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Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished participants, good morning.

We are gathered here at a dire moment for humanity – at a time when one crisis eclipses the next – to ensure that the scourge of conflict-related sexual violence and its survivors are not forgotten. I extend my sincere appreciation to Lise Grande and the United States Institute of Peace for convening this symposium, bringing together scholars, policy-makers, civil society representatives, and – critically – survivors themselves, to inform the global search for solutions. I am pleased to be speaking alongside Geeta Rao Gupta, the US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, and commend her leadership and steadfast commitment to this cause.

As tensions rise, coups erupt, and conflicts rage, this symposium provides space for strategic reflection to take stock of what we know, and what is missing from research, policy, and practice. I thank all participants for their engagement, noting that in our collective endeavour to close the knowledge, resource, and implementation gap, we are only as strong as our partnerships.

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From day one of my tenure as Special Representative, I have made the survivor-centred approach our top priority. After centuries of suppression, enforced silence, and misplaced stigma, we must navigate a way forward that is guided by the ground truths of survivors as our moral compass. Indeed, the most recent policy framework issued by the Security Council on conflict-related sexual violence, resolution 2467 of 2019, marked a turning point in calling for a holistic approach centred on survivors’ rights, needs, and wishes, that ensures their full and meaningful participation in the decisions that affect their lives.

Last week, the Security Council convened its annual Open Debate on Women, Peace, and Security focused on moving from theory to practice. Yet this aim is everywhere imperilled by growing global turbulence. It was noted that more than 600 million women and girls live in conflict-affected countries, where women’s rights are under attack, as are the courageous individuals and organizations that defend them. At the same time, the delegations negotiating peace are overwhelmingly – in some cases exclusively – male.

We are witnessing the highest number of conflicts since the close of the Second World War, with over 110 million people now displaced, marking a grim global milestone. Militarization and authoritarianism are on the march, resulting in shrinking civic space, virulent backlash on gender equality, and rising reprisals against human rights defenders and journalists, who bring atrocity crimes to the attention of the world.

Even as entrenched cycles of violence remain unbroken, new threats emerge. Gender-based harassment and hate speech are surging in the relatively ungoverned digital space. An array of new actors, such as mercenaries and private military and security companies, are complicating attribution and accountability on contemporary battlefields. Climate-driven insecurity and displacement is exacerbating competition over scarce resources, increasing intercommunal violence, including sexual violence, notably in Somalia and South Sudan. Moreover, the security umbrella for humanitarian protection and assistance activities is closing, as peacekeeping missions drawdown in Mali and the DRC.

Against this backdrop, we are compelled to recognize that conflict-related sexual violence is not a ‘niche’ technical issue that can be addressed in isolation from prevailing geopolitics. Global macrotrends are turning the clock further and further back on women’s rights, and leaving survivors further and further behind. Every new wave of warfare brings with it a rising tide of sexual violence. It is vital to the credibility of the multilateral system that we demonstrate to survivors that international law is not an empty promise, and to perpetrators that it is not an empty threat.

Yet, the attention bandwidth of the international community is limited. As the world turns its gaze to the deplorable violence in Israel and the Gaza strip, other protracted crises fade from the front page.

In relation to the escalating violence in the Middle East, since the 7^th of October attacks, I have requested Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ partners on the ground to remain alert to the risk of sexual violence, which we know is often invisible and chronically underreported. The Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Action interagency network, which I Chair, facilitates the sharing of Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ-sourced and verified information, as a basis for coordinated advocacy and action. We are aware that disturbing allegations, including forced nudity, have surfaced in the context of abduction and hostage-taking. As always, we call for such incidents to be independently investigated, with a view to ensuring that survivors have access to specialized services and justice. As always, we call for the parties to abide by international humanitarian and human rights law, which exist to restrain violent excess, even in the midst of war.

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Currently, there are more than 20 country situations within the remit of my mandate. In each of these contexts, I use my public advocacy platform, and direct diplomatic outreach, to galvanize action in response to credible, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ-verified information on incidents, patterns, and trends.

For instance, I visited Ukraine as soon as the first reports of sexual violence surfaced last year, and returned this March. I heard firsthand the searing accounts of sexual violence perpetrated by Russian soldiers, including as a form of torture to extract confessions, and to punish and intimidate both men and women in detention. The ages of the victims ranged from just 4 to 84 years old. When I visited refugee reception centers in Poland and Moldova, I witnessed the vulnerability of women and girls, who comprise the vast majority of the nearly 8 million refugees, to criminal and trafficking networks. For these predatory actors, the forced exodus was not a tragedy, but an opportunity for exploitation.

In Sudan, since the conflict erupted on 15^th April between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, sexual violence against displaced and refugee women and girls has dramatically increased. In September, I visited the border area, where I met a 7-year-old girl who, after fleeing with her grandmother, was raped in the refugee camp, where conditions remain precarious, being overcrowded and under-resourced. Sexual violence remains a prominent feature of the unbroken cycles of violence in Darfur, where women’s bodies are on the frontlines of conflict. Young women have been abducted from dormitories and hospitals, shackled, and transported in the back of pick-up trucks by fighters, to be sold in slave markets in Northern Darfur. Women and girls have been targeted for rape, gang-rape, and abduction on the basis of their ethnicity. Impunity for war crimes in this region since 2003 has emboldened perpetrators, silenced survivors, and undermined prospects for peace.

In June, I visited eastern DRC, following alarming reports of a spike in sexual violence due to the resumption of hostilities involving the M23 armed group. Many of the women and girls I met had been recently raped and were visibly traumatized. They stressed the daily risk of sexual violence while undertaking livelihood activities, such as searching for food, or collecting wood and water. These women faced an impossible choice between economic subsistence and sexual violence – between their livelihoods and their lives. In this climate of interlinked physical and food insecurity, brothels have proliferated in and around the displacement camps, with women and girls driven into prostitution by sheer economic desperation.

Over the past three years, the war in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, has been one of the deadliest on the planet. Sexual violence, including rape, sexual slavery, mutilation, and forced pregnancy have been used as tactics of war and terror on a widespread and systematic basis. According to the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, who I met with last week, the conflict has left more than 10,000 survivors in desperate need of assistance and redress. Yet, due to restricted access and official denial, these survivors are left to suffer alone.

One of the few bright spots on the horizon is Colombia, where historic progress is being made in terms of transitional justice. The Special Jurisdiction for Peace has opened a dedicated case on sexual and gender-based violence, including reproductive violence, known as ‘Macro Case 11’, following concerted advocacy from women’s civil society organizations. In May, during my official visit, I heard from survivors of wartime sexual violence, about the transformative power of recognition and reparations.

There are also signs of progress in Guinea, where a former Head of State and 10 senior officials are standing trial before domestic courts for crimes of sexual violence committed as part of the repertoire of political repression, used to quash a pro-democracy rally in Conakry in 2009 – though the pace of justice has been painfully slow. In Nigeria, in 2022, sexual violence was included for the first time ever in an indictment against Boko Haram, contributing to evolving understanding and jurisprudence on sexual violence as a tactic of terrorism.

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Each year, my Office compiles the Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, which provides a public record for a historically hidden crime. The latest annual report, debated at the Security Council in July, records 2,455 Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ-verified cases committed in the course of 2022, 94% of them targeting women and girls; 32% affecting children. For every survivor who comes forward to report, humanitarians in the field estimate that 10 to 20 others are never able to reach a clinic, let alone a courtroom.

The report includes a list of credibly suspected perpetrators as a basis for targeted action by sanctions regimes and accountability mechanisms. The latest report lists 49 implicated State and non-State parties, of which 75 percent are persistent perpetrators who have remained on the list for several years without taking any remedial or corrective action. In this regard, Women’s Protection Advisers (or WPAs) are mandated to engage with parties at country-level to foster compliance and behavioral change, and to convene dedicated monitoring, analysis, and reporting arrangements as an evidence-base for action. Yet, despite numerous resolutions calling for their swift deployment, just 8 of our 20 focus countries currently have this critical frontline capacity.

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Participants, ladies and gentlemen,

The persistence of sexual violence on 21^st Century battlefields, as a tactic of war, torture, terror, and repression, is not due to a lack of normative frameworks or institutional arrangements. It is because existing norms are inadequately enforced, and existing institutions are not backed with the requisite level of human and financial resources.

Our singular focus must, therefore, be to bridge the gap between resolutions and realities, between our highest aspirations and operations on the ground.

States bear the primary responsibility to protect their citizens, yet conflict decimates the very institutions meant to deliver justice, services, and security. As a contribution to gender-responsive security sector reform, my Office has established a dedicated Security Sector Hub, to help bring national security forces into compliance with international standards, in line with the Joint °ä´Ç³¾³¾³Ü²Ô¾±±ç³Üé²õ my mandate has signed with a dozen affected countries to date.

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Today, we know more than ever before about the drivers and dynamics, the causes and consequences, of wartime sexual violence. To translate this into practical results, my mandate has developed a range of tools to build the skill and will for effective action. These include model legislative provisions and guidance to help harmonize national laws with international standards; guidelines on private sector engagement; and a prevention framework, which sets out a two-track approach to constraining sexual violence in the first instance, and mitigating its secondary harms, such as stigmatization. Last year, we also published a Special Report on women and girls who become pregnant as a result of sexual violence in conflict and children born of such violence, which spans 24 conflict settings from 1990 to the present. This report sets out a platform of legal, policy, and operational recommendations for States and partners to take forward, in response to a global protection gap concerning a population that has long been understudied and underserved.

By helping to disseminate and socialize good practices and lessons learnt, every expert in this room and online, can help to maintain momentum to eradicate, and spare succeeding generations from, this scourge.

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Each year that I have served as Special Representative, the number of States requesting our assistance has increased, and the geographical scope of the mandate has expanded, yet the stark reality is that funding has not kept pace. Our Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Multi-Partner Trust Fund supports the operational arms of my mandate to implement a range of survivor-centred interventions. This includes my Team of Experts on the Rule of Law, which has assisted national authorities to strengthen institutional safeguards against impunity in over a dozen countries. It also includes the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Action coordination network, which has supported more than 50 projects across 17 conflict-affected settings. Yet, the volume of available resources is far from commensurate with the scale of the challenge. We cannot continue to short-change survivors and those delivering on their behalf.

As we look toward the 15-year anniversary of my mandate in 2024, I will continue, in my advocacy role, to galvanize the international donor and diplomatic community to give this cause the attention and investment it deserves. Fifteen years is, in fact, a short time in the history of an atrocity as old and enduring as war itself. In that time, we have written a new norm, drawn a ‘red line’, and built a new response architecture. Today, the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ is reaching and supporting thousands of survivors who had once been invisible and inaccessible. Slowly but surely, we are expanding the circle of allies, champions, and stakeholders. Slowly but surely, we are expanding the promise of protection.

But, in the final analysis, this is a matter of political will, and no amount of protection or assistance can substitute for what we are missing, which is peace.

A world free from war and sexual violence seems distant, but it is attainable.

I thank you all for your partnership and unwavering commitment to this cause, as one of the great peace, security, and Rule of Law challenges of our time.

Thank you.