Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to be here with you at the invitation of the Government of Germany who has been and remains one of the fiercest advocates of the struggle against CRSV.

Indeed, the Government of Germany sponsored landmark United Nations Security Council resolution 2467, which was adopted by the Council in 2019. Amongst other things, that resolution recognized the specific needs of women and girls who become pregnant as a result of sexual violence in conflict, as well as their children. It specifically stated that children born as a result of sexual violence in conflict face intersecting risks such as economic and social marginalization, physical and psychological injury, statelessness, discrimination and lack of access to services and reparations.

Resultingly, resolution 2467 called on States to protect the equal rights of all individuals affected by sexual violence in conflict including these mothers and children including in their national legislation, and in line with relevant international law including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

War has long been fought over and on the bodies of women and girls, and as OSCE’s Ministerial Council Decree No 15/05 on Preventing and Combatting Violence Against Women stated two decades ago: “violence against women and girls often remains unreported and unrecorded.” That has certainly been true of the experience of survivors who become pregnant as a result of sexual violence and their children which remains often overlooked.

That is why Resolution 2467 also called for the Secretary-General to produce his first-ever dedicated report to the Security Council on these survivors and children, which was issued in January 2022.

That report gave a sobering picture of the scope and trends and patterns affecting these survivors. It offered some official statistics such as from the Rwandan genocide where 2,000-5,000 children were born as a result of acts of sexual violence, which is likely a vast undercount, from Sierra Leone where an estimated 20,000 children were born as a result of sexual violence. In Europe, our mandate has addressed one of the conflict-related sexual violence tragic legacies in the Balkans. Decades after the war concluded, adult children are still discovering that they are children born as a result of acts of conflict-related sexual violence and discovering and tracing their identities. That is why it was so important that Bosnia and Herzegovina bolstered its domestic legislation in 2023, ensuring its Law on the Protection of Civilian Victims of War?ensured that children born of wartime rape were as a special category entitled to equal rights and protection.

Women and girls who become pregnant as a result of conflict-related sexual violence and their children are subject to multiple harms and intersecting forms of discrimination. Mothers and children are often accused of fraternizing with the enemy and rejected by their community. The report clearly highlights these multiple harms in the interest of time, as these issues have already been outlined by previous speakers I will not reiterate, but I invite you to read their description in our report. This fuels intergenerational grievances which in turn fuels cycles of violence and conflict and endangers sustainable peace.

The report also describes how, a number of armed groups have used rape, sexual slavery, forced marriage, forced pregnancy and other crimes of sexual violence as a tactic of war, deliberately to bolster their forces.

This has been the case with the Lord’s Resistance Army where there have been an estimated 8,000-10,000 children born as a result of sexual violence by that group alone. Terrorist groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and Daesh in Iraq and Syria have also used sexual violence in an attempt to create a new generation of fighters in their own image.

These communities are by no means alone in the aftermath of conflict-related sexual violence. Stigmatization and discrimination of and against children born of conflict-related sexual violence can lead to these children being victims of further crimes such as being recruited as child soldiers into armed groups to being trafficked. Infanticide and abandonment of these children have also been reported in several contexts globally.

So, what can we do? In addition to the implementation of strict measures to prohibit sexual violence in conflict globally, there is further action we can take to protect and assist women and girls who become pregnant as a result of sexual violence in conflict and their children.

First, we must ensure that where sexual violence in conflict is being documented and reported and we must take into account in our service provision planning the fact that there may be women and girls who become pregnant as a result of sexual violence in conflict and that these women and girls may have children as a result who also need specialized care and assistance.

Second, our mandate has consistently stated that women and girls who become pregnant as a result of sexual violence in conflict and their children must be protected in legislation. In the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence’s Model Legislative Provisions on the Investigation and Prosecution of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence have specific provisions providing for non-discrimination against children born as a result of sexual violence in all aspects of justice processes. It is also essential that these children, in accordance with international law, have access to nationality and identity documents to protect these children from further harm and allow for these children’s personality, talents, mental and physical abilities be developed to their fullest potential.

Third, and building on these legislative initiatives, we must ensure that children born as a result of acts of sexual violence have access to accountability including reparation from perpetrators. Indeed, the Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict has been expressly mandated by the Security Council to assist government authorities on strengthening the rule of law when acts of conflict-related sexual violence have occurred including through the “full range of justice mechanisms.” Under the leadership of Special Representative Pramila Patten, and with the co-leadership of her Office, the Department of Peace Operations, the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the United Nations Development Programme, the Team has consistently worked to ensure that children born as a result of conflict-related sexual violence are treated as “direct victims” of acts of conflict-related sexual violence themselves in national programmes on reparations. Jurisprudence from the International Criminal Court has demonstrated what this means concretely. In both the Ntaganda and Ongwen cases, the Court has held that children born as a result of acts of sexual violence are direct victims entitled to reparation from their perpetrators. This has been echoed in domestic programmes like the ones in Bosnia I mentioned earlier recognizing children born as a result of sexual violence as having equal rights under the law in the aftermath of conflict and in reparations programmes developed by Ukraine.

Yet we must ask – is there a possibility of greater accountability for children born of acts of conflict-related sexual violence beyond reparations? I think the answer must be “yes.” The mothers in Maiduguri, Nigeria who were sexually enslaved by Boko Haram give birth to children who are enslaved themselves and the perpetrators can be prosecuted both for enslavement and rape of the mother but also of the child. Armed and terrorist groups often conscript these children into combat or other forms of forced labor or subject these children to sexual violence themselves. I have seen personally how simply the fear of pregnancy as a result of an act of rape has sown fear into the communities my Team has deployed to, which makes conflict-related sexual violence an even more effective tactic of war and terror. We will continue to work with prosecutors at both international and domestic level to surface these acts in their charging documents against perpetrators so the full range of harm to children born as a result of conflict-related sexual violence is reflected. Further, we have recommended that if an act of sexual violence results in pregnancy that it may also be considered an aggravating factor for sentencing of a perpetrator.

?After three years, the report of the Secretary-General on women and girls who become pregnant as a result of sexual violence in conflict, as well as their children is publicly available but has never been officially debated before the Security Council. Yet the lack of debate on the report by the Council does not mean we do not have a clear legal mandate to act. The United Nations will continue to advocate for women and girls who become pregnant as a result of conflict-related sexual violence and their children at international level, and I am heartened that we are joined in that advocacy today by regional organizations like the OSCE and national governments including Germany and Ukraine, and our civil society counterparts, so that these mothers and children have full access to the legal rights they require and deserve.

Thank you.