Today's discussion is about our collective responsibility to give voice to th...

Today's discussion is about our collective responsibility to give voice to the voiceless. An increasing number of conflicts around the world are made even more horrific by the use of sexual violence. These are often the most disturbing and the most hidden elements of conflict. Yet, the number of victims is staggering, and it continues to grow every day. Each one of these people has a name and has a family.

The victims are women like Honorata, a young mother from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, who was held for nearly a year by armed militias and raped daily in captivity. After Honorata escaped, the stigma of her rape caused her family to reject her, leaving her alone and impoverished.

The victims are women like Layla, a teenager from Iran who was detained for two months during the country's protests in 2009. In a report last year on the PBS television channel, Layla described her treatment by the Iranian authorities. She said, “When they were raping and torturing me, and putting out cigarettes on my body, nobody knew… Death was a desire for me. I wanted to die”.

Testimonies like Layla's remind us that the systematic use of sexual violence is often the calling card of the most brutal regimes and militias in the world. State-sponsored rape has served as a primary tool of dictators from Al-Qadhafi in Libya, Al-Assad in Syria to the ayatollahs of Iran. Armed groups in Africa — from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Somalia — are using sexual violence to spread terror, instil fear and shatter lives. These tyrants, those warlords and criminals know that they leave scars not just on individual victims, but on families and communities.