By Lisa Navarrette, ICC Fellow — 
Rape as a form of Christian persecution is a grave human rights violation and an egregious act of violence used to intimidate, degrade, and destroy communities. This heinous crime is employed to target Christian women and girls. Perpetrators use rape with the intent of achieving specific goals. They wish to change the demographic makeup of a region by forcibly impregnating women, ensuring that the offspring belong to the perpetrator’s group. This is intended to diminish the presence of the targeted minority over generations. They intend to break the spirit and cohesion of a community by inflicting deep psychological trauma and stigma. This makes it difficult for the community to recover and reassert its identity and presence.
Perpetrators seek to erase cultural and religious identities by destroying the lineage and heritage of the targeted group. Forced pregnancies ensure that children are raised outside their mother’s cultural and religious context. Rape has historically been used as a means to “breed out” certain minorities, including Christians, through acts of genocidal violence and ethnic cleansing. This tactic aims not only to inflict immediate physical and psychological harm but also to undermine the cultural and genetic continuity of targeted communities.
In regions plagued by war and conflict, such as parts of the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, rape is used as a weapon of war to terrorize and destabilize Christian communities.(1) This tactic aims to force communities to flee, thus altering the demographic and religious makeup of the region. Extremist groups, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Islamic State group (ISIS) in the Middle East, have explicitly targeted Christian women and girls for rape, abduction, and forced marriage. These acts are often justified through distorted religious ideologies that dehumanize and vilify non-believers. In societies where there is deep-seated hatred toward Christians, rape can be used as a form of punishment and control. This can occur in contexts where Christians are a minority and face systemic discrimination and violence from the majority community.
During the Bosnian genocide (1992-1995), Serbian forces targeted Bosniak (Muslim) and Croatian populations in acts of ethnic cleansing. Rape camps were established where women were systematically raped with the intent of forcibly impregnating them, thus “diluting” the ethnic identity of future generations. The Hutu majority targeted the Tutsi minority in the brutal Rwandan genocide (1994). Rape was used to terrorize and humiliate Tutsi women, often with the intent of transmitting HIV/AIDS and destroying the Tutsi lineage through forced pregnancies.
ISIS campaigns in Iraq and Syria target Yazidi and Christian women. Women are abducted, enslaved, sold at markets, and raped with the explicit aim of erasing their ethnic and religious identities by forcing them to bear children of their captors. ISIS’s propaganda openly called for the sexual enslavement of non-Muslim women, seeing it as religiously justified. One reporter shares her interviews with the enslaved girls:
“What they [the victims] talk about is how systematic the rape was and how they tried to, you know, protest and they tried to ask the [ISIS] fighters, why are you doing this to me? And everything was cloaked in a religious justification. They told them, you are infidels. You are unbelievers. And the fighters explained to them that, because of your lack of faith, the Koran gives us the right to rape you, and whatever we do to you is not only justified in scripture; it is considered virtuous. And among the most difficult interviews to do were with these very young women. One was 12. Another was 15. And they described how the fighters got on the floor and prostrated both in prayer before getting on top of them and raping them. And then after the rape, they would go and take a shower and then pray again.”(2)
In Nigeria, the Islamist militant group Boko Haram has targeted Christian women and girls. They have abducted hundreds of schoolgirls, subjecting them to rape, forced conversions, and marriage to militants. The 2014 Chibok schoolgirls’ kidnapping is a notorious example where most of the abducted girls were Christians.(3) In Egypt, Christian women and girls have been abducted and forced into marriages with Muslim men. Reports indicate that these abductions often involve rape and coercion and are sometimes carried out with the tacit approval of local authorities.(4)
Rape leaves deep psychological scars on victims, including PTSD, depression, and anxiety. The stigma associated with rape can further isolate victims, making recovery more challenging. In many cultures, rape victims face severe social stigma and are often ostracized by their communities. This can lead to displacement, as victims and their families may be forced to flee their homes to escape further violence or social exclusion.
Rape as a form of Christian persecution is a brutal tactic used to terrorize and dismantle religious communities. The use of rape to “breed out” certain minorities is a grievous violation of human rights and a tool of genocidal violence. It inflicts deep and lasting harm on victims and communities, aiming to erase cultural and ethnic identities over generations. The international community must continue to work towards documenting these crimes, supporting survivors, and ensuring that perpetrators are held accountable to prevent such atrocities in the future.
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- Lee, M. (2019, January 23). For Christian Women, Persecution Looks Like Rape. ChristianityToday.com. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/january-web-only/rape-sexual-assault-for-women-persecution-looks-like.html
- Callimachi, R. (2015, August 13). How Islamic State systematically turns girls into sex slaves. PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/islamic-state-systematically-turns-girls-sex-slaves
- Nwaubani, A. T. (2024, April 12). “We Left the Girls Too Long in That Place.” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/04/complicated-psychology-victims-boko-haram/678030/
- Carey, J. (2017, April 13). What’s Behind the Horrific Christian Persecution in Egypt? RELEVANT. https://relevantmagazine.com/current/world/whats-behind-the-horrific-christian-persecution-in-egypt/
