven from their homes, needing food, warmth and sanitation. As I listened to their stories I heard about a horror that was new to me at that time: rape and sexual violence organised and encouraged as a deliberate act of policy. Whenever they went out for firewood in order to cook for their families, the women explained, the militia backed by the Sudanese state would be waiting, to seize and rape them as a means of spreading terror and humiliation.
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