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¡°Justice for women and girls must be a cornerstone of the world we seek to build,¡± says Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Secretary-General Ant¨®nio Guterres in his on women, peace and security. ¡°It means holding accountable every perpetrator of sexual and gender-based violence, including conflict-related sexual violence, gender persecution and reproductive violence.¡±

His call for justice comes at a time of global backlash against women¡¯s rights and gender parity. Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ reports that conflict-related sexual violence has reached crisis levels¡ªmore than doubling since 2024 and almost quadrupling since 2022.

The violence is compounded by structural exclusion which directly undermines prevention efforts and support for survivors. In 2025, a mere 19 per cent of peace agreements included any reference to women, girls, or gender. Not even one of the 13 ceasefire agreements drafted that year explicitly named conflict-related sexual violence as a prohibited act. The systemic exclusion is exactly what international legal experts are fighting to overcome. 

¡°Justice cannot remain an aspiration. It must become an obligation, translated into action and sustained by commitment,¡± says Pamela Morgan from the NGO Committee on the Status of Women in New York.

Today, however, justice and support for survivors remain lacking¡ªlargely due to a deficit of political will, ongoing structural exclusion, and global funding cuts to women¡¯s organizations and programmes.

Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ has listed 77 parties¡ªstate and non-state actors, including Boko Haram and ISIS¡ªimplicated in patterns of conflict-related sexual violence. Two-thirds of them have appeared on the list for multiple years without taking any corrective action.

The impunity plays out devastatingly on the ground. In northeastern Nigeria, for girls abducted and forcibly married by Boko Haram, returning home does not necessarily end their suffering, notes Eleanor Nwadinobi, a Nigerian medical doctor and women's health activist.

Without clear legal procedures, the young women face immense hurdles in separating from their captors. Often labeled as "child widows," they endure deep-rooted stigma and exclusion within their own communities. ¡°They are silenced,¡± Nwadinobi adds, underscoring the urgent need for accessible justice to restore their agency.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, service providers across several eastern provinces have registered tens of thousands of cases of sexual violence. According to CARE International, sudden shortages of post-exposure prophylaxis kits have left thousands of survivors without the essential medication needed to prevent HIV transmission resulting from rape.

Reversing the alarming trends of violence against women requires flexible, long-term funding for frontline, women-led organizations, alongside granting them greater direct influence over the decisions affecting their communities. Unfortunately, a historic decline in foreign aid in 2025 has had a devastating impact, specifically threatening the safety of women and girls living in conflict-affected countries and territories.

The was forced to halt or suspend approximately $1.4 billion in assistance programmes in mid-2025. This led to severe reductions in access to life-saving services for refugee survivors of conflict-related sexual violence from Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, and Ukraine. Moreover, over 250 -supported safe spaces for women and girls were forced to close.

¡°The effective implementation of the women and peace and security agenda depends on sustained institutional capacity, resources and partnerships,¡± Guterres warns, noting that the alternative is the risk of dismantling the multilateral and human rights frameworks the international community has collectively built.