Rape has always been used as a weapon of war but the type of brutality inflicted on women today is unprecedented, says U.N. crisis expert Kathleen Cravero.

If that seems a bold claim Cravero says not even history's most notorious warmongers would have mutilated women's bodies in the same way as Congolese rebels and militia are doing, as highlighted in a recent U.S. magazine report.

Cravero, who heads the U.N. Development Programme's Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, is spearheading a major new campaign to help women and girls affected by conflicts and natural disasters. The UNDP launched an appeal this week for $10 million to set the ball rolling.

Among other things, the initiative aims to increase women's security in crises, ensure they have access to justice and boost their participation in all stages of the peace and recovery process.

Cravero's own passion for the campaign partly stems from her time in Uganda where she saw hideous atrocities committed by rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army.

"For me, the driving force ... is the face of a young woman who was abducted from her bed at 13, dragged through the jungles by the LRA, made to bear the children of an army commander, made to participate in killing and looting and treated as a sex slave. Seven years later she had the resilience and courage to escape with her children.

"We have the responsibility - the Ugandan government in particular but also the international community - to help that woman in a very practical and long-term way to get her life back on track."

Cravero believes one reason why brutality against women during and after conflicts has got so much worse is because the nature of war has changed. Most conflicts today are not between countries; they are within countries. It may sound strange to say but to some extent armies observe rules of conduct that militias and rebel groups do not.

Sexual and physical violence against women also increases after natural disasters, says Cravero.

This is partly because social mores collapse with the destruction of traditional communities and partly because of the high levels of frustration in camps. With no means to support their family, men take their anger out on women.

Another often overlooked fact is that natural disasters often kill many more women than men. For example, three times as many women died in the Pakistan earthquake as men. Why? Because women were more likely to be indoors and died when their homes collapsed on top of them. In the Indian Ocean tsunami, many women didn't survive simply because they didn't know how to swim.

Women's livelihoods tend to be more vulnerable too. Cravero points to the example of some Caribbean countries where women depend entirely on a single crop. When a hurricane strikes their income is wiped out until they can sow and harvest again.

"Men are more able to stick a hammer in their back pocket and get one of the construction jobs for rebuilding," Cravero says.

And at the end of the day women are responsible for their children. If they can't put food on the table they may get pushed into selling sex, which in turn increases their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.

Disaster risk assessments must address women's different needs and skills, the UNDP says in its eight-point plan.

The campaign is very broad in its scope and includes ensuring women participate in politics and have access to business, credit and land.

But empowering women is not just a question of fairness. It can also speed up recovery. "Women tend to be very positive agents for reconciliation and peace," says Cravero, pointing out that women from different sides of a conflict often identify with one another in a way that men don't.

But will more conservative countries welcome some of the campaign's bolder emancipatory aims?

Cravero says there is no "cookie-cutter plan" to be applied across the board: "We have to be culturally sensitive ... How far we can go post-earthquake in Pakistan will obviously be very different to how far we can go post-flood in Mexico.

"But we need to push the envelope."

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