Justice for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Must Start and End with Survivors
Leesa Gazi and Jaqy Mutere examine how justice for conflict-related sexual violence fails survivors and argue that only survivor-led systems can deliver meaningful accountability and justice.
Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) continues to devastate lives across the globe. From Sudan to Syria, Bangladesh to Bosnia, survivors endure not only the brutal trauma of what they have suffered, but also the persistent failure of justice systems to respond meaningfully. The UN recently reported an 87% rise in cases of CRSV between 2022 and 2024, with 4,600 cases reported last year alone – yet the true figure is far higher due to underreporting. Shockingly, fewer than 1% of these crimes ever lead to conviction.
These failures are not incidental; they reflect who designs our systems of justice, and for whom. For so many survivors, formal mechanisms remain completely inaccessible, retraumatising, or simply absent. Rape in conflict has, in effect, been decriminalised through neglect and impunity. These realities demand a fundamental shift: justice systems must be designed with survivors, not for them.
Survivors and the communities that have experienced these atrocities hold unparalleled insights into what real justice requires. If the international community is serious about ending CRSV, it must stop speaking on behalf of survivors and instead listen to them – encouraging self-agency where their experiences, knowledge, and ideas help to shape the design of justice itself. This survivor-centred approach must also recognise how CRSV reverberates long after the violence has ended, shaping family life, identity, and belonging. That includes children born of CRSV, who can be both living reminders of the atrocities and powerful sources of survivor agency as families navigate trauma over time. Justice must see these children not only as outcomes of these war crimes but as lives shaped by them that are deserving of recognition and support in their own right.
Despite a proliferation of international frameworks, justice for CRSV remains more rhetorical than real. Bosnia offers a painful lesson. During the 1990s war, more than 20,000 people were subjected to sexual violence, yet justice came slowly. Two decades after the war, only a handful of survivors had received compensation despite the thousands coming forward and bravely sharing their stories. As recalled by Bosnian lawyer Adrijana Hanušić Bećirović “survivors have been asked countless times to tell their stories, only to have their expectations raised and then disappointed.” Even as prosecutions increased, prison sentences often failed to match the severity of the crimes. For many, the justice system became a source of renewed pain, and it was only when survivor voices began to influence proceedings that change, however gradual, started to take root.
In Nepal, survivors of sexual violence from the 1996-2006 armed conflict have spent years seeking justice through transitional mechanisms that remain deeply flawed. Despite international rulings in their favour, the government has failed to implement reparations for survivors or provide meaningful support. Further, survivors were never consulted in the design of these mechanisms, and their exclusion has produced a process that feels hollow and disconnected from their lived reality.
These examples underscore a painful truth – justice too often prioritises the law over lived experience, and institutional convenience over survivor dignity. Until survivors, regardless of gender, geography, or circumstance, are placed at the centre of these systems, meaningful and enduring justice will remain unachievable.
Still, there are reasons for hope. Across the world significant breakthroughs are showing what survivor-led justice can achieve. In Ukraine for instance, survivors have helped design and develop a comprehensive legal framework for CRSV known as the Bardina Law. This legislation formally recognises survivors of CRSV and provides access to urgent interim reparations, including psychological support, medical care, and financial compensation. A pilot programme has already approved payments for over 300 survivors, including men and boys, highlighting the law’s inclusive approach. Survivors also helped shape Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for investigating CRSV, ensuring trauma-informed methods and safeguarding dignity throughout the process. These reforms show how survivor participation can lead to more responsive, humane, and effective justice systems, and offer a model for other countries to follow.
In the absence of traditional justice and recognition in the legal sense, survivors are redefining what acknowledgement, advocacy, and accountability can look like through storytelling, filmmaking and memorialisation. In Rising Silence, a documentary about the Birangona, survivors of sexual violence during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, the women chose to speak publicly after decades of social exclusion – showcasing their resistance and demand for recognition.
Similarly, Petrified Survivors, a sculpture created by British artist Rebecca Hakwins in collaboration with 20 anti-CRSV organisations, embodies the stories of survivors around the world and those that have sadly passed before receiving recognition and justice. The memorial stands as a reminder that justice is not just about punishment but about visibility, ensuring survivors are seen and heard. When survivors are empowered to exercise agency over their voices and stories, they not only can transform their own lives but also advance the global movement towards justice and recognition. These forms of survivor-led remembrance help build the social conditions that make future violence less likely, challenging the stigma that silences survivors and holds perpetrators to account.
CRSV persists not because it is inevitable, but because systems have failed to respond with urgency, empathy, and accountability. This must change. Justice cannot be imposed from above, it must be shaped by those who have lived its failures. When survivors lead, justice becomes more compassionate, more effective, and more enduring. That compassion must extend across generations, including to children born of CRSV. To end these horrific crimes, we must make them universally unacceptable through holding perpetrators to account and co-creating systems that centre survivor dignity, recognition, and long-term support.
Leesa Gazi is a filmmaker and founder of the Komola Collective and Jaqy Mutere is the founder of Grace Agenda and SEMA Member.
Photo by Musa Artful
