"When militias are first reported to rape and sexually assault civilians, state forces reportedly increase their own sexual violence. In other words, governments don't outsource violence against civilians; they model it. They may influence militia behavior through training or through more informal diffusion — or both. Studies show that when governments train militias, militias are more likely to target civilians both with sexual violence and other kinds of violence."

Existing research maintains that governments delegate extreme, gratuitous, or excessively brutal violence to militias. However, analyzing all militias in armed conflicts from 1989 to 2009, we find that this argument does not account for the observed patterns of sexual violence, a form of violence that should be especially likely to be delegated by governments. Instead, we find that states commit sexual violence as a complement to—rather than a substitute for—violence perpetrated by militias.

"For policymakers to develop effective policies, they will require a clear understanding of the ways that rape and other forms of sexual violence have varied across time, space and perpetrator group. As social scientists, we are committed to tracking these forms of variation, which are essential to understanding where — and helping us test theories of why — rape has occurred in recent conflicts."

Which armed groups have perpetrated sexual violence in recent conflicts? This article presents patterns from the new Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (SVAC) dataset. The dataset, coded from the three most widely used sources in the quantitative human rights literature, covers 129 active conflicts, and the 625 armed actors involved in these conflicts, during the period 1989–2009.

This policy brief summarizes key trends in conflict-related sexual violence in 48 conflicts in 33 African countries, encompassing 236 armed-conflict actors, including state armies, militias and rebel groups.

In a study of African conflicts from 1989 to 2009, the authors find that governments do not seem to 'delegate' the commission of atrocities to militias in order to avoid accountability, as has often been assumed. On the contrary, when militias commit acts of sexual violence, states are also reported as perpetrators.