Prevention of Sexual Violence in Conflict

[Sir Charles Walker in the Chair]

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.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. On issues not being fully reported, does she agree that one of the advantages that we have in the west is that where there is a free press, these issues are highlighted, as they are being today? In some of the more repressive regimes, we hear very little, if anything, about the types of sexual violence that she is rightly alluding to.

That is a very important point, and I did not include it in my opening remarks, so I thank the hon. Gentleman for that.

What happened on 7 October was a well-documented case of mass sexual violence, in part because the terrorist perpetrators proudly filmed and advertised their crimes. A first responder at kibbutz Be’eri reported finding “piles and piles” of dead women “completely naked” from the waist down, and there have been horrifying reports of sexual mutilation. A survivor of the Supernova music festival massacre, Yoni Saadon, recalled:

“I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her…When they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head.”

Tragically, Hamas’s use of rape as a weapon of war may not be over yet. Reports indicate that female and male hostages have been sexually assaulted and abused during their incarceration. The fact that sexual violence was committed at multiple locations suggests that it was part of a systematic effort. As the Israeli women’s rights campaigner Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari told the BBC, such a concentration of cases in a relatively short span of time left her in “no doubt” that there was a

“premeditated plan to use sexual violence as a weapon of war”.

Does my hon. Friend share my anguish at the fact that the United Nations chose not to recognise that sexual violence took place during the attack on 7 October? Does she further share my horror at the testimony I heard from a woman who was responsible for looking at the bodies when they came into the mortuary? That woman talked about the greyness that confronted her, adding that every now and then there was a bit of shining colour, which was the nail varnish left on the bodies of people who had been sexually abused and then killed.

I agree with my right hon. Friend on that point, and I heard that testimony too. On that very day, I had bright red nails, unlike the paler-coloured nails that I have today, and the testimony struck me in a profound way.

For months after the 7 October attacks, there was a deafening silence from many organisations and international agencies that are supposedly dedicated to addressing these kinds of crimes. The best that the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls could respond with initially was a very evasive expression of “concern” about

“reports of sexual violence that may have occurred since 7 October, committed by State and non-State actors against Israelis and Palestinians.”

Another organisation, UN Women, which is supposedly

“dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women,”

issued multiple statements following 7 October, none of which addressed Hamas’s sex crimes.

It is deeply concerning that that has been mirrored in the response of some progressive groups, some of which have refused to believe the testimony of eyewitnesses and sought to characterise evidence as “unverified accusations”, even though the evidence of organised and systematic planned attacks in different locations at the same time is clear. The choice made by many to downplay the testimonies of survivors and ignore the evidence about those who were murdered, which we have seen in conflicts around the world, shows just how far we still have to go to change attitudes, even among groups that purport to believe all women.

It is important to note that, although it is particularly stark in relation to the sexual assaults committed on 7 October—I cite that atrocity as it is the most recent example—the denial and dismissal of sexual assault in that conflict is not unique. Many conflicts receive less international attention and reports of sexual violence are often met with an international wall of silence or ineffective expressions of concern. In that regard, it is important to draw attention to the serious allegations of sexual violence reported by interlocutors in Ramallah who raised concerns about the treatment of Palestinians in detention, and in particular the use of sexual harassment and threats of rape during house raids and at checkpoints.

I thank the hon. Member for bringing forward this important debate and allowing me to intervene. There are 614 million women and girls living in conflict regions. Women often face disproportionate violence in those conflict zones. Sexual violence is often used against women in conflict, as the hon. Member has so powerfully set out. Does she agree that it is the UK’s moral obligation to provide humanitarian support and funding to help rebuild infrastructure in those conflict zones, and to increase our international aid to 0.7% of GNI?

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I agree with what she said. The UK needs to play a leading role in that regard.

The international community should work to create an international commission with the sole mandate of focusing on sexual violence in conflict. To the hon. Lady’s point, we would be leading the way on the matter. That idea has been pioneered by Baroness Helic, informed by her role helping to create the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, and inspired by the International Commission on Missing Persons. That was formed following an agreement during the G8 and has now transformed into a treaty-based body that works in more than 40 countries.

There are gaps in international architecture, which means that sexual violence is slipping through the net. Instruments used to achieve justice internationally are able to focus only on perpetrators at the highest levels, and national courts often experience limited resources or a lack of willingness. The proposed commission would perform a similar function to the International Commission on Missing Persons, which has the dual aims of ensuring the co-operation of Governments and others in addressing issues of missing persons, and providing technical assistance to Governments in locating, recovering and identifying missing persons.

The proposed commission would have a two-pronged approach. First, it would work with Governments and other international bodies to co-ordinate the deployment of experts in countries where sexual violence in conflict has occurred, to help collect vital evidence and record testimonies in a sensitive way, and build up local expertise. On 7 October, the primary focus of emergency services was responding to the heinous act of terror, which meant that forensic evidence of sexual violence diminished over time. Should a body such as the one that is proposed have existed, it could have played a key role in collecting that vital evidence in a timely but culturally sensitive manner, which would ultimately have helped refute all the denials.

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak. I call Jim Shannon.

It is a pleasure to be called so early in the debate, Sir Charles—I am used to jumping up, then sitting back down again. It is great to be here and I look forward to all the contributions. I thank the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for securing this debate. I will give examples and perspectives from across the world.

The violence that happens to ladies and young girls across the world is horrendous. It upsets me and makes me physically and emotionally annoyed. I shudder whenever I think of the things that happen. As Members of this House, we have a platform to raise awareness of significant human rights concerns. We are here to advocate for those who are subjected to some of the most extreme cases of violence that threaten their safety, freedom and dignity. For me, each of those three points is incredibly important.

This debate has been called at a time when the world is witnessing the highest number of violent conflicts since the second world war. I am a person of faith. The Bible talks about how there will be wars and rumours of wars. I never in my lifetime can remember as many wars and as many rumours of wars as there are now. That tells me that the Bible is an indication that the last times are coming. Perhaps that is something we should take note of.

That fact makes me shudder. Knowing that that entails a rise in conflict-based sexual violence affects me physically and emotionally. The UN verified that there were 3,688 cases of conflict-based sexual violence last year alone, a 50% increase from the previous year. Women and girls account for 95% of those cases and children account for 32%. How could anyone in this world carry out anything sexual against a child?

Sexual violence occurs in conflicts across the world, with the highest numbers recorded in Ethiopia and, as the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West said, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I read some time ago that in Ukraine there were attacks on women and girls as young as eight years old and as old as 80. Can anyone envisage what that means? Those people must think they are Russian monsters, because that is what they are. They think it is okay to abuse girls and women whenever they want. That is the world we live in and why this debate is so important.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Charles, and to speak in this incredibly important debate. I thank my good and hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for securing today’s debate. Sexual violence is the most forgotten, and one of the most reprehensible, weapons of war. It is, as the United Nations has rightly stated, rarely simply the action of rogue soldiers but a deliberate planned tactic designed to terrorise, assert power and inflict lasting trauma and psychological scars. It has a particularly sickening attraction for its perpetrators. As Amnesty International put it,

“rape is cheaper than bullets”.

While the conflict in Bosnia saw the first ever convictions for mass rape as a war crime, that hardly seems to have served as a deterrent. In recent years, women and girls in Ukraine, northern Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been subjected to horrific sexual war crimes, but we have no hope of combating this evil if we cannot even acknowledge its existence, if we cannot agree that it must never be ignored, doubted or dismissed, and if we cannot recognise that rape is rape whatever the victim’s race, religion or nationality. That is why I want to briefly comment on the abhorrent acts of sexual violence committed by Hamas in its attack on southern Israel on 7 October. As we have heard, those were acts of exceptional brutality. As Meni Binyamin, head of the international crime investigations unit of the Israeli police, has suggested, they were

“the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen”

—truly horrifying acts of rape, sexual mutilation and torture.

An extensive investigation was carried out by The New York Times in December, which utilised video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with over 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape councillors. They all identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls were sexually assaulted and mutilated. They included the site of the Nova music festival, kibbutz Be’eri and kibbutz Kfar Aza. The attacks against women were not isolated events, The New York Times concluded, but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence. That confirms the analysis made by Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, an expert on family law and international women’s rights who works with Israeli women’s groups, that those were atrocities that the world, including those supposedly committed to human rights and the safety of women and girls, had decided to downplay and ignore. It took over seven weeks for the UN Secretary-General to call for an investigation into Hamas’s campaign of rape. It took UN Women, which says it is dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, 50 days to even acknowledge that these crimes had occurred. Where was the sisterhood? Where were the feminists? “Me too, unless you’re a Jew.” Let the call come from this House today directly to those women: we are here to tell you that we see you, hear you and believe you.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles, and a true honour to be part of this debate, which I have a feeling is going to be this place at its best. It is at its best when it speaks for those who cannot yet be heard, and when it confronts difficult truths in our society and makes a plan to act. I suspect that the Minister shares our concern on this matter and so we are pushing at an open door, because, sadly, this is something we have seen for many years.

Let me start by joining my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) in honouring Baroness Helic and her work on this matter, as well as thanking my hon. Friend for securing this debate. She made such a powerful opening speech, and I agree with everything that my colleagues have said. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who has just blown us all apart with her powerful call to action.

International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict is 19 June, so the Minister has a mere couple of weeks to agree and put in place what we shall decide today should happen in this House. But that should be a very easy task, because the asks are very simple. We must act, because we know that this is getting worse. I am not going to join the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in suggesting that we are in the end of days just yet, although I respect that as part of his faith, but I recognise that we live in a very uncertain world. Six out of seven worldwide are plagued by a feeling of insecurity. We are facing the highest number of violent conflicts since the second world war, and 2 billion people —a quarter of all humanity—are therefore in places affected by those conflicts.

The challenge that we face here today is that, too often, sexual violence is seen as an inevitable consequence of such conflict—as day follows night, so women will be violated. That is not the case. Women are not mere collateral damage to conflict. The first thing that we must do in this House is to challenge that notion—that complacency—that it is part of the process so our challenge is to find a way just to stop it. No; we need to prevent it, and we prevent it by, first of all, recognising that it does not need to happen. It is chilling to me that many non-governmental organisations talk about how, for those who fight wars, sexual assault is seen as more destructive than using fire to damage a community, because the resulting damage lasts for generations.

Both the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) have stressed the organised nature of what happened on 7 October, but no one has yet said what the reason was for that. The principal reason, as far as I can see, was to try to goad the Israelis into precisely the sort of overreaction—thus alienating world opinion from their cause—as that on which they have subsequently embarked. So, if it can be proven that the mass rape and other sexual abuse was planned by the organisers of Hamas, does it not follow from that, that they, as well as the actual perpetrators of these attacks, must face retribution in the international courts eventually?