When we hear about conflicts in foreign countries and imagine terrible acts, our thoughts don’t turn immediately to rape. We think of bombings and refugees and government suppression.

Last week, a young woman from the Karen ethnic minority in Burma reported being “beaten, drugged, and sexually assaulted by two men wearing army fatigues.” In November 2011, reports emerged that four women were being kept as sex slaves by the Burmese military near the Kachin-China border; forced to cook and clean during the day and gang-raped at night by the soldiers in the Light Infantry Battalion 321. These reports, unfortunately, are not rare.

Guatemala City—There’s a heavy green to this place, layered. Clouds weigh on the hills and seep into the trees and grass and leaves and bushes. Every clearing we pass turns to depths, and in those reaches lie the dead.

The most positive, most productive way to improve the lives of girls in conflict areas may appear to be to sharply steer them away from stigma and violence. But as researchers and fieldworkers, advocates and policymakers, we have to consider the pitfalls of thinking we know best.

As nightfall approached on July 30, 2010, hundreds of armed men streamed into the village of Luvungi in eastern Congo from the nearby forests surrounding the area. At first they told the villagers they were just there for food and shelter and that their presence should cause no alarm. However, what unfolded over the next four days marked one of the worst attacks against a civilian community in Congo in the last two years.