Rape in Armed Conflict

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Lester for not only securing this debate but having the courage to raise what is a very contentious issue. It is difficult to estimate how many women have been raped during armed conflict, but a survey in the American Journal of Public Health a year ago estimated that in the Congo, over 1,000 women were raped every day. We know that rape is a weapon of war and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said, is also a step to genocide.

Closer to home, I was fortunate—or unfortunate—enough to be in Tirana in the spring of 1999 when the people of Kosovo were fleeing from the Serbs. I was fortunate because I witnessed the unquestioning and generous help that ordinary Albanians were giving the refugees, mostly total strangers to them. However, it was harrowing to visit one of the hospitals and hear the stories of some of the women who were brave enough to tell what had happened to them. Some had been gang-raped by soldiers, some had been brutally raped and then abused with rifle butts, broken bottles and, in one case I heard of, with burning plastic bottles. Noble Lords can imagine the suffering.

The trauma is suffered on many levels. There is appalling physical injury and infection to be dealt with. There is great mental suffering. Children may have witnessed the rape of their mothers and are deeply traumatised as well. Husbands may reject or leave a wife who has been raped. There is social exclusion from the group, and shame heaped upon the victim by the community. Many women do not admit what has happened to them because of this.

If pregnancy results from the rape, support and counselling will be needed for the victim, although I think the idea of proper counselling in conflict zones is just pie in the sky. The majority of women will want safe abortion; without safe abortion provision, women who have been raped will try to end the pregnancy by unsafe means. The International Conference on Population and Development, held by the UNFPA in Cairo as long ago as 1994, stated in its programme of action that human rights abuses occur when a woman is forced to carry an unwanted or unviable pregnancy; this is degrading and causes mental suffering especially when the pregnancy is the result of rape.

I was not going to repeat the legal arguments but I think we have time to remind ourselves. As my noble friend has told the House, under the Geneva Convention, women who have been subjected to rape as a weapon of war fall into the category of “wounded and sick” and should have equal access to medical treatment. The UN Convention Against Torture recognises that safe abortion is a necessary element of complete medical services for injuries resulting from torture. Rape is torture, and the denial of correct medical treatment after rape is therefore, in itself, cruel and inhuman treatment—torture, in other words.

The purpose of this debate is to try to clarify just what treatment women can get from the humanitarian programmes provided by DfID. Despite President Obama’s lifting of the “global gag” rule when he came in office, abortion is still effectively banned as part of US humanitarian aid, as we have heard, which ignores the fact that the USA recognises girls and women raped in armed conflict as victims of torture. The UNFPA receives funding from the USA and would lose its funding from that source if it was using money from other donors, such as us, for abortion in the same field of operation. The UK Government have been exemplary in recognising the need for safe abortion as a necessary part of treating women who have been raped in conflict, but some of us have had confusing replies when we have tried to establish whether the USA ruling is preventing other countries doing this work when funds are pooled by agencies such as UNFPA.

On a slightly different matter, I also ask my noble friend the Minister to what extent emergency contraception—hormone—pills are used after rape. Emergency contraception is not abortion; it prevents ovulation. It can be taken up to two days after intercourse; five days for some of the new products which are becoming available. Intra-uterine devices can also be used up to five days after sexual intercourse and will prevent ovulation if they contain copper. These methods are very easy to administer. They are cheap and do not carry quite so much baggage as surgical abortion for people working in the field.

If the evidence is lacking, will research be commissioned urgently so that we can live up to our legal and moral obligations to minimise the terrible suffering of victims of conflict and sexual violence?