Sexual terror has become a disturbing tool of war, leaving disrupted communities and women and girls permanently injured. Innumerable women and girls have been victims of sexual violence in numerous conflicts around the world for many years. Today a Security Council debate on sexual violence will be held to consider measures to prevent and address sexual violence effectively.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will chair over the UN debate held in New York. Human rights organisations have long advocated stronger mechanisms to prevent and reprimand war-related violence against women. Although the ad hoc international criminal tribunals, in the aftermath of conflicts, dealt with rape and sexual abuses, the United Nations has not endeavoured for a permanent body monitoring gender-based hostilities. A resolution has been drafted for this purpose.

Sexual violence as weapon of war
Women are often part of the battlefield as victims of terror tactics. They are raped, abducted, humiliated and made to undergo forced pregnancy, sexual abuse and slavery. The abuses frequently target women of other ethnic groups, young girls abducted by rebels as ‘bush-wives', or just random women. These horrific acts have been reported in almost every war-zone, including Afghanistan, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia and many others.

In Rwanda, up to half a million women were raped during the 1994 genocide. The numbers were as high as 60,000 in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Equally, in Sierra Leonean civil war, there were up to 64,000 victims of war-related sexual violence. There have been many reports from Darfurian women and girls who had suffered multiple forms of violence committed by militia and security forces. Today's biggest sexual crime scene is the Democratic Republic of Congo. Observers have called it a "rape epidemic", with thousands of rape victims.

But also outside the theatre of conflict, women are still being terrorised. Displaced women and girls living in refugee camps are often raped and abused. After the conflicts, victims of rape face numerous obstacles in accessing justice and health care, for instance, being accused of having made false accusations, having had consensual sex before marriage, or having committed adultery in violation of national laws.

No protection
Protection and support for female survivors of violence in conflict and post-conflict areas is highly inadequate. Access to social services, protection, legal remedies, medical resources, and places of refuge is most often highly limited. A climate of impunity further aggravates the situation, often serving as an motivation to protracted abuse.

It is since 2000 that the Security Council has in principle recognised the relevance of sexual violence to its work when it adopted Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. The resolution calls for women's equal participation in peace and security issues, but yet eight years later it "has done little to effectively prevent and address such violence," says Human Rights Watch. The Rights organisation has called for the establishment of a permanent body or other mechanism linked directly to the Security Council, with a mandate to report on and monitor instances of sexual violence in conflict.

The most effective way to achieve such a mandate is when the Security Council will decide whether sexual violence is linked with the maintenance of international peace and security. Long seen as the collateral damage of conflict, systematic rape has become a means of achieving military ends. It has become a sexual manifestation of aggression and could therefore be seen as a crime of aggression. When sexual violence will be recognised as a security issue, the Security Council can effectively justify a security response and intervene.

The Rome Statute
The 1998 Rome Statute of the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) is the first treaty to expressly recognize sexual and gender-based violence as among the gravest breaches of international law. Today, almost half of all persons indicted by the ICC, the international tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone are charged with rape or sexual assault, either as perpetrators or their superiors.

Since 1998, these tribunals have convicted individuals of rape as an instrument of genocide, a form of torture, and a crime against humanity. These judgements hold out some hope that women in war-torn countries might finally gain greater access to justice for crimes of sexual violence. These courts, however, can only address these crimes after they are committed. The present debate and the possible new resolution, might now lead to a preventive system protecting women from the start and giving the Security Council an opportunity to intervene.