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This concluding chapter summarizes key findings and discusses their implications for the broader study of political violence and wartime conduct in both the contemporary era and when looking ahead. It considers prisoner abuse in other types of armed conflict, namely colonial wars, civil wars, and the United States' War on Terror. The violence frequently wrought upon captives shows that the prospects for troops who are captured are often grim. Yet the proper care offered to many other prisoners suggests all is not lost; humanitarian standards can prevail even in wartime. Looking over the entirety of past conflicts nonetheless shows that the road into and out of captivity will likely remain perilous for many prisoners for some time to come.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book aims to contribute to the growing literature seeking to explain the conduct of actors in the midst of armed conflict. Drawing from existing research on the broader study of wartime conduct, along with evidence from the treatment of prisoners across more than a century of interstate warfare, it argues that two sets of factors are the primary drivers behind violence against captured combatants. First, within the warring parties themselves, a country's regime type generates several internal incentives that influence how a captor chooses to treat captured enemy combatants. Democracies are typically more restrained about resorting to greater levels of abuse against their captives. The reasons for this democratic benevolence, however, are rooted less in liberal norms of tolerance and nonviolence than in institutionally driven considerations resulting from democratic leaders' accountability to their publics. The second set of factors turns instead to external incentives resulting from the nature of the conflict itself. The severity of fighting, especially in conflicts that get bogged down into long and costly wars of attrition, shapes how belligerents choose to treat their prisoners.

This chapter examines Angela Muvumba Sellström's fieldwork and encounters with non-state armed groups in Burundi, South Africa, and Uganda that established sexual discipline among their commanders and foot-soldiers. It reflects on ethical dilemmas of conducting research on “non-cases” of wartime sexual violence among armed groups that have regulated sex in wartime conduct. It focuses on the non-use of sex as a weapon of war that may acquit armed groups from other human rights violations they may have committed. The chapter mentions some sexual-violence survivors who are unwittingly silenced by a certain research focus even after the armed groups have regulated sexual conduct. It analyzes the regulation of sexual conduct that may be based on the male leadership of the armed group rather than female sexual autonomy, which may foster entrenched gender inequalities in society.