A memorial is left inside a bomb shelter near the Supernova music festival, where eyewitnesses reported Hamas members gang-raping and killing women.
Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Sexual violence can be used as a weapon of war. Hamas’ use of sexual violence was likely meant to show its power over Israeli women and girls and to humiliate Israeli men and Israel’s military.
In some Indian states, ethnic minority women have faced horrific levels of sexual violence.
EPA-EFE/Piyal Adhikary
Two recent incidents involving gang rape and murder have highlighted the problems of sexual violence against women in India.
Women display a poster during a rally against the persecution of Rohingya Muslims outside the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia.
(AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
Canada’s new Indo-Pacific strategy must include providing assistance to Rohingya women who have suffered sexual violence.
Ukrainian women picket in Kyiv, Ukraine, in May 2022, calling for the rescue of Ukrainian fighters from the besieged Donbas city of Mariupol amid Russia’s invasion.
(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Ukraine deserve some measure of justice through co-ordinated, carefully planned action.
Survivors of sexual and gender-based violence suffer trauma that lasts long beyond medical crises.
Corbis News via GettyImages
During epidemics, the measures taken to protect populations and to keep health systems afloat leave women and girls vulnerable to violence.
Kenyan women launched the #HerLifeMatters campaign in Nairobi in 2019 against femicide.
Kariuki James
An international protocol to document and investigate sexual violence in conflict is falling short.
Projects that support Congolese women who have survived gender violence often promote ideal notions of how men and women should behave.
Stephen Morrision/EPA
Interventions to prevent and address sexual and gender-based violence in eastern DR Congo often reinforce traditional gender stereotypes
Rwandan peacekeepers in Mali in 2014.
United Nations Photo
Interviews with Rwandan women from the military who had served on peacekeeping missions found many felt ill-equipped for what they had to deal with.
Joint winners of the Nobel Peace Prize: Nadia Murad (left) with Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege.
EPA-EFE/Stephanie Lecocq
The awarding of the Nobel Prize for Peace to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad should strengthen efforts against the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
The Yazidis – targeted by Islamic State.
EPA-EFE/Gailan Haji
There is an urgent need for a binding convention for the prohibition of violence against women.
Yazidi children hold pictures of Nadia Murad, one of two winners of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, in Duhok, Iraq, Oct. 5, 2018.
REUTERS/Ari Jalal
With the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to two leaders who fight against sexual violence as a tool of war, we looked into our archive to find stories about those efforts across the globe.
Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege: campaigners against sexual violence against women.
EPA-EFE/PATRICK SEEGER
The prize recognises that violence against women has become a weapon of war.
Congolese women march to government offices in the Bunia, Eastern DRC to mark International Women’s Day.
Stephen Morrison/EPA
Women in the DRC are much more than victims of violence and coming together to effect change.
South Sudanese women queue to vote.
Mohamed Messara/EPA
South Sudan’s chiefs wield real power, administering customary laws to resolve local disputes. But they often reinforce gender inequalities – could the new chief change this?
After colonisation, dispossession and decades of military violence, indigenous women in Guatemala are closing in on justice at last.
Iraqi federal police forces advancing on Hawija, October 2017.
Mohamed Messara/EPA
Such children suffer unique challenges.
Sexual violence survivors need more than recognition of what they have suffered.
Viktor Petrovich/shutterstock
As foreign Islamic State fighters return home, there needs to be proper prosecution of sexual violence in armed conflict.
A UN peacekeeper keeps watch in a camp for displaced civilians in Juba, South Sudan.
David Lewis/Reuters
The United Nations has had many chances to deal decisively with the endemic sexual and gender based violence against children in its missions. But the problem persists. What will it take to stop it?
Life in a refugee camp in Juba, South Sudan.
EPA/JM Lopez
The violence and instability that wracks South Sudan is profoundly gendered.
Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo enters the court room of the ICC.
Reuters/Jerry Lampen
Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo has been convicted for crimes of sexual violence during war in the Central African Republic. It’s a significant case, but not the historic victory it’s been hailed as.