Prevention of Sexual Violence in Conflict

Alex Davies-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Charles, and to speak in this incredibly important debate. I thank my good and hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for securing today’s debate. Sexual violence is the most forgotten, and one of the most reprehensible, weapons of war. It is, as the United Nations has rightly stated, rarely simply the action of rogue soldiers but a deliberate planned tactic designed to terrorise, assert power and inflict lasting trauma and psychological scars. It has a particularly sickening attraction for its perpetrators. As Amnesty International put it,

“rape is cheaper than bullets”.

While the conflict in Bosnia saw the first ever convictions for mass rape as a war crime, that hardly seems to have served as a deterrent. In recent years, women and girls in Ukraine, northern Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been subjected to horrific sexual war crimes, but we have no hope of combating this evil if we cannot even acknowledge its existence, if we cannot agree that it must never be ignored, doubted or dismissed, and if we cannot recognise that rape is rape whatever the victim’s race, religion or nationality. That is why I want to briefly comment on the abhorrent acts of sexual violence committed by Hamas in its attack on southern Israel on 7 October. As we have heard, those were acts of exceptional brutality. As Meni Binyamin, head of the international crime investigations unit of the Israeli police, has suggested, they were

“the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen”

—truly horrifying acts of rape, sexual mutilation and torture.

An extensive investigation was carried out by The New York Times in December, which utilised video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with over 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape councillors. They all identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls were sexually assaulted and mutilated. They included the site of the Nova music festival, kibbutz Be’eri and kibbutz Kfar Aza. The attacks against women were not isolated events, The New York Times concluded, but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence. That confirms the analysis made by Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, an expert on family law and international women’s rights who works with Israeli women’s groups, that those were atrocities that the world, including those supposedly committed to human rights and the safety of women and girls, had decided to downplay and ignore. It took over seven weeks for the UN Secretary-General to call for an investigation into Hamas’s campaign of rape. It took UN Women, which says it is dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, 50 days to even acknowledge that these crimes had occurred. Where was the sisterhood? Where were the feminists? “Me too, unless you’re a Jew.” Let the call come from this House today directly to those women: we are here to tell you that we see you, hear you and believe you.

I had the privilege of being present at the sitting of the UN Security Council where special representative Pramila Patten presented her report on the sexual violence that took place on 7 October. Describing her experience as unlike anything she had witnessed elsewhere in the world, Patten said:

“The world outside cannot understand the magnitude of the event”.

Her report outlined the desperate need and moral imperative for a humanitarian ceasefire to end the unspeakable suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the immediate and unconditional release of all the hostages.

If the conflict and violence overseas were not bad enough, we know that this has had a knock-on effect on the levels of violence against women and girls here in the UK, where Jewish Women’s Aid stands virtually alone among charities dedicated to combating violence against women in speaking out about those brutal events. I know from my discussions with the charity as the shadow Minister for domestic abuse and safeguarding that the accusations levelled at Israeli women—that they were lying about the brutal rapes and sexual violence that took place on 7 October—served to undermine confidence in the services that Jewish Women’s Aid offers.

As Deborah Lipstadt, the US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, and Michelle Taylor, the US permanent representative to the UN Human Rights Council, have argued, this reaction is in stark contrast to the global gender-based violence movements’ typical emphasis on the importance of listening to, and believing, survivors’ accounts.

Sexual violence is seen as a weapon of war all over the globe. According to the national prosecutor’s office, over 200 accounts have been recorded of sexual abuse committed by Russians during its war on Ukraine, which have begun proceeding through Ukrainian courts. Since the start of the brutal armed conflict between the Sudan armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in mid-April 2023, conflict-related rape and sexual violence against women and girls in Sudan has increased significantly. As conflict escalates in Gaza and the middle east, UN experts describe credible allegations that Palestinian women and girls have been subject to sexual assault, including rape, and are calling for a full investigation. At least two Palestinian detainees have been raped, with others being subject to multiple forms of sexual assault and humiliation.

These brutal events are not confined to overseas and have led to a rise in incidents of Islamophobia and abuse here in the UK. Just yesterday I was told by police and Tell MAMA that since 7 October and the escalating conflict in the middle east, there has been a dramatic increase in incidents of domestic abuse in Muslim households reported to them right here in the UK. This once again demonstrates that British Muslim women have borne the majority of the brunt of anti-Muslim hate during this time.

The devastating truth is that sexual violence is commonplace in war, but this does not have to be the case. Let us be clear that rape and sexual violence must never be used as a weapon of war, and those seeking to capitalise on foreign events to spread hatred at home will not be allowed to get away with it. Preventative work is key to tackling this and I am pleased that work is already being done through initiatives that we have already heard of, such as the PSVI. Cross-departmental work like that is essential to tackling the issues. While we can do little to alleviate the suffering of victims, survivors and their families, we can stand here today and speak up on their behalf, acknowledging these devastating crimes, no matter where they are positioned on the globe. Victims and survivors deserve to be listened to, validated and believed.