Your Excellency Mr. Jürg Lauber,

Distinguished participants,

I appreciate the opportunity to address this August assembly. We gather here, united in our shared commitment to uphold and protect the human rights of women and girls, in the face of increasing gender-based violence in conflict and humanitarian settings.

At a time when women’s rights are under unprecedented assault, this annual discussion serves as an indispensable platform to guide our collective search for solutions, against the rollback of progress, painstakingly achieved over decades.

Today, we meet amid worsening trendlines on conflict-related sexual violence globally. The world is facing the highest number of conflicts since World War II, while the number of displaced people has reached a record of over 110 million. Rising militarization is bringing conflicts across regions to boiling point, creating the conditions for unimaginable and unrelenting cruelty. Gang rape, sexual slavery and other brutal forms of sexual violence are being used as tactics of war, torture, and terrorism, to subjugate and displace populations.

The 2024 annual Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, which I will present to the Security Council in August, records over 4,500 UN-verified cases across 21 country situations with women and girls accounting for 91% of the victims. While the report conveys the severity and brutality of verified incidents, it does not purport to reflect the global scale or prevalence of this chronically underreported, historically hidden crime. We know that for every woman who comes forward, many more are silenced by fear of reprisals and the paucity of services. Furthermore, stigma, rooted in harmful social norms, results in socioeconomic exclusion and impoverishment of survivors.

The report highlights a number of both entrenched and emerging issues:

I. Displaced, refugee and migrant women and girls continue to face heightened risks of sexual violence, including abductions and sexual slavery, in conflict-affected settings, such as Burkina Faso, DRC, Haiti, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan.

II. In Myanmar, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere, women and girls fleeing for their safety, have fallen prey to unscrupulous trafficking and criminal networks, for whom forced displacement of civilians is not a tragedy, but an opportunity for exploitation.

III. The illicit proliferation and availability of small arms and light weapons, in places like Haiti and Sudan, fuels the conflicts and creates an environment in which sexual violence occurs and recurs with impunity.

IV. Women are exposed to sexual violence in the course of essential livelihood activities. In eastern DRC, women have reported carrying condoms with them while searching for food or collecting wood and water. These women face the unacceptable choice between economic subsistence and sexual violence, between their livelihoods and their lives. We cannot underestimate how food insecurity increases the risk of sexual violence, and how conflict and hunger are linked in complex spirals of cause and effect.

 V. Sexual violence continues to be a persistent feature of the political economy of war, with armed and terrorist groups, using it strategically to assert control over territories and lucrative natural resources, and to incentivize the recruitment of fighters, through forced marriages and the sale and trafficking of women and girls, in regions like the Sahel.

VI. The unprecedented scale and severity of attacks, harassment and threats against healthcare facilities and frontline service providers in conflict settings, including Haiti, Mali, Myanmar, the State of Palestine, Sudan, and Ukraine, has severely hampered access to life-saving assistance for survivors. Services are least available at the very moment when survivors need them most.

VII. While conflict-related sexual violence is a grave breach of International Humanitarian Law, amounting to a war crime, crime against humanity, and/or constituent act of genocide, impunity remains the norm and accountability the rare exception.

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

In a world scarred by conflict and instability, we must use all tools at our disposal to confront the persistent scourge of conflict-related sexual violence.

Since I took office in June 2017, one of my strategic priorities has been to address the root causes of this violence, with structural gender inequality and discrimination as its invisible driver.

Rape is not an inevitable by-product of war. It can be prevented through a concerted and strategic approach. Through my Security Council mandate, I continue to prioritize:

Prevention and deterrence through justice and accountability – driven primarily by my Team of Experts on the Rule of Law, which supports national institutions to strengthen investigations and prosecutions for these crimes. My office launched Model Legislative Provisions and Guidance on Investigation and Prosecution of CRSV to assist States to harmonize domestic laws with international standards, given the importance of a comprehensive legislative framework.

Since 2022, the UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict network, which I Chair, comprising 26 UN member entities, has been rolling out a Prevention framework, including in Ukraine. This framework outlines measures to address the root causes of sexual violence, in addition to mitigating the secondary harms, such as stigma, trauma and reprisals. Indeed, if left unaddressed, the harms compound and multiply over time.

I have expanded my circle of allies through the signing of a number of Frameworks of Cooperation, including with the CEDAW Committee, the Inter Parliamentary Union, and religious leaders from across the spectrum of faiths. Through the cooperation with CEDAW, Member States such as the DRC and Myanmar, have been requested to submit exceptional reports on measures taken to address CRSV.

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

The promise expressed by the Security Council through its 6 dedicated resolutions on CRSV is prevention. We owe survivors more than solidarity; we owe them effective and decisive action to prevent and eradicate these crimes.

We must reassure populations at risk that they are not forgotten, and that international law is not an empty promise. At a moment of backlash and regression, a failure to sustain progress would not only betray the survivors but further embolden the perpetrators.

Thank you.