Communist Party of Swaziland

Statement on the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict

Friday, 19 June 2026: The International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict is commemorated at a moment when humanity is witnessing an alarming escalation of wars, occupations and military aggression. Across the globe, imperialist powers continue to compete for spheres of influence, strategic territories, natural resources, markets and geopolitical dominance, fuelling devastating conflicts whose victims are overwhelmingly workers, peasants, women and children.

War is not gender-neutral. Women and girls often suffer its most brutal consequences. Sexual violence has become one of the most heinous weapons employed in modern conflicts, used deliberately to terrorise communities, humiliate populations, destroy families, force displacement and reinforce military and political domination. The elimination of sexual violence in conflict has therefore become an urgent international necessity.

The scale of this crisis is staggering. The United Nations verified nearly 10,000 cases of conflict-related sexual violence in 2025, more than double the number recorded in the previous year. Women and girls constituted the overwhelming majority of victims, while men and boys have also increasingly been subjected to these crimes. Yet these figures represent only a fraction of the actual number of survivors, as countless violations remain unreported due to stigma, fear, insecurity, displacement and the collapse of social support systems.

From Sudan to the Democratic Republic of Congo, from Haiti to Palestine, women and girls continue to bear the heaviest burden of wars driven by geopolitical rivalries, foreign intervention and militarisation. In Sudan, hundreds of cases of sexual violence have been documented since the outbreak of war in 2023, while millions of women and girls remain exposed to heightened risks of abuse and exploitation. These atrocities expose the human cost of endless wars and imperialist competition.

On this International Day, we draw particular attention to the plight of the Palestinian people, who continue to endure genocide, occupation, siege and forced displacement under Israeli settler-colonial rule, sustained politically, economically and militarily by imperialist powers.

Palestinian women and girls have experienced multiple and intersecting forms of violence arising from Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza and decades of military occupation. Thousands of Palestinian women and girls have been killed, injured or permanently disabled since October 2023. Tens of thousands have been displaced and deprived of food, clean water, shelter and access to healthcare, including reproductive and maternal health services. Pregnant women have been forced to give birth in overcrowded shelters, makeshift tents and bombed hospitals under conditions that violate the most basic standards of human dignity.

Reports by United Nations experts, humanitarian agencies and human rights organisations have documented sexual humiliation, threats of rape, degrading treatment, torture and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinian detainees and civilians. Such abuses cannot be understood in isolation from the broader structures of settler colonialism, apartheid and military occupation that seek to subjugate and dispossess the Palestinian people.

The struggle to eliminate sexual violence in conflict cannot be reduced to humanitarian concern alone. It is inseparable from the struggle against war, occupation, colonial domination and imperialism itself. It demands accountability for perpetrators regardless of their political alliances, an end to impunity for powerful states, and unwavering solidarity with peoples resisting oppression and fighting for their national liberation.

On this International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, we stand in solidarity with all survivors in Palestine, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and every part of the world where war and occupation continue to devastate human lives. We reaffirm our commitment to a world founded on peace, justice, equality and self-determination, a world free from imperialism, colonial domination, patriarchy and exploitation.

Only through the eradication of war and systems of oppression, chiefly capitalism, can humanity finally eliminate the use of sexual violence as a weapon of conflict.

Issued by the Communist Party of Swaziland