IRIN Web Special on violence against women and girls during and after conflict. The term gender-based violence is used to distinguish violence that targets individuals or groups of persons on the basis of their gender from other forms of violence. Gender-based violence includes acts such as rape, torture, mutilations, sexual slavery, forced impregnation and murder. During conflict, violence aganist women becomes an excepted norm while militarisation and the increased presence of weapons result in high levels of brutality and even greater levels of freedom or exemption from punishment. In this special there are articles on rape as a tool of war, UN peacekeeping, war and women's health, interviews and special reports from Angola, Burundi, Liberia, Tajikistan, Congo and Sudan.