This volume explores the meanings, nature and function of rape during political transitions, showing that high levels of sexual violence directed mainly against women and children during war-time normally do not cease or dissipate after the end of formal hostilities, and that post-conflict societies experience higher than normal to extremely high levels of sexual violence against women and children. In the process, the book proposes a theory of sexual violence during political transitions that views this form of sexual violence less as a lingering effect of the armed conflict and more as an attempt to construct the new social order as a masculine-heroic order.