I beg to move,
That this House has considered the prevention of sexual violence in conflict.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I thank Labour Friends of Israel, the all-party parliamentary group on UK-Israel and others for the briefings they have provided for this debate. I also thank Baroness Helic, who is a leading campaigner on this issue.
The focus of this debate is to ensure that we keep shining a light on the horror of the use of sexual violence in conflict. As we know, throughout history sexual violence was considered just part of the spoils of war. Rape, enslavement and murder, particularly of women and girls, formed an accepted part of the narrative of conflicts over centuries. Finally, a breakthrough came just 30 years ago. The deliberate use of mass sexual violence in armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo provoked a loud and very angry response from global women’s organisations and human rights activists, which could not be ignored.
Under that pressure, the United Nations Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 1993. Significantly, that had an unprecedented commitment to prosecute rape as a crime against humanity, along with other war crimes. A Rwandan tribunal followed with the same objective. In 2000—really not that long ago—the UN Security Council recognised women’s perspectives, rights and roles in relation to peace and security for the very first time. I am pleased to say that that initiative was championed by the UK Labour Government.
Important steps in recent years include the Government’s creation of the UK women, peace and security national action plan and the establishment of the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, which has been allocated funding. However, in an increasingly volatile world, women and girls continue to bear the brunt of the violence, and those legal frameworks and tribunals have been insufficient to ensure gender justice.
The use of sexual violence in conflict and the denial and dismissal that so often occurs afterwards remain a constant scourge in conflicts around the world. Shockingly, just last month, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Pramila Patten, reported that wartime sexual violence increased by 50% in 2023, compared with the previous year.
Perhaps the most well-known example of our failure to tackle sexual violence in conflict in the past year is the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli women and girls on 7 October. Most of the victims of that violence were subsequently murdered, so we may never have a full account of what actually took place.