SGBV

Despite our efforts, in many theatres of conflict women continue to be the primary victims of large-scale, often systematic, sexual violence. Actions committed by Da’esh or Boko Haram show the most extreme forms of such violence, which particularly targets women and children. For those terrorist groups, sexual violence is a weapon of war, but also a source of financing and a recruitment tool. In Syria, rape, forced marriage, sexual slavery and prostitution particularly threaten women and adolescents, especially in regions controlled by Da’esh. In Iraq, Da’esh has set up a marketplace where women and girls from minority groups, including Yezidis and Christians, are sold into sexual slavery.

The large-scale abductions of girls and women by Boko Haram in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria, go hand in hand with the systematic practice of sexual violence, the most common being rape. The abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls in the spring of 2014 — 82 of whom were freed a week ago — brought into broad daylight a common practice of that terrorist group and others, used for intimidation and propaganda and as recruitment strategy, but also as favoured instrument of their ideology.

Boko Haram, Da’esh and other groups like Al-Shabaab in Somalia have integrated those practices into their doctrine and strategy. Those acts, which are morally revolting to the human conscience, can legally be classified as war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide. The members of terrorist groups who organize and commit such acts should be held to account in due course. We cannot accept that such crimes remain unpunished.

Beyond terrorist groups, sexual violence is used on a large scale as a weapon of war by armed groups or forces, for example in South Sudan and in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, but also in northwestern Central African Republic. Far from being a matter of individual cases or the acts of lost soldiers, in many regions sexual violence is a means to terrorize populations or as an instrument of collective punishment against ethnic or religious groups. Its primary target is women, but is also used against children and men.