Emily Darlington

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.