PRETORIA -- The last 10 to 15 years have not been the best advertisement for the human species. Our brutality toward fellow human beings, including children and women, seems to plumb ever-lower depths. The positive side of identifying with fellow members of a particular religion, race, tribe or ethnic sect is only too often mirrored by the negative side of inflicting unspeakable horrors on those outside our own select group.
The result has been far too many examples of large-scale killings and ethnic cleansing. The different manifestations of ethnic cleansing include the methodical killing of members of a particular group to diminish or eliminate their presence in a particular area; the organized physical removal of members of a particular group from a particular geographical area; acts of terror designed to force people to flee; and the systematic rape for political purposes of women of a particular group (either as another form of terrorism, or as a means of changing the ethnic composition of that group).
As this indicates, an unhappy trend of contemporary conflict has been the increased vulnerability of civilians, often involving their deliberate targeting. Sometimes the permanent displacement of civilian populations has been a primary objective of the conflict. There has also been increasing concern about the deliberate use of systematic rape to provoke exclusion from a group.