Sexual Violence in Conflict

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

I appreciate that time is short, so I will get straight to the point.

There are two major areas in which girls and women who are raped in situations of armed conflict are repeatedly discriminated against. The first is the routine denial of safe abortion services to those victims of war, in violation of their right to non-discriminatory medical care under international human law, and the second is the failure to treat rape and the deliberate transmission of HIV as prohibited weapons or methods of war.

The denial of abortions to girls and women raped in armed conflict was recently the focus of debate in the House of Lords, and it has been the subject of many parliamentary questions. The Government responded by acknowledging that they considered girls and women raped in armed conflict to be the “wounded and sick”, and that they are entitled to non-discriminatory medical care, including abortions. They have also acknowledged that international humanitarian law, not national law, is the legal framework that must be obeyed in the provision of humanitarian aid. However, those acknowledgments are insufficient without concrete action to ensure that that right is granted to the wounded women who need it.

What concrete action could the Government take? To begin with, they could recognise that the right to abortion for girls and women raped in armed conflict is protected under humanitarian law and is not subject to national laws on abortion. That should be explicitly included in all relevant Government policy guidance, including the Department for International Development’s “Safe and unsafe abortion” practice paper.

Rape and the deliberate transmission of HIV are acknowledged as being used as weapons of war, but neither is treated as a prohibited weapon or method of warfare. Despite global recognition that they are used as weapons of war, they are invisible in weapons regulation. They none the less violate core principles of humanity in international humanitarian law, and as such they should be treated as prohibited weapons of war. The failure to treat war rape like other illegal weapons prevents victims from being entitled to reparations for their injuries. Victims should be entitled to have the perpetrators held accountable for their crimes. For that reason, the failure to treat rape as part of the international framework that regulates the means and methods of warfare is particularly confounding. We regulate starvation under that framework, so why not rape and sexual violence?

In April, the Government will work to secure a clear political statement from the G8 of its determination to make real, tangible progress on combating the use of sexual violence in conflict. However, if we are truly to lead, we must speak up for those who do not have a voice and bring awareness to issues that are often neglected or left out of the conversation. Acknowledging the issue is not enough, and talk is not enough. The UK must take concrete steps to ensure the provision of abortion services for women raped in war and to bring rape into the prohibited weapons or methods of war framework.