In a women’s ward in a New Delhi hospital lies a frail 15-year-old girl. Her face and head are bandaged, leaving visible only a bruised blue-black eye and swollen lips. Burn marks and scabs extend down her neck to her whole body, and a strange stench surrounds her.

When I research rape in war, particularly gang rape, three thoughts prevail: First, the repeated illustration that rape is the expression of dominance, a vicious and complex way of ensuring that certain people and institutions function and thrive; second, that sexualized violence is not inevitable; and third, that women in the world experience life the way that imprisoned men do.

In the aftermath of the widely publicized sexual assaults in India, local and international experts have focused on the environment in which impunity, victim-blaming, and under-reporting have allowed these crimes to persist. The attention has forced Indians to examine how police, medical examiners, and members of the public treat sexual assault survivors.

Natacha Indzabingui is one of thousands of women hiding in the bush in the Central African Republic. The 32-year-old told me that when armed men attacked her village, “everyone tried to escape. Those who couldn’t were attacked. If they saw a woman they wanted, they just took her. If she had a child, it was just thrown to the side.” Thirty people were abducted that day, Indzabingui said, including 12 women and girls, some as young as 7.