19 giugno: Giornata Mondiale contro la violenza sessuale nei conflitti armati

Translated by Federica Conti

According to Pramila Patten, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts, the United Nations registered and verified 9,788 cases of conflict-related sexual violence in 2025. This data shows a much broader, systematic phenomenon and shows a growing trend. The current report lists more than double the 4,600 cases reported last year.

The violence documented by the United Nations is not limited to rape, but it also entails a wider range of crimes such as individual and group rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy and abortion, forced sterilization, forced marriage, and trafficking of human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation in the context of war.

The abuses are mainly happening in those countries marked by a deep crisis of safety and by armed conflicts, where the responsibility is upon both state actors and non-state individuals. In this context, sexual violence is often used as a strategic means to reach political and military goals. In societies characterized by highly patriarchal cultures, women’s bodies are still seen as an extension of men’s power. Therefore, affecting women means psychologically humiliating the enemies. In this way, rape becomes a weapon of terror and control with the aim of undermining the resistance of civilians and, in extreme cases, to damage the cultural and biological identity of a community.

The dynamics described in the report written by the United Nations are directly confirmed in different current war zones. For instance, in Sudan, sexual violence keeps being used as a war weapon, and hundreds of women in the Darfur area were victims of individual and group rapes during the attacks against their villages. The phenomenon does not only involve militias and irregular armed forces, but Israeli and Russian armed forces, for security, are also once again cited in the report among those responsible for sexual violence due to the reiteration of the violence perpetrated. These last two cases are particularly controversial due to repeated obstacles faced by UN researchers from Israel and Russia,

International law has made progress in recognizing these crimes. Humanitarian international law forbids rape and other forms of sexual violence, both in cases of international armed conflicts and non-international ones. One of the fundamental bases of this protection is the Convention of Geneva in 1949. In particular, the IV Convention of Geneva, dedicated to the protection of civilians in times of war, prohibits forced prostitution and raped in 27th article.

Another step forward in humanitarian international law was introduced with the first additional protocol to the Convention of Geneva in 1977. In Article 76 (comma I), it declares that:

“Women shall be the object of special respect and shall be protected in particular against rape, forced prostitution and any other form of indecent assault”.

On the judicial side, a historical turning point in the condemnation of rape as a weapon of genocide and crime against humanity was reached by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda at the end of the last century. This evolution led to the following adoption of the Rome Statute, entered into force the 1st of July 2022, including explicitly rape and other forms of sexual violence in the list of crimes against humanity and in the crimes of war. On the diplomatic side, with the resolution 2467 of 2019, the UN Security Council recognised sexual violence as a real tactic of war and terrorism, affirming that each state has the responsibility of preventing it and prosecuting it.

The UN report S/2026/31 is a decisive call to the Security Council and Member States: it must prompt urgent action to strengthen accountability, prevention, and support for survivors. States are called upon to ensure humanitarian access without obstacles, expand monitoring and sanction mechanisms, support advisers for the protection of women in UN missions, reinforce investigations and criminal prosecutions, and increase funding for medical, psychological, and legal services. Immediate, coordinated effort is needed to end impunity, provide justice for survivors, and create a future where sexual violence in conflict is no longer tolerated.

Most past and present wars are considered similar because of the brutal and repetitive continuity. It is a trail of violence that for centuries stayed at the borders, without making noise, often silenced and considered as one of the inevitable consequences of armed conflicts. Through the bodies of the most vulnerable individuals, almost always women and little girls, the goal is to affect a whole society, transforming suffering into a weapon.

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