SGBV

The term “conflict-related sexual violence” covers a wide range of sexual violence, including rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, forced sterilization, forced marriage, as well as trafficking in persons, when perpetrated in situations of conflict for the purpose of sexual violence or exploitation. As appalling and criminal as these forms of sexual violence are, my delegation wishes to draw specific attention to the use of sexual violence in conflict as a tactic of terrorism.

The motives behind this particularly heinous crime, enumerated in the Secretary-General’s report, constitutes a litany of evil that includes incentivizing the recruitment of terrorists, terrorizing and displacing populations, forcing religious conversion through marriage, suppressing women’s fundamental rights, generating revenues through sex trafficking, extorting ransom from desperate families, giving women and girls as war spoils to compensate fighters, who are then entitled to resell or to exploit them as they wish, and using women and girls as human shields and suicide bombers. The immeasurable suffering of so many women, who continue today to be victims of such cruelty, cannot but put fire under our feet to spur us all to action. The Holy See therefore appeals to the international community through the Security Council to give priority to this particularly horrendous violence against women and children.