Tara Mewawalla
TW: this article discusses sexual violence and rape.
Alongside the continuously brutal and devastating invasion of their country, the Ukrainian people are now facing the horrific prospect that Russian forces are systematically using rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Sexual Violence in Ukraine
Russian troops had been occupying Bucha, a suburb within Ukraine’s capital , Kyiv, until early April. In a basement in the suburb, over 24 women and girls, aged between 14 and 24, were held captive by Russian soldiers. Over a period of 25 days, they were systematically raped and nine of them are now pregnant, according to Ukraine’s ombudsman for human rights, Lyudmyla Denisova.
“Russian soldiers told them they would rape them to the point where they wouldn’t want sexual contact with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children”, she said.
Denisova reported further: a 14-year-old girl is pregnant after being raped by five men and an 11-year-old boy was raped in front of his mother, who was tied to a chair at the time.
Kateryna Cherepakha, the President of La Strada-Ukraine, a public human rights organization working to ensure gender equality and prevent gender-based violence, spoke to the UN. She said her organization had received calls accusing Russian soldiers of nine cases of rape, involving 12 women and girls.
“This is not different from other terrorists such as ISIS. And here it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council”
“We know and see – and we want you to hear our voice – that violence and rape is now used as a weapon of war by Russian invaders in Ukraine”, she told the Security Council.
On 5th April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also addressed the UN Security Council: “Women were raped and killed in front of their children. Their tongues were pulled out only because the aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them”, he said. “This is not different from other terrorists such as ISIS. And here it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council”.
The Investigations
Sima Bahous, UN Women Executive Director, announced to the Security Council on Monday that although all allegations must be independently investigated, “the brutality displayed against Ukrainian civilians has raised all red flags”.
Kremlin officials have since responded to the claims. Russia’s deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told the Security Council: “Russia, as we have stated more than once, does not wage war against the civilian population”. He accused Ukraine and its allies of “a clear intention to present Russian soldiers as sadists and rapists”.
“Human Rights Watch has included repeated acts of rape in their documentation of several cases of Russian military forces violating the laws of war”
But Ukraine’s UN Ambassador told the Council that the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine was “launching a special mechanism of documentation of cases of sexual violence by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian women”.
Human Rights Watch has included repeated acts of rape in their documentation of several cases of Russian military forces violating the laws of war. Hugh Williamson, the Europe and Central Asia director of the organization said: “The cases we documented amount to unspeakable, deliberate cruelty and violence against Ukrainian civilians”.
The History of Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War
The reports joins a disturbing history in which systematic sexual violence and rape are used as instruments of war for colonizers, invaders, and those waging war.
In the 1990s, rape was used for ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia where women were intentionally and forcefully impregnated by enemy soldiers. In Rwanda, rape was also used as a means of genocide, where women of the Tutsi ethnic group were raped by soldiers infected with HIV. These soldiers were recruited and organized by the Hutu-led government. In 2009, UN officials and a number of human rights and aid organizations, including Human Rights Watch, reported high numbers of rapes of men in eastern Congo.
“Systematic sexual violence represents an attempt by armed forces and political figures to both brutally wound and incapacitate individual civilians and to undermine and weaken the identity of a nation”
The rape of women, men, and children at wartime is often not a cruel and sadistic result of the conflict. Systematic sexual violence represents an attempt by armed forces and political figures to both brutally wound and incapacitate individual civilians and to undermine and weaken the identity of a nation.
In 1993, the UN Commission on Human Rights declared systematic rape to be a crime against humanity and to be punishable as a violation of women’s human rights. Two years later, the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women announced that rape by armed groups is a war crime.
On Tuesday, President Zelensky addressed Lithuanian lawmakers via video, questioning why this abuse of human rights was taking place: “The cynical answer is that they are convinced that they will avoid punishment, they know that the world and Europe will make sure this is forgotten”. Law and policymakers and human rights and aid organizations across the globe must make sure this does not happen.
If you or anyone you know has been affected by sexual violence, please find helpful resources here and here.
Image courtesy of Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to this image.
Tara Mewawalla
I am a 21-year-old recent English Literature graduate. I am currently doing a Masters in Gender Studies at LSE and my writing interests include gender and race inequality, culture, and global news.