The ethnic cleansing campaign carried out from 1992-1995 left thousands of Bosnian women coping with the loss of their families and communities and the profound psychological trauma and humiliation of sexual assault and torture. Throughout the war, rape was used as a military tactic with the official intent to demoralize and terrorize communities, driving women and others from their homes as a demonstration of the power of the invading forces.

Serbian soldiers and paramilitary groups systematically perpetrated mass rape, forced impregnation, forced prostitution and sexual slavery on all non-Serb women with the aim of ethnic cleansing. Women were sometimes raped publicly when soldiers would enter a village, as well as in the privacy of their own apartments and houses. There were more than 16 rape/concentration camps that were organized by the Serbian military during the war. Women were kept in a camp for a minimum of 21 days, though many were held for longer periods. If a woman became pregnant in the camp, she would be held until the late stages of pregnancy, then forced to leave with no provisions or a place to return. Other women were released as part of a prisoner exchange. During the imprisonment period, women suffered mass rape on a daily basis; they had to cook and clean for the soldiers; and at times they were forced to do so naked. Rape served as a horrifying means of humiliation, not only for women but also for a whole population.

Although rape has historically been used as a weapon of war, it has never been prosecuted in international courts as a war crime. Bosnian and Croatian women are credited for speaking out about the rape and crimes they faced, and for bringing this issue into the international arena. Because of their courage and willingness to speak, rape has been prosecuted as a war crime for the first time in the War Tribunals of former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

In post-war Bosnia, women are still facing the brunt of economic and political hardships. Thousands of female-headed households are still internally displaced in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Women form the majority of the poor population, with limited economic opportunities or health services to deal with the consequences of the war.

Prostitution and trafficking of Bosnian women has also expanded greatly since the war ended. Because of high unemployment rates, many Bosnian women are easy targets for human traffickers who promise them job opportunities in the West, but instead force them into prostitution. Traffickers are often the same warlords and paramilitaries from the war who have turned to organized crime in the post-war turmoil. Women are taken from their homes, abused and forced to become prostitutes and slaves for local and foreign soldiers with the NATO-led peacekeeping forces. In April 2002, the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina recorded more than 1,300 female prostitutes in the country.