SGBV

That brings me to my second and final point. In places where sexual violence is used as a weapon of war, the Council needs to address more fundamental needs — the protection of women and accountability for those who commit abuses. Let us consider South Sudan, which has already been mentioned. In South Sudan’s Unity state, Government soldiers killed and raped civilians, pillaged homes and destroyed livestock, forcing families to flee into swamps to hide. Anyone who left the swamps risked sexual assault, so when women had to start venturing out to find food, these communities reportedly nominated the oldest women to go first to protect the children and teenagers from being raped. When the first ones grew too weak or had been raped too many times, these communities moved to the next oldest woman. Let us just imagine for a moment what the impact of these choices must be on the women of Unity state in South Sudan — imagine that was our own mother or grandmother going out to shield our daughter.

Extremist groups are using medieval tactics elsewhere to subjugate women. We see this with Boko Haram, when the organization kidnapped schoolgirls to be forcibly married to fighters or brainwashed to be suicide bombers. We see this with Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, when Yazidi women and girls are sold as sex slaves in markets. So building peace in those conflicts must start by stopping the attacks against women and making sure that women will not be attacked with impunity. That means ending impunity generally, which we are not doing a good job of.