Sometimes we read about SGBV, and sometimes about sexual violence; can you tell us the difference?

Sexual violence is one form of sexual and gender-based violence, or SGBV. The broader term covers harms linked to unequal power relations and gender norms, including physical, psychological and emotional violence, socio-economic violence and harmful practices. These harms can take different forms in different contexts, and the risks may intensify during armed conflict or other situations of violence.

Sexual violence involves an act of a sexual nature committed against a person in coercive circumstances. Coercion may involve force or a threat of force, but it can also arise from fear, detention, psychological pressure, abuse of power or a wider coercive environment. A person may also be unable to give genuine consent. Sexual violence includes rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy and enforced sterilization.

The ICRC addresses sexual violence in armed conflict, where it is prohibited under international humanitarian law [IHL], and in other situations of violence. Anyone can be a victim or survivor. The risks people face, however, are not uniform: they depend on both personal characteristics and circumstances. Age, disability or other aspects of a person’s identity may interact with being displaced, detained or living near a front line, for example, to shape their exposure to harm.Footnote ¹

What has the ICRC been doing, and what does it plan to do, in preventing and responding to sexual violence linked to armed conflict?

As with other IHL violations, the ICRC tries to prevent the occurrence of sexual violence, reduce the harm it inflicts, and respond to the needs of the people affected by it. While it clearly violates IHL, sexual violence is obscured by multiple misconceptions, taboos and sensitivities. Despite the awareness of the existence of such violence in many conflicts throughout history, at one stage the ICRC acknowledged that sexual violence had not been addressed by it to the extent and with the type of commitment that it should have been.Footnote ²

In 2013, the ICRC committed to strengthening its response.Footnote ³ This meant bringing together different areas of its work: helping victims and survivors obtain urgent medical care and mental health and psychosocial support, addressing their other immediate needs, and working to protect them from further harm. Our response must be guided by what each person tells us they need, rather than by assumptions about their priorities.

However, response alone is not enough – we also need to prevent sexual violence before it occurs. In our discussions with authorities and weapon bearers, we have found that its prohibition is not always understood or taken seriously. Sexual violence may be dismissed as an inevitable part of war, a minor transgression or a private matter. We work with States and armed actors to make the prohibition clear in their rules, training and practice.

The PSVP, launched in 2022,Footnote ⁴ has helped us take that work closer to the situations in which risks arise. It brings engagement with weapon bearers and affected communities together with applied research and monitoring, so that we can learn what appears to reduce risks and adjust our approach. The results so far have given us promising avenues for prevention, as well as a clearer sense of what we still need to learn.Footnote ⁵

The next step is to carry those lessons into the ICRC’s wider prevention and protection work and share them across the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. From 2027, we intend to build on what the programme has developed and make its final 2022–26 lessons publicly available, so that others working to prevent sexual violence can use and test them too.

How can a better understanding of sexual violence in armed conflicts improve the humanitarian response?

We need to understand both why sexual violence occurs and what it does to the people affected. It does not occur in every conflict, and armed actors differ in their conduct. If we can understand the circumstances and decisions that enable perpetration, we can identify where prevention efforts may have the greatest effect.

Understanding the consequences is also important to ensure that we provide victims/survivors with the quality services they need. Science is still trying to figure out all of the consequences of sexual violence; the most immediate consequences are well known, like physical injuries and life-threatening aspects, but the mental health consequences have not been explored enough, nor has the rippling effect of the harm that it inflicts.Footnote ⁶ Such consequences are long-lasting and often go beyond the individual: they may affect a family and even communities with horrendous brutality for decades. What happens when a family realizes that they will have children conceived because of sexual violence? What happens to a society when fathers have been forced to rape their children in front of other members of the community? There is still much we need to understand, and doing so requires sustained work by authorities, humanitarian organizations and researchers.

The essential need to understand more cannot become a reason to delay action, however. If we wait until we have a complete account of why sexual violence occurs or of every consequence it has for victims, survivors, families and communities, we may end up waiting for decades. Our knowledge remains incomplete, but we already have enough evidence to act: to respond to the needs that people describe and to work to prevent further violence. At the same time, we must keep gathering evidence and be willing to change our approach in light of what we learn. That is the balance we have to maintain: acting with the knowledge we have, while making our prevention and response more effective.

Based on your experience and research, would you say that sexual violence is an inherent feature of armed conflicts?

No, it is not. Armed conflict can intensify violence and deepen its consequences, but sexual violence is not an inevitable feature of war.

The conduct of armed actors varies, even within the same conflict. One armed group may use sexual violence deliberately to drive people from an area and gain control of territory. Another may not adopt it as a strategy but may tolerate it, treating it as a reward for its members or failing to sanction those responsible. A third may prohibit it, incorporate that prohibition into its code of conduct and take action against perpetrators. Understanding these differences matters because they show that sexual violence is shaped by decisions, practices and command structures that can be challenged and changed.

At the same time, conflict-related sexual violence does not occur in isolation from the society in which the conflict takes place. In my experience, pre-existing gender-based violence can create conditions in which sexual violence is more readily tolerated. Armed conflict may compound those conditions as protective networks weaken, families are separated and the rule of law deteriorates.Footnote ⁷ There is also evidence about the likelihood of severe post-conflict forms of SGBV when sexual violence is a feature during the armed conflictFootnote ⁸ Studies show that the consequences of sexual violence are not something that goes away after the act itself or the signing of peace agreements – it really percolates through generations.Footnote ⁹ Victims and survivors have shared this intergenerational and retaliatory victimization in the words of their own perpetrators: “I am raping you because you raped my grandmother.” This shows how sexual violence outlives the conflict that produced it. In the legal classification, these were two distinct international armed conflicts separated in time and territory, but for the people who lived through them, no such separation existed and the perpetration of sexual violence was the open wound between the two, one protracted cycle of victimization and retaliation running through both.

What this tells us is that sexual violence in armed conflict is not inherent to war itself – it is a choice, shaped by command structures, incentives and pre-existing social patterns that can be identified, anticipated and in many cases prevented. But it is also self-perpetuating: it outlives the conflicts that produce it and may drag victims/survivors and their descendants into the next one.

In stark contrast with the above, what seems to be inherent is the invisibility of sexual violence in humanitarian response. As of 2021, SGBV funding requests averaged less than 1% of total need across humanitarian response plans,Footnote ¹⁰ while prevention specifically has historically received less than 0.2%. In 2025 this already dramatic baseline collapsed further, just as needs surged.Footnote ¹¹ Sexual violence in conflict has moved from chronically under-addressed to acutely abandoned.

You’ve said that the need for better understanding can’t be an excuse to delay action. Methodologically, how does that play out? How does the ICRC gather evidence rigorous enough to guide prevention work, given how sensitive and under-reported sexual violence is, without waiting for data that may never be complete?

Collecting reliable information during armed conflict is difficult, and sexual violence is particularly likely to go unreported. Its occurrence varies across conflicts and armed actors. But uncertainty cannot be our starting point for deciding whether to act. The ICRC works on an assumption of occurrence: in a conflict, we should be prepared to prevent sexual violence and respond to those affected, even when we have no reports yet of particular incidents.Footnote ¹² Let’s not wait for the data and let’s act against sexual violence right away, unless we prove that sexual violence is not happening. This reverse burden of proof is very critical when we are working on prevention of, and response to, sexual violence.

If we are waiting for data to act, we are failing enormously, but while acting, gathering data is necessary in order to ensure higher-quality interventions. Over the last ten years, we have been witnessing a global movement putting the emphasis on making visible the invisible when it comes to sexual violence.Footnote ¹³ Another example of learning as we act is the ICRC’s policy brief on stigma against victims/survivors of sexual violence.Footnote ¹⁴ This document gathers what we have learned by listening to the victims/survivors themselves: in many of the contexts where we work, the fear of (suffering) stigma, of being rejected by the family and by those who in theory are individuals’ safety network, is so high that many victims/survivors don’t recognize themselves as such; they prefer to bear the negative consequences of the violence rather than suffer the social consequences of that violence through victim-blaming, stigma and rejection. Many prefer to die, to kill themselves, rather than being exposed to the level of suffering of being stigmatized.

I heard this myself from a group of community members, and I still remember that I was trembling from head to toe while listening. They shared with us that one of the parties to the armed conflict reached the community and perpetrated mass sexual violence. Afterwards, the community had to establish a suicide watch because most of the victims were leaving their houses in the middle of the night to drown themselves in a nearby pond. It is heartbreaking; they endured and survived extreme brutality and violence but saw families and communities as a threat even worse than the violence they suffered, instead of sources of recovery and hope. This was an eye-opener that highlighted how, for certain segments of the population, social norms can be as destructive as conflict-related violence.

Researchers and practitioners are very much aware of the reality that data on such violence in armed conflicts is limited and faulty, and are working together to overcome the limitations, always under a “do no harm” approach that put victims/survivors at the centre.

In 2024, you co-authored a blog post Footnote ¹⁵ exploring and suggesting new approaches beyond the prevalence-based approach to measuring sexual violence prevention in conflict settings. Can you tell us a little bit more about it?

I co-authored that post with Jessica Lenz, Senior Protection Adviser at InterAction, bridging simultaneous discussions that were happening within the sector, including with States, protection actors and donors.

The starting point is that when discussing prevention and sexual violence, we are addressing two inherently challenging topics. One of the fundamental issues with prevention is that it is difficult to measure what has not happened because of successful intervention. “Prevention cannot be measured” is a humanitarian adagio that I still hear. At the same time, as previously mentioned, sexual violence comes with its own complexities, including invisibility, sensitivity and severe underfunding. When it comes to prevention, there is often an expectation that success must be demonstrated through a decrease in prevalence, comparing data from before and after an intervention. However, this approach is hardly applicable to conflict and it is certainly not effective for sexual violence. In fact, increased awareness of sexual violence can initially lead to a rise in reported cases, as more victims/survivors come forward. In this context, a rise in reporting can be “desirable”, a sign of greater visibility, trust and access to support rather than an increase in the actual prevalence of sexual violence.

The purpose of the blog post was to bring these two aspects together and demonstrate that prevention can indeed be measured, but we need to shift the paradigm to do it. Just as we have evolved in our approach to addressing sexual violence, we can similarly refine our methods for measuring prevention. The nature of sexual violence in conflict remains as complex and painful as it was thirty years ago when I first knew about the issue. However, the humanitarian sector has shifted its approach, adapting the way we work around these issues, and InterAction’s Gender-Based Violence Prevention Evaluation Framework,Footnote ¹⁶ as we mentioned in the blog post, has paved the way.

If we focus only on the absence of perpetration as a measure of prevention, we adopt an incomplete view. While successful prevention means that an act of violence has not occurred, it also means that certain factors have changed to create that outcome. It is these changes, these shifts in behaviour and perception, that we try to measure.

The ICRC has played a key role in advancing this shift in approach, influencing both researchers and practitioners through its work, particularly with the Roots of Behaviour in War study. This initial research helped us to understand the patterns and motivations behind violence in conflict, and the Roots of Restraint in War study then went a step further, examining not just the negative aspects of conflict but also the factors that lead to restraint,Footnote ¹⁷ the positive influences that prevent violations of IHL from occurring. This perspective is instrumental in shaping our understanding of what enables prevention.

The ICRC’s PSVP builds on the findings of the Roots of Restraint in War study. The programme challenges traditional assumptions, including moving beyond prevalence as the sole indicator of change; instead, we focus on understanding the elements that lead to behavioural change. If we can identify and track these elements, if we can determine the psychological and social factors that drive change, we can gain deeper insights into what is happening rather than just what is not happening. This understanding is crucial for preventing IHL violations, including sexual violence.

To achieve this, over the past five years we have built a monitoring, evaluation, and learning framework embedded directly in our operations targeting sexual violence prevention with weapon bearers and conflict-affected communities.Footnote ¹⁸ This framework allows us to assess and demonstrate the outcomes of the ICRC’s prevention work in a way that is measurable. We do not claim that it is perfect; we know it is not. The point is to put our reasoning on the table so that others can test it, challenge it and build on it.

Based on your experience, what are the fundamental elements and criteria that humanitarian actors and policy-makers must use to positively impact the behaviour of parties to an armed conflict when it comes to the prevention of sexual violence?

When we started the PSVP, we asked victims/survivors: what do you want? The quasi-unanimous response was “I want this not to happen”,Footnote ¹⁹ or “I wish this had never happened and I wish no one else to go through what I went through and what I am still suffering.” To stop re-occurrence of sexual violence, weapon bearers must align IHL with their own value systems. This is the core message of the Roots of Restraint in War study – in other words, we “start with what is already there”.Footnote ²⁰

For me, not being a lawyer, the most relevant point is that IHL really captured something that was already there, in existing value systems, social norms and religious beliefs. When you look at provisions dealing with sexual violence, sometimes it is described as rape, sometimes as violence against women and sometimes in other terms, but the principle is there. It is reflected in different religious and cultural traditions, some going back centuries, including Christian and Buddhist principles and Islamic law.Footnote ²¹

If we look at this only from a legal perspective, we risk losing sight of the underlying values that IHL brought together. What it reflects is something shared across humankind: the basic principle that sexual violence is harmful in such a fundamental way that it was prohibited in many cultures before modern IHL existed. Across cultures, countries and religions, there is a recognition of the extreme harm caused by these acts and of their terrible consequences.

For example, if you approach the issue by simply telling fighters what IHL prohibits, many of them may not care – they may not see it as relevant or even applicable to them. What we try to do instead is connect the issue to shared values and existing belief systems. The good thing is that we can draw on examples that already exist; for instance, there is an armed group that has incorporated the prohibition of sexual violence into its code of conduct. When you look at the way that armed groups reflect the prohibition of sexual violence in their own rules, it gives you many clues about their underlying conceptions. In this particular example, the group has said that a fighter who commits rape will lose the protection associated with being a fighter. The group’s conception is that fighters who fight for legitimate or accepted values are protected from death in combat, almost as if they were bulletproof, but the moment they commit rape, they lose that protection and can die. The rule even includes the idea that protection will be lost because of an act committed against someone else’s body. This is very interesting because it shows that we do not always need to impose an external legal framework. What IHL calls an unlawful act, the group identifies as being connected to the fighters’ protection from harm – or more pertinently, the loss of it. The relevant values, in this case considering sexual violence as an unlawful act, may already exist within people’s own ideas and belief systems.

In another example, the ICRC has also done valuable work bringing together IHL and African values and traditions.Footnote ²² Acknowledging that it is simplistic to speak of a single set of “African values” given the continent’s incredibly diversity, the broader point remains: many of these principles already exist within different cultural and social systems in Africa. When we engage with fighters, as with authorities, what we are increasingly trying to develop is this shared element – the point where legal norms connect with values that people already recognize and uphold.

The second – and connected – element is that most of these efforts rely heavily on one approach: sanctions as the main deterrent mechanism to prevent sexual violence perpetration. While efforts towards better justice outcomes for sexual violence victims/survivors are critical, we need to understand that the sole reliance on justice also entails what I call a “sacrificial logic”: we are feeding the justice system with victims/survivors of violence to improve the system itself. In other words, justice-focused prevention relies on a violation to happen, but shouldn’t we prevent and stop violations in the first place? Is it acceptable to rely on victim after victim going through the horrendous judicial experience for impunity to decrease and sanctions to become a deterrent factor? No, it is not – that is the short answer for me. We must improve front-line prevention efforts in addition to those aimed at improving the judicial response. We need to change the behaviour of those who are in the front line of everyday conflict so that they do not perpetrate sexual violence and so that we do not need victims to go through the judicial ordeal. If we can foster the convergence of a values-based approach with front-line and structural prevention, we can create meaningful change: those who have committed sexual violence cease to perpetrate it, bystanders intervene rather than remain passive, and those who have never perpetrated violence continue to uphold that stance. We should make all possible efforts to disrupt the sacrificial logic implicit in sanctions and deterrence.

The third element is to address misconceptions when we talk to parties to armed conflict. As previously mentioned, sexual violence is not limited to rape; it also includes forced abortion and forced contraception, among others. In the process of co-developing a tool with ex-combatants to prevent sexual violence by active members of non-State armed groups, they told us, “I should have known this before; now I realize that I punished the victim by forcing contraceptives on them.” We equally stress the issue of coercion and abuse of power, because consent cannot be understood simply as someone saying “yes” – armed actors must factor the power that comes with carrying a weapon, wearing a uniform and belonging to an armed group. When you ask a young girl, “Do you want to go out with me?”, and she says “yes”, that does not necessarily mean there is consent. More often than not, it is purely survival.Footnote ²³

In recent decades, various actors have made concerted efforts to reduce the perpetration of sexual violence linked to conflict by adopting a wider perspective. A good example of this is the policy brief produced jointly by the ICRC and DCAF, the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance, in 2026.Footnote ²⁴

One last caveat is important: successful prevention of sexual violence cannot happen if we look at weapon bearers as the sole threat or we rely on sanctions by the authorities as the go-to mechanism. A three-pronged approach – addressing weapon bearers, authorities and communities together – is essential to stop sexual violence, and communities are the piece most often missing from this prevention equation.

Finally, is there any distinction to make on this topic between State armed forces and non-State armed groups?

The type of armed actor is not the main factor determining whether sexual violence is perpetrated. There is a misconception that sexual violence is perpetrated more by non-State armed groups than State armed forces, but the data shows the opposite.Footnote ²⁵

It is true, however, that there are differences in the way we engage with different types of weapon bearers. This is generally related to their organizational structure. With State armed forces, there is usually, although not always, a clear and formal structure. We often have better access to military manuals, codes of conduct, training curricula and other formal documents. This makes it easier to identify entry points for engagement. And yet, even when all of these formal elements are in place, they do not necessarily translate into practice. With non-State armed groups, it really depends; the level of formality in their structures is often lower, although some groups are actually quite well organized. In terms of effectiveness, we rely heavily on organizational structures. The more structured an actor is, the easier – or perhaps less difficult – it becomes to understand where and how to intervene and to think about a more systemic approach. With non-State armed groups, the challenge is more about consistency of engagement. Even when these groups are well structured, it can be very difficult to rely on the same type of interlocutor within the same organization or even within the same operating environment. With armed groups, what we are trying to do is make the approach much more tailored. Regardless of the type of armed actor, the question is always the same: who do we have in front of us?

Maybe the main contribution of the PSVP in reinforcing prevention efforts with weapon bearers is to overcome a one-size-fits-all approach. Often the resources are the same for everyone: State armed forces, non-State armed groups, commanders, new recruits, instructors, legal advisers and middle-ranking members. Roughly put, the message was always the same, regardless of whether it was the ICRC or its chain of command conveying it: “This is prohibited, and this is prohibited, and this is prohibited too.” Instead, we should ask: what can this particular person actually do? For new recruits, for example, what is their power? What can they concretely change within their limited sphere of influence?Footnote ²⁶ This might mean not being a bystander, understanding how to prevent sexual violence, or knowing what early action they can take when they see something happening. For a commander at battalion level who is active in combat near to civilians, the message often needs to be different – much more specific and operational. In some cases, it can be as concrete as ensuring that everyone wears the uniform correctly and no one removes or conceals their insignia, since doing so is a warning sign of potential IHL violations, including sexual violence. This works best paired with educating the civilian population to recognize the uniform, establishing safe reporting systems and making sure that civilians know how to use them.

This is what we are really trying to do: to tailor the message to the type of person we are engaging with and make that message actionable. The goal is that someone leaves an ICRC training, dissemination session or dialogue and, one hour later, is able to take action.