Armed men in civil wars commit widespread and extreme rape. This is the public perception of wartime sexual violence. These atrocities have occurred in Iraq and Syria, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan's Darfur, the new South Sudan and in the Central African Republic. Thus, attention by policymakers and the media has increased. However, international advocates (and to a lesser extent scholarly communities) have fetishized the most grotesque types of violence such as slavery and abduction, gang rape and brutal rapes (Meger, 2016) without explaining patterns of variation in sexual misdeeds. They have also obfuscated lessons of restraint and sexual discipline in the conduct of war. After all, not all men rape and not all men in conflict commit sexual violence.

Indeed, a recent turn in research has begun to problematize the image of warzones as sites of perpetual sexual predation. Scholars have shown that not all armed actors allow rape; that abuses, including rape, can be organized by women; that men are also victimized; that perpetrator groups commit a diverse array of acts; and further, that sexual violence is not always a ‘weapon of war’ (Cohen, 2013; Cohen and Nordas, 2014; Dolan, 2016; Eriksson Baaz and Stern, 2013; Gutiérrez Saní and Wood, 2014; Hoover Green, 2018, 2017, 2016; Hultman and Muvumba Sellström, 2018; Kirby, 2012; Lieby, 2009; Muvumba Sellström, 2015a, 2015b; Sivakumaran, 2007; Wood, 2018, 2014, 2009, 2006). Still, most research addresses pathological wartime sexual conduct, not the control that is associated with punishing perpetrators by some conflict actors. What about the non-cases, where militaries and armed movements have stigmatized sexual predation and established effective practices to discipline their fighters?

My research has brought me into fieldwork and encounters with non-state armed groups in Burundi, South Africa and Uganda that established sexual discipline among their commanders and foot-soldiers. Since 2011, I have conducted field research on the Palipehutu-FNL (Forces Nationales de Libération) in Burundi (1980– 2008); and, beginning in 2017, Uganda's National Resistance Army/Movement (NRA/M) (1981– 86) and the African National Congress's armed wing uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) (1961– 90/91).