Christina Lamb - Our Bodies Their Battlefield

From the award-winning war reporter and co-author of I Am Malala, this is the first major account to address the scale of rape and sexual violence in modern conflict.

Christina Lamb has reported on wars for over thirty years, becoming increasingly angered by the untold half of the story. In Our Bodies Their Battlefield she gives voice to women in conflict, exposing how in the modern warfare rape is used by armies, terrorists and militias as a weapon to humiliate, terrify and carry out ethnic cleansing.

Speaking to survivors across four continents, Lamb encounters the astonishing suffering and bravery of women in war. From Southeast Asia, where ‘comfort women’ were enslaved by the Japanese during World War II, to the chilling sexual torture carried out by the Argentine junta that seized power in 1976 and the horrific gang-rape of Rohingyas tied to banana trees by Burmese soldier in 2017. From 1970s Bangladesh, where thousands of women were raped by Pakistani troops, to the Yazidi women and children who witnessed the mass murder of their families before being enslaved by ISIS and the Nigerian schoolgirls forced to be Boko Haram bush wives. Along the way Lamb uncovers incredible heroism, including the Bosnian women who have hunted down more than a hundred war criminals, the Aleppo beekeeper rescuing Yazidis and the Congolese doctor who has risked his life to treat more rape victims than anyone else on earth.