Impact of Conflict on Women and Girls

Emily Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this debate. I also thank the Minister—who I know feels very strongly about these issues, and has done for many years.

I will try and refrain from repeating anything that has been said by other hon. Members—there have been some fantastic speeches. I also say to anybody watching, that if they feel disturbed by this, there are support services that they can refer to. This is a difficult topic but it is important that we shine light on it. I know there is some detail here that can be triggering to some people.

The world is facing the highest number of conflicts since world war two, and women and girls are paying the price. Upholding the safety and dignity of women and girls, protecting them from torture and violence, is a human rights obligation, but it is one that the world—and we—often fall short of upholding. Rape in war is by no means a new phenomenon, but its escalation as a deliberate strategic and political tactic is now undeniable. That has many consequences. There are the physical consequences, the unwanted pregnancies, the sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. There is also the brutality, and the psychological consequences, that come alongside these kinds of activities. In conflict areas, what makes it worse, is the disregard of international law, the arms proliferation, the increasing militarisation and the shrinking of civic space. It exacerbates conflict-related sexual violence, and it hinders safe reporting and response. It also leads to an increase in trafficking and exploitation.

Access to healthcare is just one of the ways gender violence is perpetrated, in some cases by the lack of care for those who have been physically damaged by rape, but also for those who have unwanted pregnancies as a result. Hospitals and other healthcare facilities should be a beacon of safety and healing for those that are injured in conflict, including survivors of sexual violence. But the destruction of health facilities—and the direct and indirect killing of healthcare workers—has severely hindered the provision of lifesaving medical assistance for survivors who need comprehensive medical care, sexual and reproductive healthcare, and psychological support, as well as avenues for reporting.

The message from the #MeToo movement was that crimes of sexual violence are compounded by cultures of stigma, silence, denial and victim blaming, which often prevent women from securing justice. Yet it often feels like this is ignored when women are in a war zone. Women and girls are just seen as inevitable collateral damage.

I would like to highlight a few cases: I will try not to repeat what has been said before by hon. Members. In Gaza, beyond the impact of the loss of hospitals and healthcare workers—which has been highlighted by my hon. Friends—women and children also bear the brunt of the lack of supplies in wartime. In Gaza, millions of women and children are suffering from the inability of aid agencies to cope with the demand for supplies or to deliver them to those in need.

At the moment, we estimate that 690,000 women and girls in Gaza require menstrual hygiene products. The stocks of hygiene kits have run out, and the price of those that are available is exorbitant. Women are having to choose between buying pads and buying food and water. So instead they are cutting up old sheets or old clothes to use as pads, thereby increasing their risk of infection and the stigma that those infections bring. There is also a risk because they have not changed their clothes in over 40 days.

In every humanitarian disaster, in every sense, women pay the biggest price. The UN is working with over 30 women-led organisations in Gaza to provide gender-based violence services, and last year, over 159,000 women and girls used those services in Gaza. If the ban on UNRWA comes in, I dread to think where those women and girls will go for support.

We have heard a lot about Afghanistan. Under the Taliban’s apartheid of women, women and girls have been denied access to learning, employment and travel. They have been excluded from public spaces and banned from singing—I find that one the hardest to understand—although they may not want to sing. They have been banned from attending medical institutions and from seeing male doctors. Despite those restrictions, Afghan girls, many of whom were already in school when the Taliban returned to power in 2021, continue to dream, but they have to attend underground schools or participate in local home schooling or remote learning, which puts them and their teachers at risk.

There have been other consequences. Child marriage has increased by 25%. I am not even talking about forced marriage, which is bad enough. Those children should not be forced into marriage and everything that comes with that. The risk of maternal mortality has surged by 50%.

As we have just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), rape was used as a weapon in Israel. I do not want to repeat what she said, but despite the fact that it has been well documented, even by the armed perpetrators, the majority of organisations still fail to acknowledge the sexual violence that took place on 7 October.

We have heard about the rapes that are happening in Ukraine. It is not just about the rapes, but the fear of rape. One Ukrainian victim of sexual violence said:

“I would have preferred to die.”

Rape has become cheaper than bullets as a means to terrorise a nation, and the aggressors know that. The psychological fear is passed on, not just from woman to woman but from women to girls. Civilian women who are not officers or soldiers are often targeted for rape and punishment to humiliate the soldiers on the frontline.

Time and again, women bear the brunt of war’s brutality. They are consistently on the frontline as soldiers, fighters, doctors, nurses, volunteers, peace activists, carers for their communities and families, internally displaced people, refugees and, too often, victims and survivors. Women confront the increased sexual and gender-based violence and its perilous health conditions while being forced to make life or death decisions for themselves and their families. At the same time, women are often excluded from the decision-making processes, and their rights and needs remain unprotected and unmet.

This culture of silence continues even though the UN officially recognised gender-based violence in 1992. It is as recently as that; for some of us it does not feel very long ago, which shows our age. Since that recognition, little has changed for women in conflict areas. There is still too much silence from international organisations, alongside a lack of moral clarity in calling out sexual violence on a global scale. Justice and any hope of healing begin with recognition. If we are a rules-based society that believes in human rights, we cannot continue to see women and girls as inevitable collateral in a conflict. We are not just victims of violence or weapons of war.

We must work with authorities, especially security forces, to reinforce the message that sexual violence, like all war crimes, is prohibited and will be prosecuted. We have to draw a clear red line against these acts. Training, awareness raising and a prompt response from those in positions of leadership in military and police units is necessary to make this happen. We need a cultural shift from the normalisation of sexual violence and the emotional battery of women and girls in conflict; they must be seen as the true victims and survivors they are. We must put pressure on international authorities to take concerted action to make protection from sexual violence a central part of their peacekeeping efforts. Finally, the UK’s contribution should be a long-term partnership with women and women-led organisations right around the world, so that we can support women in those countries to be part of a future free of gender-based violence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue. The UK Government have raised it at an official level. It is incredibly important that the future process includes different religious and ethnic groups and women. That point has definitely been made. The voices of Syrians who have been through so much must be heard.

When I was in Jordan, I met Syrian refugees—women who had fled from Syria into Jordan. I also met a number of girls being supported by the UK to access the education that they might not otherwise have had, and we are of course working with the Jordanian Government on that. It is clear that those women and girls have to be part of the future of their country. That is in line with the new Government’s determination to support women’s organisations, including those representing women with disabilities. We are being very thorough about that.

A number of Members talked about Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Gaza was mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith), for Glasgow West, for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) and for Bathgate and Linlithgow, and by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton. We are also deeply concerned about the healthcare situation in Gaza, including for women and girls, and indeed for men and boys. I have seen that for myself. When I was in Jordan, I saw medical supplies that should have been in Gaza but had not been allowed to pass in. The Government have repeatedly pushed the Israeli Government on that. We have raised this continuously, bilaterally and multilaterally. There must be access for all the humanitarian supplies that are needed, and that must include medical supplies.

UK aid has been going to support women, particularly around sanitation, menstruation and pregnancy. I have discussed this directly with bodies such as UK-Med and others. It is appalling to see the deeply concerning reports about the treatment of Palestinian detainees. Detainees must be treated in line with international law, there must be access for the ICRC, and reports of sexual violence must be investigated.

The impact of conflict-related sexual violence on Israelis was raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Washington and Gateshead South and for Milton Keynes Central, and others. I know that this issue is causing incredible pain and anguish to the families of hostages, having spoken with some of them in Tel Aviv. They are deeply concerned, understandably, about the situation for their family members. That is yet another reason why the hostages must be released, we must have a ceasefire, and we must see that surge of aid into Gaza.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North asked some questions about Afghanistan. As the Foreign Secretary has said, the Taliban’s further oppression of women through its so-called vice and virtue law is appalling. Many Members rightly raised the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan during the debate. My hon. Friend asked specifically about gender apartheid. We are aware of calls for the inclusion of gender apartheid as a new crime against humanity, and we are actively considering the legal and policy questions raised by the proposed new crime.

My hon. Friend asked for more details about what we are doing; well, we continue to condemn the Taliban’s action against women and girls, and did so most recently in a December G7+ joint statement. We have already said that as a new Government we support the initiative to hold the Taliban to account for their violations of the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, or CEDAW. I am pleased that I can report today that we will formally join the list of countries that have announced their political support for the initiative. I hope Members will welcome that.

The Government are committed to preventing conflict-related sexual violence against women and girls, particularly in instances of trafficking. In relation to Ukraine, we heard some really disturbing details during the debate. We provided up to £10.7 million to support projects aimed at building Ukraine’s capacity for the domestic investigation and prosecution of war crimes, including conflict-related sexual violence. On the issue of capacity, which was raised by the shadow Minister, a member of the PSVI team of experts has been deployed to Ukraine to support Ukrainian authorities in the investigation and prosecution of conflict-related sexual violence in a survivor-centred manner. It is really important to have that expert input, which we are supporting.

On the broader of issue of preventing sexual violence in conflict, in November, Lord Collins visited Colombia in his first official engagement as the Prime Minister’s special representative. He led the UK’s delegation to the high-level meeting of the international alliance on PSVI. I was pleased to hear the shadow Minister talk about the initiative from 2023. We very much support that agenda and are determined to enhance it. She asked about our plans to do so; when Lord Collins was in Bogotá, he called for greater international action in response to the increased rates of conflict-related sexual violence around the world. To respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury, that includes determination to use sanctions where necessary against the perpetrators of these vile crimes.

We know that all forms of gender-based violence, including conflict-related sexual violence, are preventable. That is why I am pleased that we have committed a further £18 million to the UN trust fund to end violence against women, as well as providing training on sexual exploitation and abuse for more than 2,000 peacekeeping personnel in the last financial year, through the British peace support team in Africa. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central, who is not in her place—

[Emily Darlington]

I am back now.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Oh, she has come back—excellent. She was right to raise that matter.

This has been a challenging afternoon for many because we have also had a debate on violence against women and girls in the Chamber, so I know that many have been shuttling between the two. I will briefly also mention that, during the 16 days of activism against violence against women, I announced three new partnerships with women’s rights organisations in Kenya and South Africa to develop new preventive strategies.

Our commitment to halve violence against women and girls within a decade and our work with international partners to empower women globally are critical. We have talked today about how an unprecedented profusion of conflict is having a devastating impact for so many women and girls around the world, so I underscore this Government’s unwavering commitment to changing that, and to ensuring that, to reuse the quote rightly mentioned by the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns), “Shame must change sides”. It should be the perpetrators who are feeling that shame, who are feeling the accountability and, above all, who are deterred from that behaviour in the first place. We are determined to work in partnership with Members across this House, with key international and multilateral partners, with civil society and, most importantly, with women and girls affected on the ground.