United Nations - Human Rights

When Silence Breaks: Accountability For Sexual Violence In Conflict

AKAHNJOC — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:18:06 +0000

The Exhibit
The Mandate

The United Nations Security Council established the mandate of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC) in response to the widespread and systematic use of sexual violence as a tactic of war, terror, torture and political repression, and the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators. In conflict-affected settings, national justice systems may be significantly weakened, thus impunity remains the rule and prosecution the rare exception.

Created by Security Council resolution 1888 (2009), the Team of Experts supports national authorities in strengthening the rule of law and combating impunity for conflict-related sexual violence. Working with governments, UN missions, and country teams, the Team helps build criminal accountability, reinforce judicial capacity, and improve responses for survivors, including access to justice and reparations.

Composed of specialists from DPO, OHCHR, the Office of the SRSG-SVC, and UNDP, the Team operates under the strategic leadership of the SRSG-SVC. Its expertise has been repeatedly recognized and encouraged by the Security Council in resolutions 2106 (2013), 2331 (2016), 2447 (2018), and 2467 (2019).

The Team of Experts focuses on situations in the Secretary-General’s annual report on conflict-related sexual violence, while also responding to requests from national authorities and guidance from the SRSG-SVC.

Organizers: The UN Team of Experts on the Rule of Law/Sexual Violence in Conflict and its co-leads, the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (OSRSG-SVC), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the Department for ɫ��TV Operations (DPO). Photo | Aida Grovestins

In the past decades, the pursuit of justice for conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has reshaped the global legal landscape. From early international tribunals to hybrid mechanisms and national courts, courageous survivors and justice actors have broken silences, challenged impunity, established legal precedents, and made visible crimes that were long ignored or treated as inevitable.

This exhibition highlights key milestones in the development of accountability for CRSV within the broader framework of the United Nations’ Women, ɫ��TV and Security agenda, including Security Council Resolutions 1325 (2000), 1820 (2008) and 1888 (2009). While some landmark judicial decisions predate resolution 1325, they are included because they laid essential legal foundations for the recognition of rape and other forms of sexual violence as war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide - developments that later enabled normative, institutional, and operational advances by the United Nations and Member States.

The exhibition presents a curated selection of emblematic cases drawn from international, hybrid, national, constitutional, and regional jurisdictions. The inclusion of national judgments reflect the critical role of domestic courts in applying and advancing international legal standards on conflict-related sexual violence. These cases were selected for their jurisprudential significance and illustrative value across regions and legal traditions. This selection does not intend to be exhaustive.

Rather than following a strict chronological sequence, the exhibition foregrounds thematic and legal developments in accountability for conflict-related sexual violence. These cases showcase accountability not only in international courts, but also in hybrid and domestic jurisdictions - from early rulings in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia that first classified rape as a crime against humanity and a form of genocide, to more recent national and hybrid court convictions for sexual slavery, forced marriage, and forced pregnancy.

Though challenges remain, these cases affirm a powerful truth: justice for sexual violence in conflict is possible. Survivors have led the way. The world is beginning to listen — and act.

Disclaimer: This exhibition includes material that some visitors may find sensitive or disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised

Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic shift in the understanding of the scourge of conflict-related sexual violence and its impact on international peace, security and development, the response required to prevent such crimes, and the multisectoral services needed by survivors. Structural gender-based inequality and discrimination are exacerbated in conflict-affected and fragile settings, placing women and girls at a heightened risk of sexual and gender-based violence. While the United Nations also addresses the problem of conflict-related sexual violence from an operational perspective through the strengthening of security and justice institutions, it remains essential to recognize and tackle gender-based inequality as the root cause and invisible driver of sexual violence, in times of war and peace.

Sexual violence is a grotesque tactic of war, used to brutalize, torture, and repress, scarring bodies, minds and entire communities. The horror of these heinous crimes echoes long after the guns fall silent. Too often, perpetrators walk free, cloaked in impunity, while survivors often bear the impossible burden of stigma and trauma. The pain does not end with them. It stretches across lifetimes, ravaging generations of families, and forces the inherited legacy of trauma and suffering on the descendants of survivors. ...Let’s unite to end this despicable crime, demand justice for survivors, and sustain our critical efforts to end the cycle of violence for good...”

— António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations

Prosecutor V. Duško Tadić, ICTY (1997)

Photo | Adobe stock

Context & Jurisdiction:

The Bosnian War (1992–1995) was marked by ethnic cleansing, mass detentions, and sexual violence. In response, the UN Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1993 — the first international criminal tribunal since Nuremberg, and the first ever established by the UN Security Council. Duško Tadić, a Bosnian Serb political leader from the town of Kozarac, was the first person tried by the ICTY.

Case Summary:

In May 1997, the ICTY found Tadić guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes for his role in persecuting Bosniak civilians. He participated in and aided beatings and torture at the Omarska, Keraterm, and Trnopolje detention camps.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

While Tadić was charged with rape, but not ultimately convicted, the case marked the first time an international war crimes tribunal admitted survival testimony about sexual violence including forced public nudity, genital mutilation, and sexual assaults, as part of its evidentiary record. This conduct was recognized as part of the broader inhumane acts used to terrorize detainees. The ICTY established key procedural foundations, including witness protection and trauma-informed approaches for sexual violence cases, which were applied in Tadić and subsequent prosecutions such as Furundžija and Kunarac, which directly addressed sexual crimes and further developed the jurisprudence.

Trial and appeal decisions

In sum, the accused will be found criminally culpable for any conduct where it is determined that he knowingly participated in the commission of an offence that violates international humanitarian law and his participation directly and substantially affected the commission of that offence through supporting the actual commission before, during, or after the incident.”

– Prosecutor v. Tadić, ICTY Trial Chamber, Judgment, 7 May 1997, para. 692

Prosecutor V. Dragoljub Kunarac Et Al, ICTY (2001)

Photo | Susana Sacouto

Context & Jurisdiction:

In the Bosnian War, the town of Foča became notorious for “rape camps” where Bosnian Serb soldiers systematically raped and enslaved Muslim (Bosniak) women. The ICTY charged Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovač, and Zoran Vuković – all holding military positions – with orchestrating sexual enslavement in Foča.

Case Summary:

In February 2001, the ICTY convicted Kunarac, Kovač and Vuković of multiple counts of rape, while Kunarac and Kovac were also convicted of enslavement. Evidence showed they had detained women and girls in houses and barracks, subjected them to repeated rape, and traded them among soldiers like chattel. This was the first international case focused primarily on sexual enslavement of women in conflict.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

The Kunarac judgment was a legal watershed. It clarified the definition of enslavement in international law, holding that sexual slavery is encompassed by enslavement, and that formal “ownership” is not required, as the exercise of power over persons suffices. The case recognized control of sexuality and forced labor as factors that determine whether an act constitutes enslavement, underscoring that domination of victims’ autonomy and repeated sexual violence constitute crimes against humanity even absent monetary exchange.

Trial and appeal decisions

The main characteristic of the enslavement… was the sexual exploitation of the girls and women. All the controls exerted served that purpose. Repeated violations of the victim’s sexual integrity, through rape and other sexual violence, were some of the most obvious exercises of the powers of ownership by the accused.”

– Prosecutor v. Kunarac et al., ICTY Trial Chamber, Judgment, 22 February 2001, para. 460 (quoting the Prosecutor’s Final Trial Brief)

Prosecutor V. Gojko Janković, Bosnia And Herzegovina (2007)

Photo | Susana Sacouto

Context & Jurisdiction:

Gojko Janković, a Bosnian Serb paramilitary leader, had been indicted by the ICTY for overseeing rape camps in Foča. In 2005, the ICTY transferred his case to Bosnia’s War Crimes Chamber in Sarajevo, a domestic court established to continue war crimes trials locally.

Case Summary:

In 2007, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina convicted Janković of crimes against humanity for multiple acts of rape, torture, and enslavement of Bosniak women and girls. Witnesses recounted that Janković personally raped several teenage girls and kept two of them in sexual slavery for months. Janković was sentenced to 34 years in prison, the longest sentence issued by the Bosnian war crimes court at that time.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

The trial marked the first conviction by a Bosnian court for sexual enslavement as a crime against humanity, localizing the standards set by the ICTY. The judgment also emphasized survivor testimony in domestic proceedings, legitimizing wartime rape victims’ experiences within the national judiciary. Janković’s conviction sent a powerful message that even years after the war, perpetrators of sexual violence would face accountability.

Trial and appeal decisions

[the accused] used female detainees (...) as sexual and general servants (...), treating them as objects and personal possessions and exercising complete control over their lives.”

- Bosnian War Crimes Court judgment 16 February 2007 Judgment, para.6

Prosecutor V. Jean-Paul Akayesu, ICTR (1998)

Context & Jurisdiction:

During the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda civilians were targeted in mass killings and systematic sexual violence. In response, the United Nations Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to prosecute those most responsible. Jean-Paul Akayesu, as mayor of Taba commune, stood trial before the ICTR.

Case Summary:

In September 1998, the ICTR found Akayesu guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, determining that he had instigated and allowed the rape of Tutsi women in Taba, using sexual violence as part of the genocidal campaign. He was held accountable for inciting and aiding and abetting the atrocities committed under his authority.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

This case marked the first time an international tribunal explicitly recognized rape as a component of genocide and as a crime against humanity. The judgment defined rape broadly as “a physical invasion of a sexual nature committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive”. The court held that sexual violence was an “integral” part of the process of destruction of the Tutsi ethnic group. It set a precedent by affirming that mass rape can be an act of genocide when perpetrated with intent to destroy a group.

Trial and appeal decisions

Sexual violence was a step in the process of destruction of the Tutsi group – destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself.”

- ICTR Trial Chamber I, Akayesu Judgment 2 September 1998

Photos | ICTR

Photo | Screenshot from "The Uncondemned"

Auto 092/2008 and subsequent decisions (like Auto 009/2015) effectively created a state obligation to address and prevent conflict-related sexual violence, influencing Colombia’s later transitional justice system.

Advancing Justice For CRSV Before National Constitutional Courts Colombia’s Constitutional Court Advances The Fight Against Impunity For CRSV (2008)

Context & Jurisdiction:

Even absent war-crimes tribunals, domestic constitutional courts have played pivotal roles in addressing conflict-related sexual violence by defining state obligations to prevent and remedy these crimes. In Colombia, decades of internal armed conflict saw sexual violence (especially against displaced women) become rampant and largely unacknowledged.

Impact And Significance:

In 2008 the Constitutional Court of Colombia issued Auto 092 – a seminal ruling addressing the plight of displaced women. The Court recognized that conflict-related sexual violence was systematic and invisible, and it directed the government to prioritize investigations of 183 specific cases of sexual violence by armed actors. The Court’s language was forceful: it stated that “sexual violence against women is a habitual, extensive, systematic and invisible practice in the Colombian armed conflict.” This represented a groundbreaking acknowledgement at the highest judicial level that sexual violence was not random or private, but a structural tactic of war in Colombia. The Court mandated protective measures, better access to justice for women, and integration of sexual violence issues in peace talks and reparation programs.

Trial and appeal decisions

High Risk Tribunal, Guatemala, and Sepur Zarco (2016)

Context & Jurisdiction:

During Guatemala’s 36-year internal armed conflict, indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ communities were targeted by the army. In the early 1980s, at a military outpost called Sepur Zarco, soldiers enslaved and systematically raped indigenous women after murdering or “disappearing” their husbands. Decades later, Guatemala’s national judiciary—through a High Risk Tribunal—took up the case, demonstrating the growing willingness of domestic courts to address conflict-related sexual violence.

Case Summary:

In February 2016, two former military officers, Lieutenant Esteelmer Reyes and civilian patrolman Heriberto Valdez, were convicted of crimes against humanity for sexual violence, sexual slavery, and domestic slavery at Sepur Zarco. The court found that, in 1982–83, soldiers forced Q’eqchi’ women to report to the base every three days, where they were raped, tortured, and made to cook and clean for the troops. Many of these women’s husbands had been killed or taken by the army in a land dispute. Reyes and Valdez were sentenced to a cumulative 360 years in prison (120 years for Reyes, 240 for Valdez, reflecting additional killings), and the court ordered reparations including land restitution and memorials.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

The Sepur Zarco case was historic: it was the first time Guatemala or any national court convicted former military officers for wartime sexual slavery. The tribunal explicitly recognized that the rapes and enslavement at Sepur Zarco were not isolated incidents but part of a deliberate strategy of war. Judge Yassmin Barrios, in her sentencing, affirmed that sexual violence was used as a weapon to destroy the women and their communities, declaring that “the desecration of the bodies of the women also constituted a desecration of the community...turning the women into objects of war”. This powerful acknowledgement by a domestic court in Guatemala was a watershed for survivors. It set a precedent for other countries, showing that national courts can prosecute sexual slavery as an international crime and deliver long-overdue justice to survivor

Trial and appeal decisions

The desecration of the bodies of the women also constituted a desecration of the community. It turned the women into objects of war, to achieve the annihilation of those considered their enemy.”

- Mujeres Transformando el Mundo, in Al Jazeera, 3 March 2016

Photos | UN Women Elena Hermona, Cataline Sanchez, Fernanda Zelada Rosal

High Risk Tribunal, Guatemala, and Maya Achi Women (2022 & 2025)

Context & Jurisdiction:

During the early 1980s, at the height of Guatemala’s civil war, Maya Achi communities in Rabinal (Baja Verapaz) endured widespread massacres, forced displacement, and systematic sexual violence carried out by the army and affiliated Civil Self-Defense Patrols

Case Summary:

In 2022, a Guatemalan court convicted five former paramilitaries of crimes against humanity for the rape and sexual enslavement of 36 Maya Achi women; in a second trial in 2025, three more ex-patrol members received 40-year sentences for rapes committed between 1981 and 1983, with the court recognizing the women’s testimony and ordering reparations.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

These rulings confirmed that sexual violence and domestic slavery against Indigenous women during the conflict were systematic, weaponized practices, and they consolidated Sepur Zarco’s precedent by extending accountability beyond military officers to local paramilitary structures, reinforcing the notion of sexual violence as an atrocity crime requiring structural reparations.

Trial and appeal decisions

Photos | Verdad y Justicia

East Timor, Special Panels (2000–2005)

Context & Jurisdiction:

In the 1999 vote, voters rejected special autonomy, which paved the way for Timor-Leste’s independence. After this vote, military forces were accused of carrying out widespread atrocities. Civilians were murdered, and many women were raped or enslaved amid the violence. In response, the UN administration in East Timor (UNTAET) established Special Panels with international and East Timorese judges (2000–2005) to prosecute serious crimes. This hybrid tribunal in Dili had jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, including sexual offenses.

Case Summary:

In one landmark case of the Special Panels (the “Lolotoe” trial), militia commander José Cardoso was convicted of crimes against humanity for murder, torture, and rape committed against the population. Cardoso and others were convicted of abducting and sexually enslaving Timorese women suspected of supporting independence. In 2003, Cardoso was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

The Special Panels broke ground as the first court in Asia to prosecute conflict related sexual violence as crimes against humanity. They applied definitions later used by the International Criminal Court, recognizing rape, sexual slavery, and other gender-based crimes under customary international law. These trials signaled that even years after conflict, perpetrators of sexual violence could be brought to justice in domestic-hybrid courts. They also helped build Timor-Leste’s capacity to address such crimes locally, setting a precedent for post-conflict justice in the region.

Trial and appeal decisions

I want them to face justice and stay in jail… the money cannot buy my dignity as a woman."

- Maria do Rego, East Timorese survivor of 1999 sexual violence, on the need for accountability (Reuters, 2008)

The dissenting opinion of International Judge Benfeito Mosso Ramos focuses on the definition of rape under Indonesian law, which he challenges for being incompatible with internationally recognized human rights standards, particularly the CEDAW Convention. He notes that Article 285 of the Indonesian Penal Code, cited in the judgment, criminalizes forced sexual intercourse with a woman who is not the perpetrator’s wife, thus excluding marital rape. This omission violates CEDAW and Article 17 of Timor-Leste’s Constitution. Ramos concludes that Indonesian law applies in Timor-Leste only if it aligns with international human rights standards; therefore, Article 285, insofar as it permits marital rape, cannot be enforced. In light of recent debates between the government and civil society in Timor-Leste, this dissenting view appears ahead of its time.”

- Dr. Yann Franc De Ferrière

Photos | Yann Franc De Ferrière

Prosecutor V. Brima, Kamara & Kanu, SCSL (2007)

Context & Jurisdiction:

Sierra Leone’s 1991–2002 civil war was marked by extreme brutality, including widespread sexual violence by rebel groups. The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) was established by the UN and Sierra Leone as a hybrid tribunal combining international and national law, judges, and prosecutors to try those bearing greatest responsibility for war crimes. This case involved three leaders of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) junta, which had allied with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels and terrorized civilians.

Case Summary:

In June 2007, SCSL Trial Chamber II convicted Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara, and Santigie Borbor Kanu of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including rape and outrages upon personal dignity. The AFRC commanders had led campaigns of terror, including the abduction of women and girls as “wives” for fighters. In its February 2008 judgment, the SCSL Appeals Chamber confirmed these convictions.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

The AFRC appeal judgment was groundbreaking in international jurisprudence. It affirmed that forced marriage in this case the coercion of women and girls into “conjugal” relations - is not subsumed by the crime of sexual slavery; it is a separate crime characterized by a forced relationship of exclusive domesticity and social stigma. The Appeals Chamber defined forced marriage in the context of the Sierra Leone conflict as compelling someone “by force or threat... to serve as a conjugal partner, resulting in severe suffering”. This precedent has since influenced how courts address situations where rape is combined with the imposition of a marital status. The case also reinforced that rape in armed conflict is equivalent to torture and is subject to command responsibility. The Appeals Chamber went a step further: it legally recognized forced marriage as a distinct crime against humanity (as an “other inhumane act”), the first time any court did so. All three defendants received lengthy prison sentences, underscoring that even top commanders would answer for sexual violence.

Trial and appeal decisions

Forced marriage [is] a situation in which the perpetrator… compels a person by force, threat of force, or coercion to serve as a conjugal partner, resulting in severe suffering, or physical, mental or psychological injury to the victim.”

- SCSL Appeals Chamber, AFRC Case (Forced Marriage definition, 2008)

Photos | SCSL

Advancing Justice For CRSV Before The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights: Progress In The Regional Context - Fernández Ortega Et Al. (2010) And Rosendo Cantú Et Al. (2010)

Context & Jurisdiction:

In the early 2000’s, in Mexico’s Guerrero state, Indigenous Me’phaa communities were heavily militarized under counter-insurgency operations, with widespread allegations of abuses by soldiers against Indigenous women.

Inés Fernández Ortega, an Indigenous Me’phaa woman, was raped and tortured by soldiers in 2002.
Valentina Rosendo Cantú, 17-year-old Indigenous Me’phaa girl was raped and tortured by soldiers in 2002

Impact and significance:

In Fernández Ortega and Rosendo Cantú, the Court reaffirmed that rape committed by members of the armed forces constitutes torture and clarified States’ obligations to investigate sexual violence with due diligence, applying gender-sensitive, intercultural, and—in the case of Rosendo Cantú—child-rights standards. While Fernández Ortega advanced an intersectional analysis addressing discrimination against Indigenous women and barriers to access to justice, Rosendo Cantú reinforced heightened protection obligations where the victim is a minor.

At the individual level, Mexico implemented key reparative measures for the victims and their families in both cases, including compensation, medical and psychological care, educational support, translation and dissemination of the judgments, and public acknowledgment of responsibility. Proceedings were transferred from military to civilian jurisdiction, in compliance with the Court’s orders, marking a significant step toward ensuring independent and impartial investigation of human rights violations.

At the structural level, these cases collectively contributed to advancing limitations on military jurisdiction over human rights violations against civilians, strengthening investigative standards for sexual violence, and promoting intercultural and child-sensitive safeguards.

These cases have had an enduring influence on regional accountability standards for conflict-related sexual violence attributed to members of armed forces.

Judgment

Advancing Justice For CRSV Before The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights: Progress In The Regional Context - El Mozote (2012)

Context & Jurisdiction:

In December 1981, during El Salvador’s civil war, the Atlacatl Battalion carried out massacres in El Mozote and surrounding hamlets, killing nearly a thousand civilians—mostly rural peasants, many of them women and children—as part of counter-insurgency operations.

Impact and significance:

The Court held that the El Mozote massacres which occurred in the context of a non-international armed conflict, in El Salvador, constituted grave violations of the rights to life, personal integrity, and liberty. Importantly, it ruled that sexual violence perpetrated by members of the armed forces formed part of the massacre strategy and constituted torture. The judgment also consolidated the principle that amnesty laws cannot bar investigation and prosecution of serious human rights violations and war crimes.

At the individual and community level, the Court ordered comprehensive reparations, including renewed criminal investigations, exhumation and identification of remains, psychosocial and medical care, educational support, public acknowledgment of responsibility, memorialization measures, and community development initiatives. El Salvador implemented key reparative actions including public acts of recognition, establishment of memory initiatives, and reopening of domestic investigations following the 2016 constitutional annulment of the Amnesty Law.

At the structural level, the judgment had significant constitutional and institutional consequences. It reinforced the incompatibility of “blanket amnesty” laws with the American Convention, contributing to the eventual invalidation of the Amnesty Law at national level. It strengthened the obligation to investigate grave violations irrespective of temporal distance, clarified that statutes of limitation cannot apply to war crimes and crimes against humanity, and advanced the integration of international humanitarian law into Inter-American human rights jurisprudence.

Judgment

Video Caso masacres de el mozote

Hissène Habré, Extraordinary African Chambers, Senegal (2016)

Context & Jurisdiction:

Hissène Habré, former president of Chad (1982–1990), presided over a regime of state terror. His notorious secret police (DDS) committed torture, mass killings, and sexual violence against political detainees and marginalized ethnic groups. After Habré’s overthrow, victims fought for decades to bring him to justice. In a groundbreaking example of African international justice, the African Union and Senegal established the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC) within Senegal’s court system to try Habré for international crimes.

Case Summary:

On May 30, 2016, the EAC convicted Hissène Habré of crimes against humanity, including rape and sexual slavery, war crimes, and torture. Witnesses bravely recounted in court how they were sent to military camps in the desert to serve as slaves for soldiers and how women in detention were raped by Habré’s agents. One survivor, Khadidja Zidane, testified that Habré himself had raped her– making him the first former head of state ever personally convicted of rape in a court of law at the Trial level. The trial established that Habré’s regime used sexual violence (such as forced nudity, rape, and sexual slavery of female prisoners) as methods of torture and persecution. Habré was sentenced to life imprisonment, and an appeals court upheld the verdict, also awarding reparations to victims. Though convicted on first instance for the direct commission of the rape of Khadija Hassan Zidane, Habré was acquited on appeal because the charge had not been included in the original indictment. However, the court emphasized that the credibility of Khadija Hassan Zidane was not in question.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

The Habré case was hailed as a victory for survivors and a milestone for African justice. It demonstrated that even the most powerful can be held accountable: an African court, operating under universal jurisdiction, prosecuted a former head of state for sexual crimes. The judgment explicitly recognized sexual violence was used as an instrument of political repression by Habré in Chad, not merely incidental abuse. It has been described as “a huge brick in the wall” of establishing sexual violence as an international crime. This case set a precedent for future universal jurisdiction cases and gave hope to victims worldwide that time and power do not shield perpetrators. This case showed that when political will exists, states can cooperate to end impunity for even entrenched, high-level offenders.

Trial and appeal decisions

Khadidja Hassan Zidane, who was raped by Hissène Habré, holds a picture of herself testifying at Habré’s trial N’Djaména, 2016. Photo | Aida Grovestins

Ginette Ngarbaye, who was raped in Hissène Habré’s prisons, celebrating his conviction, N’Djaména, 2016. Photo | Aida Grovestins

This case sets a new benchmark for efforts to end impunity in Africa... and the first time a former African leader has been prosecuted for crimes under international law before a court in another African country.”

- Amnesty International, 2016

Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Cambodia (2018)

Context & Jurisdiction:

Under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia (1975–1979), widespread atrocities were committed, including forced marriages arranged by the state and ensuing sexual violence. For decades, these crimes went unaddressed. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a hybrid tribunal composed of both Cambodian and international judges, prosecutors, and staff, was established to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders. In 2018, the ECCC’s Trial Chamber delivered a landmark judgment in Case 002/02 against Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, the regime’s top surviving leaders.

Case Summary:

In November 2018, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, which – for the first time – included convictions for the regime’s policy of forced marriage and the rape that occurred within those forced marriages. The court found that the Khmer Rouge had compelled thousands of young people into state-mandated marriages and ordered them to consummate those unions under threat of death. Couples who refused were closely monitored, re-educated, or even executed. The judgment detailed how women and men were victimized by this policy, stripping them of autonomy over intimate life. Both defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment (adding to prior life sentences).

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

The ECCC’s findings broke the silence on sexual crimes under the Khmer Rouge. It found that forced marriage and rape within a forced marriage constitute crimes against humanity of inhumane acts. By acknowledging the systematic nature of forced marriage within a “widespread climate of fear” that did not amount in most cases to genuine consent, the tribunal provided long-awaited validation to survivors.” Notably, on appeal, the Appeals Chamber overturned the Trial Chamber and entered an additional conviction with regards to the male victims (in addition to female victims) of rape in forced marriage

Trial and appeal decisions

Both men and women felt compelled to have sexual intercourse with their new spouse. Couples who were found to have not had sexual intercourse were re-educated or threatened with being killed or receiving punishment.”

- ECCC Trial Chamber, Case 002/02 Judgment (2018)

Photos | Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Prosecutor v. Bosco Ntaganda, International Criminal Court (ICC) (2019)

Context & Jurisdiction:

Bosco Ntaganda served as Deputy Chief of Staff and operations commander for the Union of Congolese Patriots (UCP)/Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (PFLC) during the Ituri conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2002–2003. The UCP/PFLC forces under his command committed massacres, recruitment of child soldiers, and rampant sexual violence both against the enemy Lendu community and within their own ranks. The DRC Government referred the situation to the ICC in 2004, and the Prosecutor opened an investigation. Ntaganda surrendered to the Court in 2013 after years as fugitive.

Case Summary:

In July 2019, the ICC found Ntaganda guilty beyond reasonable doubt of 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Importantly, these convictions included multiple sexual violence charges: rape and sexual slavery against members of the Lendu civilian population and against child soldiers within Ntaganda’s own forces. The judges concluded that Ntaganda was criminally responsible for rape used as a weapon to terrorize communities and for the rape and sexual slavery of child soldiers within his own forces. In a first for the ICC, the verdict held that such intra-force abuses are war crimes – meaning a commander can be prosecuted for raping or enslaving members of his own armed group. Ntaganda was later sentenced to 30 years in prison, the heaviest ICC sentence to date.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

The Ntaganda case is a landmark for broadening accountability for sexual violence. It reinforced that no one is outside the protection of the law in armed conflict – even one’s “own” troops are protected from rape and enslavement by their commanders. Ntaganda was the first person to be convicted of sexual slavery by the ICC. The verdict has been celebrated as an important measure of justice for victims and as a strong message of deterrence. By addressing sexual crimes against child soldiers, it also advanced the legal understanding of gender-based crimes and the protection of children in war. The case demonstrates the ICC’s commitment to pursuing complex sexual violence charges and sets a precedent for future prosecutions regarding armed groups that perpetrate sexual abuse internally.

Trial and appeal decisions

Photos | ICC

The long-awaited judgment provides an important measure of justice for Bosco Ntaganda’s victims and puts others responsible for grave crimes on notice.”

- Maria Elena Vignoli, Human Rights Watch (2019)

Prosecutor V. Dominic Ongwen, ICC (2021)

Context & Jurisdiction:

Dominic Ongwen was a notorious commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that terrorized northern Uganda and neighboring regions from the late 1980s through the mid-2000s. The LRA became infamous for abducting children – boys forced into child soldiering and girls forced into sexual slavery and “forced marriage” to LRA fighters. As a former abductee-turned-commander, Ongwen was both victim and perpetrator. The ICC, which had issued warrants for top LRA leaders, eventually put Ongwen on trial after he surrendered in 2015.

Case Summary:

In February 2021, the ICC convicted Dominic Ongwen on 61 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Notably, 19 of those counts were for sexual and gender-based crimes – the most SGBV counts in any ICC case thus far. Ongwen was found guilty of rape, sexual slavery, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, and torture, among other crimes. Evidence showed that Ongwen had personally “married” multiple abducted girls; the court heard harrowing testimony of women who were enslaved as his so-called wives, enduring rape, forced childbearing, and brutal living conditions. This trial was the first time ever that an international prosecutor charged forced pregnancy as a standalone crime, and the ICC secured a conviction for it. Ongwen was later sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

Ongwen’s conviction is widely hailed as a milestone for international justice in addressing sexual violence. It broke new ground by affirming forced pregnancy – making women carry pregnancies resulting from rape – as a war crime and crime against humanity, thereby expanding jurisprudence on reproductive violence. The judgment also solidified the understanding of forced marriage as an international crime, echoing earlier precedents but on a larger scale at the ICC. The court’s findings acknowledged the profound and long-lasting harm such crimes inflict: survivors suffered stigma, trauma, and difficulties reintegrating into society. Importantly, this case demonstrated the ICC’s increased capacity to handle complex gender-based crimes even when the accused presented a unique profile (Ongwen’s defense highlighted his own victimhood as a child soldier). The verdict underscored that victimhood does not excuse victimizing others. For survivors of the LRA’s sexual violence, many of whom had waited over a decade for justice, the Ongwen judgment was validating. It also serves as a deterrent message in ongoing conflicts: practices like forced marriage and forced pregnancy are egregious crimes, and commanders ordering or tolerating them will be held accountable.

Trial and appeal decisions

This conviction is an important milestone in the long quest for justice and recognition for survivors of sexual and gender-based crimes in war.”

- Human Rights Watch commentary on the Ongwen Judgment (2021)

Photos | ICC/CPI

Higher Regional Court - Koblenz, Germany (2022)

Context & Jurisdiction:

Following the Syrian uprising of 2011, former President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces engaged in systematic torture, murder, and sexual violence against detainees in secret prisons. In order to address crimes in the Syrian conflict, some countries have invoked universal jurisdiction to pursue justice. The Higher Regional Court became the first to hold a trial addressing state-sponsored torture in Syria, putting on trial Anwar Raslan, a former Syrian intelligence colonel, and Eyad al-Gharib, a junior officer, for crimes committed at Damascus’s notorious al-Khatib (Branch 251) prison.

Case Summary:

On January 13, 2022, the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz convicted Anwar Raslan of crimes against humanity for overseeing the torture of over 4,000 prisoners, including at least 27 murders and multiple cases of sexual violence (rape and serious sexual assault). Raslan was sentenced to life imprisonment. Earlier, in 2021, Eyad al-Gharib was convicted of aiding and abetting these crimes (receiving a 4.5-year sentence). The trial heard evidence from dozens of Syrian survivors, men and women, who described electric shocks, beatings, rape, and sexual humiliation inflicted in custody as part of Assad’s machinery of repression. This was the first-ever trial addressing Syria’s state torture network, and it explicitly acknowledged sexual violence—such as rape of detainees and forced nudity—as an integral component of the crimes.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

The Koblenz trial has been lauded as a “landmark leap forward” for accountability. It demonstrated the ability of national courts to fill the impunity gap for atrocities in Syria, including sexual crimes that survivors feared would never be punished. The judgment treated rape and sexual assault by state agents not as isolated abuse but as part of a systematic attack on civilians (thus qualifying as crimes against humanity). Importantly, the court recognized the gendered dimensions of torture — how former Syrian officials used sexualized violence to degrade and terrorize. The involvement of survivor testimonies (with protective measures for victims of sexual violence) also set precedents in witness protection in such trials. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and others hailed the verdict, noting it as a clear example that even in the absence of an international tribunal, domestic courts can prosecute sexual violence in conflict. The Koblenz trial has inspired similar proceedings and gives hope to Syrian survivors that they will have justice for sexual violence at home and abroad.

Trial and appeal decisions

This is a landmark leap forward in pursuing justice for the serious human rights violations perpetrated in Syria... a clear example of how national courts can and should fill accountability gaps for such crimes wherever they were committed.”

– Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2022)

Photos | ECCHR

Illustrations | Moner Alkadri (Human Rights Watch 2021)

Advancing Justice For CRSV Before The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights: Progress In The Regional Context, Bedoya Lima (2021)

Context & Jurisdiction:

During Colombia’s armed conflict, journalists, especially women reporting on paramilitary and state abuses, faced systematic threats, censorship, and violence. Jineth Bedoya, an investigative journalist, repeatedly exposed links between armed groups and state actors, becoming a target amid escalating hostilities and entrenched patterns of conflict-related sexual violence.

Impact And Significance:

The Court recognized that sexual violence committed against a journalist in retaliation for her investigative reporting constituted torture and a violation of freedom of expression, establishing that rape can function as a tool to silence, intimidate, and censor women in public life. The judgment clarified that States have heightened obligations to prevent, investigate, and punish gender-based attacks targeting journalists, incorporating a gender-sensitive approach under both the American Convention and the Belém do Pará Convention.

At the individual level, Colombia implemented key reparative measures including compensation and psychosocial care for the victim, and a public acknowledgment of responsibility.

At the structural level, the ruling had significant impact on protections for journalists. It strengthened state’s obligation to adopt gender-sensitive investigative standards and implement measures to prevent violence against members of the press, reinforcing regional standards linking conflict-related sexual violence, gender discrimination, and freedom of expression.

Trial and appeal decisions

Video Audiencia Pública- Caso Bedoya Lima

Photo | OSRSG/SVC

Yazidi Enslavement Cases, Higher Regional Court - Frankfurt Am Main, Germany (2021–2022)

Context & Jurisdiction:

In 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) launched a genocidal attack against the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq, marked by mass killings and the kidnapping of thousands of Yazidi women and children for sexual slavery. As the ISIS “caliphate” fell, some perpetrators traveled or returned to countries in Europe. Germany, using universal jurisdiction laws and a proactive prosecutorial approach, became the first country to prosecute ISIS members for the genocide and enslavement of Yazidis.

Case Summary:

In November 2021, a Frankfurt Higher Regional Court convicted Iraqi national Taha Al-Jumailly of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes – including the enslavement, rape, and abuse of a Yazidi woman and her 5-year-old daughter, who tragically died under captivity. He was sentenced to life in prison. This was the world’s first conviction of an ISIS member for genocide against Yazidis. Earlier that year and in 2022, German courts also convicted several female ISIS returnees for participating in the enslavement of Yazidi girls. Notably, in October 2021, a Munich court convicted “Jennifer W.”, a German ISIS member, for war crimes and murder after she allowed a Yazidi toddler (whom she and her husband kept as a slave) to die of thirst. In 2022, another German woman (identified as “Nadine K.”) was convicted in Hamburg for aiding and abetting genocide by keeping a Yazidi woman as a slave. These cases were led by evidence from Yazidi survivors, some of whom acted as co-plaintiffs with support from activists like Nobel laureate Nadia Murad and human rights lawyers.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

These prosecutions are landmark in multiple ways: They mark the first time courts have adjudicated sexual violence as an act of genocide against the Yazidis and have recognized that ISIS’s organized system of sexual slavery was carried out with the intent to destroy the Yazidi community. The convictions for rape and sexual enslavement under both German and international law in these trials have shown the viability of universal jurisdiction for addressing sexual crimes. Survivors who testified saw their tormentors face justice far from the crime scene, underscoring a growing global consensus that geography should not shield perpetrators. These cases also established important jurisprudence on the responsibility of not only direct abusers but also accomplices (such as ISIS wives who facilitated slavery). The outcome has been celebrated by Yazidi advocates as finally hearing a court declare ISIS’s crimes for the most serious breaches of international law. Germany’s model is now encouraging other nations to pursue justice for sexual violence in conflicts where international tribunals lack jurisdiction.

Trial and appeal decisions

This verdict is a win for survivors of genocide, survivors of sexual violence, and the entire Yazidi community... [The] use of universal jurisdiction in this case can and should be replicated by governments around the world.”

- Nadia Murad, Yazidi survivor and UN Goodwill Ambassador (2021)

Photos | ECCHR

Prosecutor V. Kavumu Group, Democratic Republic Of The Congo (2017)

Context & Jurisdiction:

In the Democratic Republic of Congo’s protracted conflicts, sexual violence has been rampant. In the province of South Kivu, the village of Kavumu experienced a particularly horrific series of crimes (2013–2016): dozens of very young girls (toddlers and children) were abducted at night, raped, and mutilated. A local militia led by provincial lawmaker Frédéric “Colonel” Batumike believed that raping infant girls would make fighters invincible. The DRC authorities, with support from international partners, convened a mobile Military Court in Kavumu to try these crimes under national law.

Case Summary:

In December 2017, a military tribunal in Bukavu convicted Batumike and 10 members of his militia of crimes against humanity for the systematic rape and murder of 37 young children in Kavumu. The court found that over a three-year period, the group abducted girls (some as young as 18 months old) from their homes, sexually assaulted them, and in some cases, killed them – all as part of a deliberate campaign of terror. Batumike was a sitting provincial parliamentarian at the time of his arrest; his conviction marked the first time a DRC official of such rank was held accountable for conflict-related sexual violence. All 11 perpetrators were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Sexual Violence Charges & Legal Impact:

The Kavumu trial was hailed as a breakthrough in the fight against impunity. It demonstrated the ability of the courts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to prosecute complex CRSV cases domestically. Importantly, the judgment recognized the use of rape as a tactic to cow communities and “mystically” empower fighters, thus treating these rapes as acts of war rather than ordinary crimes. The case also set standards for child victim protection during trial – proceedings were conducted with sensitivity to the very young survivors. International observers praised the verdict as a model of complementarity (national justice fulfilling the role of international courts) and a sign that no one, not even powerful officials, is above the law. The trial’s success was attributed to collaboration between Congolese authorities and international legal experts, and it underscored the value of universal jurisdiction principles being applied at home.

Judgment (FR)

Photos | Physicians for Human Rights

This unprecedented trial is a major landmark in the fight against impunity for sexual violence… With this decision, the [Congolese] justice system has sent a clear signal that no one is above the law, whatever their rank.”

- Maman Sidikou, UN Special Representative in DRC (2017)

Justice for CRSV Before National Constitutional Courts - The Constitutional Court of Kenya Advances the Fight Against Impunity for CRSV

Context & Jurisdiction:

After Kenya’s 2007 post-election violence, which was marked by politically-instigated rapes, a group of survivors sought justice and redress by competent authorities. In a historic High Court (constitutional division) judgment on December 10, 2020, the court ruled that there had been a failure to investigate or prosecute post-election sexual violence and to provide redress. The Court awarded compensation of 4 million Kenya shillings (≈USD 35,000) each to four of the petitioners. This marked the first official recognition of post-election sexual violence for survivors. The judgment affirmed the state’s duty under both national and international law to protect citizens (rights to life, security, freedom from torture) from sexual violence and to diligently investigate such crimes. Although not all survivors in the case were compensated, as the court required more proof in some instances, the ruling was lauded as a major victory for accountability in Kenya’s domestic courts.

Impact and significance:

Like in Colombia, in 2008, in Kenya 12 years later, the State’s constitutional court intervention underscores that sexual violence in conflict is a question of fundamental rights.

In Kenya, the High Court’s decision, coming after years of advocacy, set a precedent for survivors and reaffirmed the State’s obligation to address sexual violence crimes. This case represents a positive example of judicial recognition of survivors’ rights and experiences. As a landmark ruling, by a constitutional court, it signals that redress for conflict-related sexual violence can be found, not only in criminal tribunals, but before the highest national courts, upholding victims’ rights.

This is a historic day for survivors... The court’s decision will reverberate widely for the prevention, investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence in Kenya and around the world.”

- Physicians for Human Rights (2020)

Special Criminal Court, Central African Republic (2022)

Context & Jurisdiction:

Since 2003, the Central African Republic (CAR) has been gripped by cycles of armed conflict, with atrocities committed by multiple militias. Rampant sexual violence – including rape used to terrorize communities – has characterized these conflicts. In 2015, with UN support, CAR established the Special Criminal Court (SCC), a hybrid tribunal with national and international judges and a mandate to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on CAR soil.

Case Summary:

In its inaugural trial, Prosecutor v. Issa Sallet Adoum, Ousman Yaouba, and Tahir Mahamat (all members of the 3R militia), the SCC tried atrocities from a May 2019 attack on villages in northwestern CAR. In October 2022, the SCC delivered its first verdict: Adoum was convicted of crimes against humanity (murder, inhumane acts) and as a commander responsible for rapes committed by his subordinates, and two co-defendants were convicted of murder and degrading treatment. The militia attack, which killed 46 villagers, included the rape of several women – facts explicitly noted in the judgment. Adoum, identified as the “military chief” who had authority over the perpetrators, was sentenced to life imprisonment, while the others received 20-year terms.

Impact and significance:

The SCC’s first judgment is a milestone for CAR’s justice sector. It established a precedent of holding commanders accountable for sexual violence committed by their fighters, reflecting the doctrine of superior responsibility in a national court setting. By acknowledging the rapes (six women were raped during the massacre) and convicting Adoum for those acts, the court signaled that sexual violence is integral to the gravest crimes, not a side issue. The SCC’s success also illustrates the value of hybrid courts in contexts where international crimes might otherwise go unpunished. Human rights observers lauded the verdict as a “triumph of justice” and a “strong signal… against impunity” by the national authorities. It provides hope that other perpetrators of CAR’s long-running sexual violence epidemic – regardless of affiliation – can face justice either at the SCC or beyond. The decision further underlines the importance of victim participation: local victims celebrated the ruling because it recognized their suffering and delivered a measure of accountability.

Trial and appeal decision

The verdict is a milestone for the victims and communities that have been terrorised during the country’s conflicts.”

- Elise Keppler, Human Rights Watch (2022)

Looking Ahead Dixinn Criminal Court Guinea - Verdict On The 28 September 2009 Events

Context & Jurisdiction:

In July 2024, a landmark trial concluded in Guinea’s domestic courts regarding the massacre and mass rape at the Conakry stadium in 2009, in which at least 156 persons were killed or disappeared and at least 109 women and girls were subjected to rape and other sexual violence, as per the findings of the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry. On 31 July 2024, the Criminal Court of Dixinn convicted former President Moussa Dadis Camara and 7 other defendants for crimes against humanity, including sexual violence, and awarded reparations to the victims. The appeal remains pending and subsequent trials also commenced against six additional defendants in December 2025, including for sexual violence. The road ahead remains long but after sixteen years, survivors, victims and their families are pursuing historic steps for justice in Guinea with global ramifications.

Impact And Significance:

The delivery of the first‑instance verdict marks a significant milestone in the pursuit of justice for survivors of sexual violence and ensuring accountability for perpetrators, including the highest-ranking figures of government such as former heads of states and senior state officials. The direct application of the Rome statute provisions by an African national court is historic. Indeed, the Criminal Court of Dixinn decided to reclassify the facts as international crimes, with the sexual violence perpetrated being judged as a crime against humanity.

International support, including from UN and civil society were key to ensuring justice was pursued and achieved, even 13 years after the facts. Victims and survivors relentless search for justice was central to achieving justice. Their participation in proceedings was essential and formally recognized by the court, which awarded substantial reparations in acknowledgment of the scale of the killings, enforced disappearances, and widespread sexual violence. Although the appeal remains pending and subsequent proceedings are ongoing, this judicial proceeding sends a powerful signal and has resonated beyond Guinea’s borders, serving as a reference point for other countries facing similar challenges.

When the sentence has fallen [...], the tears flowed. [...] And finally, justice was done”

– Asmaou Diallo, President of AVIPA, 26 September 2024, Film for the 15th anniversary of the Office of the SRSG on Sexual Violence in Conflict

Photo | Team of experts

Context & Jurisdiction:

As global awareness and legal precedent for accountability for conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) have expanded, new investigations and prosecutions are underway. In many of the countries and situations under the purview of the UN Security Council mandate on sexual violence in conflict, survivors continue to demand justice for recent atrocities, including egregious sexual violence. While each context is different, a common challenge persists: translating documentation into effective investigations, and investigations into legal cases capable of holding perpetrators accountable.

In several contexts, legal proceedings are currently ongoing. These include, but are in no way limited to the following:

Ukraine:

Photo | Adobe Stock

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainian prosecutors, supported by international experts, have been actively documenting CRSV cases through a dedicated prosecution unit within the Office of the Prosecutor General. Ukraine has also adopted prosecutorial strategies to prioritize CRSV cases and ensure a survivor-centered approach will be used throughout proceedings.

Though challenges remain, efforts are underway through various fora to ensure that individuals responsible for CRSV will face trial impartially with due process of law, and several convictions in domestic courts have already been rendered.

Sudan (Darfur):

UN Photo | Albert Gonzalez Farran

In the early 2000s, Janjaweed militias perpetrated widespread sexual violence, including rape, as part of ethnically targeted attacks in Darfur.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Sudanese officials, including former President Omar al-Bashir, for genocide and crimes against humanity, including rape. To date, former President Omar al-Bashir—one of the ICC’s principal indictees—remains in Sudanese custody and has not been surrendered to the Court, while other suspects remain at large. In 2025, in a landmark judgment, former Darfur militia leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman (“Ali Kushayb”) was convicted on 27 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur between 2003 and 2004, including rape as both a war crime and a crime against humanity. The case marked the Court’s first conviction for gender-based persecution. Sexual violence continues to be a prominent and deeply alarming feature of the ongoing conflict in Sudan, with reports of rape, including gang rape, sexual slavery, and other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity. Investigations by the ICC and other actors remain ongoing, with conflict-related sexual violence a priority line of inquiry. The demand for accountability for CRSV continues.

Myanmar (Rohingya & beyond):

Photo | Nicole Tung

In 2017 the military “clearance” operations in Myanmar were characterized by widespread threat and use of sexual violence, with countless Rohingya women and girls gang-raped, often in front of their families. International avenues for justice remain in motion. In 2018, the United Nations Human Rights Council established an Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar to “collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence of the most serious international crimes and violations of international law committed in Myanmar since 2011, and to prepare files in order to facilitate and expedite fair and independent criminal proceedings, in accordance with international law standards, in national, regional or international courts or tribunals that have or may in the future have jurisdiction over these crimes, in accordance with international law.”

In 2022, a national court in Argentina, opened a case under universal jurisdiction for crimes against the Rohingya, including rape. Meanwhile, ethnic conflicts within Myanmar have also involved CRSV against other minorities, and Myanmar civil society is collecting survivor testimonies in hope of future trials. Though justice moves slowly, precedent from other cases gives hope that Myanmar’s perpetrators could one day be held to account for sexual violence as war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide.

Colombia: Investigating CRSV as macro cases before the Special Jurisdiction for ɫ��TV (JEP)

Context & Jurisdiction:

As a direct result of the 2016 ɫ��TV Agreement, Colombia established a comprehensive transitional justice system centered on the Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP). Created within the framework of the peace process, the JEP represents a unique model that integrates accountability with truth, reparations, and guarantees of non-recurrence. A distinctive feature of the JEP is its use of “macro-cases” to address patterns of violence arising from the scale and systemic nature of the conflict. Rather than focusing solely on isolated incidents, the JEP investigates structures of criminality, chains of command, and discriminatory practices affecting large victim populations. This methodology has enabled jurisdiction to confront crimes that were historically under-investigated, including sexual, reproductive, and gender-based violence. Within this framework, Macro-Cases 07 and 11 represent landmark efforts to address conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) not as incidental conduct, but as an integral component of armed group control, persecution, and repression during the conflict.

Macro case 7 Recruitment and Use of Children in Armed Conflict:

Photo | Special Jurisdiction for ɫ��TV (JEP)

Case Summary:

Opened in 2019, The JEP initiated Macro-Case 07 to investigate the recruitment and use of children by the FARC-EP. The 2024 Auto de Determinación de Hechos y Conductas established that recruited children were subjected to systematic sexual violence, forced contraception and forced abortions, restrictions on pregnancy, and persecution of LGBTI adolescents, all enforced through hierarchical command structures. The JEP formally charged former FARC commanders with war crimes and crimes against humanity based on these findings.

Impact and Significance

Macro-Case 07 is among the first transitional justice proceedings globally to establish that sexual and reproductive violence against children, including LGBTI children, formed part of an organized system of armed group control. Despite extensive documentation of sexual violence by all parties to the conflict, these crimes were historically marginalized in investigations and negotiations. Women’s and LGBTI organizations successfully advocated for a dedicated case within the JEP to address this gap. By recognizing these acts as international crimes, the JEP advances jurisprudence on CRSV in the context of child recruitment and armed conflict

Macro-case 11 “Gender-based violence, sexual violence and reproductive violence”:

Photo | Special Jurisdiction for ɫ��TV (JEP)

Case Summary:

In September 2023 (Auto SRVR 05 of 2023), the JEP opened Macro-Case 11 on gender-based violence, sexual violence, reproductive violence, and other prejudice-motivated crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Structured into three sub-cases (FARC-EP against civilians, State forces against civilians, and intra-ranks violence), the case is based on a provisional universe of more than 35,000 victims between 1957 and 2016.

Impact and Significance

Macro-Case 11, which is still ongoing, represents the first large-scale transitional justice case globally to center not only on the acts of sexual violence but also on the discriminatory motives and gendered logics underpinning them. It explicitly recognizes women, girls, LGBTI persons, and men as CRSV survivors. The collective accreditation of 104 men as victims of sexual violence further broadens the legal and conceptual understanding of CRSV as a form of gender-based violence affecting diverse populations.

Impact

Past and ongoing prosecutions show how UN Security Council action and international law have helped transform the global response to conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). They affirm a clear principle: justice for sexual violence is not secondary to peace; it is essential to it. Around the world, accountability is being pursued through hybrid courts, national jurisdictions applying international law and universal jurisdiction, and international tribunals.

These landmark cases recognize that rape and other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity are among the gravest crimes. Since the groundbreaking Akayesu judgment, jurisprudence has strengthened legal frameworks and improved the way national, regional and international authorities investigate and prosecute sexual violence in conflict.

In both past and ongoing cases, survivors’ agency, strength and advocacy have driven progress. They have challenged the notion that sexual violence in war is “inevitable collateral damage,” insisting instead that it be treated and prosecuted as the serious crime that it is.

Today’s efforts build on these precedents. Each step forward reinforces a global norm: rape, sexual slavery and other forms of conflict-related sexual violence of comparable gravity must not go unpunished. For victims and survivors, this progress sustains hope for justice.

I want you to know that your rights don’t end when wars begin.”

– Pramila Patten, UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict (2022)

This exhibit was on display at UNHQ in March 2026

When Silence Breaks: Accountability For Sexual Violence In Conflict

AKAHNJOC — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:17:45 +0000

jankovic_gojko_2nd_instance_verdict_20-2-20071-1.pdf

arret_kavumu_hcm.pdf

Teaser image:

Photography 4 Humanity

AKAHNJOC — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 18:21:29 +0000

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is the leading UN entity on human rights with a unique mandate to promote and protect all human rights for all people. Under the leadership of the High Commissioner, with a staff of roughly 2000 people working in more than 90 countries, it aims to make human rights a reality in the lives of people everywhere.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights

Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. Everyone is entitled to these rights, without discrimination.

Human Rights are Universal

The universality of human rights is the cornerstone of international human rights law. This principle, as first emphasized in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, has been reiterated in numerous international human rights conventions, declarations, and resolutions. The 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights noted that “All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated.”

The United Nations and Human Rights

The promotion and protection of human rights - civil, cultural, economic, political and social - is a key purpose and guiding principle of the United Nations, which has helped develop a comprehensive body of human rights law and established mechanisms to promote and protect these rights and to assist states in carrying out their responsibilities.

"The climate crisis is the biggest threat to our survival as a species and is already threatening human rights around the world."

- António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and has been translated into over 500 languages.

About Photography 4 Humanity

Photography 4 Humanity and its global collaborator, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) calls on photographers around the world to bring to life the power of human rights. With compelling images that illustrate courage, despair, hope, injustice, compassion, and human rights victories and failures, large and small, this project aims to inspire people to get involved and take a stand for human rights. Based in Boulder Colorado, Photography 4 Humanity works with an Eminent Jury to help select top images from around the world to be featured in the annual Photography 4 Humanity exhibit at the United Nations. For more information and a list of Eminent Jurists, visit: Photography4Humanity.com

About Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Alliance

Right Here, Right Now, a United States based corporation, collaborates with OHCHR, to address climate change as the human rights crisis that leading scientists and human rights advocates have declared it to be. Right Here, Right Now supports effective, human rights-based implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change and works with OHCHR and other leading partners to inspire and equip people and institutions to drive measurable change – from policy to culture.

The Collaboration

The Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Alliance began working with Photography 4 Humanity in 2022, to feature images of people affected by and seeking to address climate change.

Winning image: In Jharia’s Fire, Both Earth and Mothers Weep - Amid the burning coalfields of Jharia, an elderly woman collapses in grief. Her tears rise through the smoke, echoing the silence of lives lost and forgotten in the flames. (Jharia, India. July 12, 2025) Photo/Sourav Das

Photography 4 Humanity calls on photographers around the world to bring to life the power of human rights through their images. Highlighting the most compelling human rights imagery - illustrating courage, despair, hope, injustice, compassion in ways small and large, the photos serve to inspire people to get involved and take a stand for human rights.

Photography 4 Humanity issues a global call to action, inviting amateur and professional photographers to submit images for its annual competition. Each year, the winning photograph, along with the top 10 finalists and 20 honorable mentions, is featured in a single online exhibition, presented by the United Nations.

The global collaborator of Photography 4 Humanity is the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). OHCHR is also the global collaborator of the Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Alliance, which is working with Photography 4 Humanity to call upon photographers around the world to capture images of people affected by climate change.

These images depict the human impacts of climate change as well as the innovative, courageous, and inspiring actions of those seeking to stop it.

The exhibit is developed to highlight the work of top photographers through the Photography 4 Humanity Global Prize Competition, and to inspire photographers to document the power of human rights around the world.

The exhibit is created and organized by Photography 4 Humanity with the support of OHCHR.

TOP 10 FINALISTS

On His Shoulder, Through the Storm

Feni, Bangladesh

Amid the 2024 floods in Feni, Bangladesh, a father carries his child from a local clinic, stepping through knee-deep contaminated water that swallowed homes and endangered countless lives (August 22, 2024). Photo/S.M. Al Muztaba Rosul

Searching the Guadalupe

Texas, USA

Days after catastrophic flash floods in central Texas, a lone rescuer combs the Guadalupe River near Camp Mystic, where waters rose 30 feet in an hour, sweeping away homes, trees, and 27 campers (July 6, 2025). Photo/Jim Vondruska

Planting for Tomorrow

Kyaukpadaung, Mandalay Division, Myanmar

In Kyaukpadaung, farmers turn to bamboo cultivation, adopting methods that safeguard the climate while working in balance with nature, offering sustainable solutions for future generations (August 1, 2024). Photo/Yoe Yar

Forced Living

Takht-e-Adalat Fishing Pier, Zabol, Iran

When Afghanistan built a dam on Lake Hirmand, its waters stopped flowing into Iran. The resulting drought and unrelenting 120-day winds now define daily survival for border communities in Zabol (July 20, 2025). Photo/Maho

Rising Tides, Rising Threats

Mumbai, India

In Mumbai’s flooded shanty colony, a young boy is struck by a sudden high tide. Rising temperatures and early monsoons driven by climate change intensify flooding, leaving vulnerable communities increasingly at risk (May 28, 2025). Photo/S.L. Shanth Kumar

The Drought Didn’t Take His Smile

Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil

On Lago do Aleixo in Manaus, a child waves from a stranded boat. The 2024 drought—the Amazon’s worst in 122 years—dried up vast waters and disrupted countless lives (October 29, 2024). Photo/Suamy Beydoun

Forest Rescue

Baneh City, Kurdistan Province, Iran

In Baneh City, residents fight to save the Zagros forests, battling flames without proper equipment. Despite their courage, vast stretches are consumed by fire year after year (August 17, 2024). Photo/Omid Mohammadi

California Wildfires

Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, USA

At sunset, flames from the Palisades Fire scar the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. The January 2025 blaze highlights California’s escalating wildfire crisis fueled by drought and rising temperatures (January 14, 2025). Photo/Ethan Swope

Floating Classrooms as the Ganges Rises

Patna, Bihar, India

In Patna, Bihar, students attend class in waterlogged rooms as Ganges floodwaters surge through the city. Extreme weather and weak infrastructure leave schools vulnerable to sudden, climate-driven deluges (August 13, 2024). Photo/Ashish Gupta

Aftermath of Deadly Flooding at Camp Mystic

Hunt, Texas, USA

Inside Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, chairs sit scattered in a damaged room. Flooding from the Guadalupe River left destruction in its wake, following a surge that claimed dozens of lives (July 7, 2025). Photo/Marco Bello

20 HONORABLE MENTIONS

Resilience Amid the Flood

West Bengal, India

In West Bengal, a young girl stands knee-deep in floodwaters, clutching schoolbooks outside her bamboo home. Her determination reflects the resilience of children facing worsening climate-driven floods (August 1, 2025). Photo/Sankar Mandal

Small Shop

Hpa-an, Myanmar

In Hpa-an, Myanmar, residents struggle to clear floodwaters from a small shop. Their efforts capture the daily challenges faced by communities adapting to intensifying climate impacts and recurring floods (July 27, 2025). Photo/Nan Lay Thwe Oo

Child Returning Home on His Grandfather’s Back

Chittagong, Bangladesh

In Chittagong, hours of heavy rain leave roads submerged. A grandfather carries his grandson home from school, navigating floodwaters that routinely disrupt life in Bangladesh’s low-lying coastal city (July 28, 2025). Photo/Md Shamim Ul Islam

Face of Changes

Ścinawa, Poland

In Ścinawa, Poland, residents fill sandbags as a peak flood wave approaches. Their efforts to shield homes highlight the growing strain on small towns confronting extreme climate-driven flooding (September 18, 2024). Photo/Piotr Dziurman

Plastic Recycling

Vinh Phuc, Viet Nam

In Vinh Phuc, Vietnam, families collect and repurpose plastic waste to survive. In a nation still marked by war’s legacy, recycling becomes both livelihood and necessity amid economic hardship (May 23, 2025). Photo/Quan Nguyen Ho

Lost Settlement

Odisha, India

In Odisha, India, a man sits in a ghost village abandoned to coastal erosion. Once-thriving communities are vanishing, with 74 seaside settlements already claimed by the encroaching sea (August 11, 2024). Photo/Sudip Maiti

Cry of Nature

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo

In Kinshasa, muddy floodwaters swallow entire streets. The deluge transforms the city into a chaotic landscape where natural disaster overwhelms fragile infrastructure (April 6, 2025). Photo/Liandja Elongo Hans

Life on the Sandbar

Kushtia, Bangladesh

As rivers dry under climate stress, sandbars in Kushtia, Bangladesh, turn to grazing grounds. Herders guide cattle across shifting terrain, embodying resilience in a landscape continually reshaped by water’s absence (March 19, 2025). Photo/Solayman Hossain

Texas Floods

Kerrville, Texas, USA

In Kerrville, Texas, a man surveys overturned vehicles and shattered trees along the Guadalupe River. Flash floods rose with violent speed, leaving devastation and reminders of nature’s unyielding power (July 5, 2025). Photo/Ronaldo Schemidt

Grandma’s House

Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

In Porto Alegre, Brazil, floodwaters swallowed neighborhoods, leaving homes like this one abandoned and broken. Each empty room carries the weight of loss and the memory of family life washed away (April 29, 2024). Photo/Estephani Azevedo

Missing on the Riverbank

Passo de Estrela, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Priest Ezequiel walks through the ruins of his church in Passo de Estrela, where floods destroyed 600 homes. Across Rio Grande do Sul, 183 lives were lost in the disaster (August 6, 2024). Photo/Mateus Bruxel

Rescue from the Inferno

Mahlaing, Mandalay Division, Myanmar

In Mahlaing, an elderly man was trapped as wildfire swept toward his home. A rescue team reached him in time, embodying both human fragility and resilience in the face of climate-driven disaster (August 27, 2024). Photo/Aung Kyaw Zaw

The Fight for Water

Bojonegoro, Indonesia

In Bojonegoro, drought has dried vital water sources, sparking a clean water crisis. People struggle for access, while rising health risks underscore the human toll of climate change (October 27, 2024). Photo/Wahyu Budiyanto

When Water Turns Against Us

Isparta, Turkey

In Isparta, water—the essence of life—can also bring despair. This scene reflects both its power to sustain and its capacity to disrupt lives when balance is lost (December 15, 2024). Photo/Mehmet Yilmaz

Seaweed Against the Tide

Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia

In Nusa Lembongan, seaweed farmers cultivate one of nature’s climate allies, absorbing CO₂. Yet their work faces mounting threats from rising seas, warming waters, and ocean acidification (February 11, 2025). Photo/Nadège Delalieu

Trapped by Rising Waters

Mahajanga, Madagascar

In Mahajanga, Madagascar, heavy rains turned streets into rivers. Families were trapped inside their homes as floodwaters surged; one person lost their life in the disaster (March 1, 2025). Photo/Cem Genco

Buried by the Mountain

Jhyaple Khola, Tribhuvan Highway, Kathmandu–Dhading border, Nepal

A sudden landslide engulfed vehicles on Jhyaple Khola along the Tribhuvan Highway, killing 35 people. The tragedy revealed the deadly force of natural disasters in Nepal’s fragile mountain terrain (September 25, 2024). Photo/Dipendra Dhungana

Greening the Future

Singapore City, Singapore

A wildlife bridge in Singapore blends architecture and ecology. Innovative green design demonstrates how cities can adapt to climate challenges while improving quality of life (June 20, 2024). Photo/Mansour Mohsen

After the Cold Drop

Paiporta, Valencia, Spain

A woman walks past stacked, wrecked cars after torrential rains from Storm DANA inundated Paiporta, near Valencia. The storm left widespread destruction across Spain’s eastern coast (November 4, 2024). Photo/Guillermo Gutierrez Carrascal

California Wildfires

Los Angeles, California, USA

The Palisades Fire tears through homes in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, fueled by fierce winds. The blaze highlights California’s growing struggle against climate-driven wildfires (January 7, 2025). Photo/Ethan Swope

This exhibit was launched in November 2025

Photography 4 Humanity

AKAHNJOC — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 20:42:51 +0000

Teaser image:

From Words to Violence: Lives Behind the Field of Death

AKAHNJOC — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 20:51:26 +0000

Teaser image:

From Words to Violence: Lives Behind the Fields of Death

AKAHNJOC — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 19:24:22 +0000

This photograph was taken by Almin Zrno, a well-known Bosnian photographer in Sarajevo in 1966. Created in 2001 as one of his first memorable works, the photograph “Mother of Srebrenica" portrays a woman from Srebrenica with a stony face that reflects, better than any words, all the pain and sorrow of the Srebrenica genocide. The photograph itself, like no other image or discourse, stands as a symbol of the unspeakable nature of the tragedy transpired in Srebrenica, depriving the viewer of the ability to speak. The woman in the photograph is a living person, but everything we call life has abandoned her. She is merely a remnant of the ephemeral and material world. Even her clothes are materially literal, with the forms of decoration and patterns dominating, just as the deep, tense lines dominate her utterly shriveled face. Her life has collapsed and immersed itself within her. All feelings, pain, and thoughts have sunk in, along with every sound and light from the outside world - that woman is no longer there.

For this photograph, Zrno received his first out of six awards for best photograph of the year, awarded by the Association of Applied Artists and Designers of Bosnia and Herzegovina. “Mother of Srebrenica," was exhibited in 2015 in the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. Zrno's work have also been exhibited around the world, in Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Israel, Greece, and the United States.

In July 1995, in what had been established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia as an act of genocide, more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were executed in just eight days by the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA) under the leadership of Ratko Mladić in the town of Srebrenica, in addition to more than 20,000 civilians who were expelled. Srebrenica was a United Nations-declared “safe area”. Ratko Mladić has been convicted of genocide and war crimes before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, established by the United Nations in The Hague. The act of genocide, however, was the culmination of a brutal three-year siege, during which the population of the Srebrenica enclave lived under deplorable conditions and endured unimaginable suffering.

This was the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust. While it prompted a ceasefire that eventually led to the end of the war, it also left deep emotional scars on the survivors, families of victims, and the Bosnian and Herzegovinian society in general.

It is beyond the scope of this exhibit to address all the important segments of the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. What is important, however, is to recognize how inaction in the face of hatred can lead to unimaginable consequences, to recognize how hatred spun into words kills without remorse. As we mark 18 June as the International Day for Countering Hate Speech, it is essential to recognize any form or expression that “attacks others or uses pejorative or discriminatory language” for what it is – hate speech and counter it.

Hate speech is an alarm bell - the louder it rings, the greater the threat of genocide. It precedes and promotes violence.”

United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres

As we mark 11 July as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, the Permanent Mission of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Nations, in partnership with the Office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, the UN Department for Global Communications, collaborated with the Memorial Center Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery for the Victims of 1995 Genocide to illustrate the power of words and their consequences. By providing examples of the role of language and rhetoric in the lead-up to genocide, we emphasize the dangers of hate speech and dehumanizing language. Framing the exhibit around photographs showcasing the donation of artifacts to the Srebrenica Memorial Center’s archive as part of the “Lives Behind the Fields of Death” project, we show the devastating power of words when they turn to hate speech. These artifacts, donated by survivors and victims’ families, are accompanied by their personal stories. And this is where words can, in fact, have healing power. It is up to us how we wield the power of words.

Amidst the numeric data and judicial rulings that characterize genocide research, it is imperative that the humanity and identity of those individuals with first-hand experience of genocide remain at the center of our understanding. This exhibition aims to present, in a poignant and dignified manner, a portion of the horrors endured by the victims and survivors of the Srebrenica genocide, present genocide through the eyes of those who directly experienced it, as well as offer insights into the lives of Srebrenica’s victims and survivors before the war, during the siege, and in the aftermath of genocide, the ongoing struggles of all those who continue to live with the consequences of the genocide.

Historical Background

At the onset of the war, Srebrenica was one of the few free territories or enclaves in eastern Bosnia. By the end of 1992, it had become a refuge for Bosniaks from across the region ﬂeeing terror and violence at the hands of the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA). Under the leadership of Ratko Mladić, the BSA continued its relentless attacks on Srebrenica throughout the war, and, due to the inﬂux of refugees, the enclave’s population had swelled to over 40,000 by the spring of 1993. During a visit to the enclave, Venezuelan Ambassador to the UN Diego Arria described the situation as “a slow-motion genocide.”

After a series of brutal assaults by the BSA, the international community decided to take action in Srebrenica. On April 16th, 1993, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 819, formally declaring Srebrenica a UN-protected ‘safe area.’ Many Srebrenica inhabitants believed that after a grueling year under siege, the violence was ﬁnally at an end. In February of 1994, the Canadian UNPROFOR contingent, which had been the ﬁrst to arrive in Srebrenica, was replaced by Dutch forces.

On March 8th,1995, Radovan Karadžić issued “Directive 7” which ordered the BSA troops “to create an unbearable situation of total insecurity, with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica.” At three o’clock in the morning on July 6th, the BSA began its attack on Srebrenica. Advancing from the south, they set ﬁre to the Bosniak homes and villages in their path, forcing thousands of civilians to ﬂee to the UN base in Potočari where several hundred Dutch peacekeepers were stationed.

On July 11th, General Mladić entered Srebrenica with his troops and declared before a throng of assembled journalists, “We give this town to the Serb nation...the time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region.” In just over a week, Bosnian Serb forces deported more than 25,000 women and children, and systematically slaughtered more than 8,000 Bosniak men. Formally ruled a genocide by two international courts, the crimes committed in Srebrenica in July of 1995 constitute one of the darkest episodes of human history.

In July of 1995, the BSA began transporting the bodies of Srebrenica’s victims to primary gravesites in close proximity to the places where the victims had been executed, in order to hide the evidence of their crimes. Between August and November 1995, the BSA employed civilian manpower and resources to exhume the remains of Srebrenica’s victims from the primary graves and transport them to be reinterred at a number of secondary gravesites. To date, 94 mass gravesites have been exhumed in and around Srebrenica. While 6,765 victims have been buried in the cemetery of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, the search continues, as over one thousand individuals are still missing.

About the project

“The Lives Behind the Fields of Death” is a joint project by the Srebrenica Memorial Center and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIRN BiH).

It began with the ﬁlming of 100 testimonies from survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, where BIRN BiH provided a platform for survivors to share their stories in the public sphere, while the Memorial Center preserves personal belongings recovered from mass graves and donated by genocide survivors, incorporating them into exhibitions.

The content produced during this project forms part of the permanent exhibition at the Srebrenica Memorial Center Museum in Potočari.

Without testimonies of survivors, objects in photos would be reduced to exactly that – objects. Sad and silent remnants of lives cut short, of a world lost. Giving them a voice through individual stories honors the lives through memories of what it once was, of childhoods and homes, of families torn apart. And by giving them a voice we amplify the power of words. Words of hatred led to so much death, destruction, and incomprehensible inhumanity. Now, different kinds of words share the power of love that preserves and upholds the memory of victims and the power of courage and resilience that speak of hope for the future. That is one of the most important messages of this project – how words can bring about devastation and sorrow or how they can heal wounds and mend broken connections, countering the dehumanization messaging by the perpetrators.

The significance of this project further lies in preserving autobiographical narratives and transforming them into collective history. Many survivors have not lived to tell their stories. Among those interviewed, Djulsa Velić and Senahid Mehmedović passed away in the course of the project. After the initial filming was completed, Hajra Ćatić, another interviewee, also passed away, followed by Ramiz Nukić and Mehmedalija Ustić.

Filming began in October 2020 and continued throughout 2021 in Srebrenica, Sarajevo, and Tuzla. As part of the project, a documentary based on the testimonies was produced, as well as a documentary about the filming process. This video footage and the exhibits are part of a permanent exhibition at the Srebrenica Memorial Center in Potočari.

The video testimony of Emina Hajdarević—who is still searching for her son’s mortal remains—won first prize in the online exhibition “Remembering Through Art.” Her story was described as a powerful contribution to important discussions on memory, conflict, and justice, deeply impactful, and reflective of the profound experiences of those affected by the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.

Building on the experience gained through this project and recognizing the importance of individual stories, BIRN BiH, in collaboration with the Srebrenica Memorial Center, produced the documentary film “Samir Mehić Bowie: Letters from Srebrenica.” This film, which premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival in August 2024, tells the story of a rock guitarist killed in the Srebrenica genocide.

“The Lives Behind the Fields of Death” has since continued with the filming of an additional 100 testimonies. This still ongoing effort seeks to preserve memories, honor victims and survivors, and combat genocide denial.

Almir Ramić

As a young translator in Srebrenica during the war, Almir’s first assignment was working for a doctor from the World Health Organization posted in Srebrenica. Almir still tears up when he recalls being asked about his salary expectations during the interview for this job: “My answer was food for me and my mother.”

He recalls an especially traumatic experience in Konjević Polje, during shelling:

“At one point, a man came up to us crying and distraught, holding a child in each arm. The children were between six and eight years old, as far as I can remember. He was distraught, crying and pleading, and I was translating. The children were in a state of total shock, as if they weren’t aware of what was happening to them. Both children’s legs barely had any skin left. But they weren’t crying, and they were telling their father, ‘Dad, we’re fine.’”

Amir donated his UNHCR ID card—a powerful symbol of his story.

Almedina Memišević

Almedina was a child at the time of the war and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She and her siblings lost their mother, Zelena, at the beginning of the war in 1992, followed by their father, Azem, in the July 1995 genocide.

“My father Azem was a wonderful dad – the kind any child would want to have. He was our friend as well as our father—and sometimes even our mother! He was everything we needed,” Almedina shared.

Almedina saw her father for the last time near the post office during the fall of Srebrenica in 1995: “We said goodbye for the last time. He said we might never see each other again. Those were his last words. He hugged all four of us, kissed us, and then turned to our grandmother and told her to take good care of his kids. We looked back until we could no longer see him, and he looked back to see us.”

Almedina donated her father’s sweater, her mother’s headscarf, and a text she wrote as a child in 1996, to the Srebrenica Memorial Center. The sweater she donated was all she had left of her father’s belongings.

“The decision to give my father’s sweater away was a difficult one, but I think by doing so, I will help ensure people do not forget about Srebrenica or Potočari. All those tombstones must not be forgotten. It is not a lie. It is the truth – that genocide happened in Srebrenica.”

Munira Subašić

As the president of the Movement of the Mothers of the Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves, Munira has dedicated her life to seeking justice for genocide victims and their families, as well as fighting the genocide denial and the glorification of convicted war criminals. She donated artifacts belonging to her husband, Hilmo, and her son, Nermin, both of whom were killed in the genocide. She remembers Hilmo as a loving husband and dedicated father. Her son Nermin, who was just 20 years old at the time he was killed, was named Srebrenica’s most handsome man in an event organized by the Dutch UN peacekeeping battalion in 1994.

After both Hilmo and Nermin went missing in July 1995, Munira put all of her efforts into finding her son’s mortal remains.

“In the beginning, I thought maybe he was alive. I would sit on my balcony and think about him walking along with some other woman or children. In 2013, they found just two of his bones. One was found right near the Memorial Center and the other was 25 kilometres away, in a different grave in Jadar. So, in 2013, I buried him. I buried those two bones. I wanted to set an example for other mothers to bury their loved ones even if the body was not complete.”

The mortal remains of her husband, Hilmo, were found in Pilica in 1996, during the investigations of International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Munira donated Nermin’s belt and Hilmo’s glasses, found with his mortal remains.

Fatima Dautbašić Klempić

Fatima, who is now employed as a gynecologist, spent the entire war working at the hospital in Srebrenica. She donated the keys to the medical facility where she worked, as well as a hairpin in memory of Dr. Tomoko Dada Kanto, a Japanese surgeon who worked in Srebrenica in 1994. The medical staff in wartime Srebrenica worked under harrowing conditions, performing operations without anesthetics or basic medical supplies.

“I assisted Dr. Nedret Mujkanović during an abdominal surgery on a young man with a stomach injury. We held ether-soaked cotton over his mouth and stitched his intestines. Several days later, he jumped from a window due to the excruciating pain,” Fatima recalled. Later, she helped wounded survivors during the Death March.

“It was so hard, unspeakably awful. I was terrified that my brother, who was with me the whole time, would be hit in the legs. What could I do if that happened? These items take me back to 1995, as if they bring back the people and times I lost. They remind me of when we were all still alive and well, which is why they are so significant.”

Crime of Genocide

The United Nations was established 80 years ago in response to the atrocity crimes committed during the Second World War. Preventing genocide remains as critical today as it ever did. This exhibition is a call to action and reminds us of the need to build a world in which justice prevails and all people are equal in dignity and rights.

Where we see people facing systematic discrimination or becoming targets of violence simply because of who they are, because of their identity, we must act – both to defend those at immediate risk and those who could be in jeopardy in the future. By promoting a culture of peace and non-violence that includes respect for diversity and non-discrimination, we can build societies that are resilient to the risk of genocide.”

United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres

Defining the “crime without the name”

The term “genocide” was first coined by the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, combining the words:

genos, from the Greek word for race or tribe
cide, from the Latin word for killing

In his 1944 book, Lemkin defined genocide as “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves”.

In Lemkin’s view, genocide is a premeditated crime with clearly defined intent, rather than just an aberration. Having lost over 40 members of his family in the Holocaust, Lemkin worked tirelessly to establish a legal framework that would prevent any future instances of genocide.

Murder had a name. Why was it a named crime for one person to kill another, but not for a government to kill millions of people? Shouldn’t states be held accountable for trying to destroy entire peoples – their lives, cultures and histories?”

Raphael Lemkin

His efforts led to the first-ever human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations: In 1948, genocide was recognized as a crime under international law by the United Nations General Assembly with the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Convention’s preamble recognizes that “at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity” and that international cooperation is required to “liberate humankind from such an odious scourge”. It further defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law.

Amra Begić

Amra was 13 years old in 1992, the youngest of three daughters of Rešid and Hajra Fazlić. In April 1992, her family was forced to separate. With war approaching, her father decided to send his daughters on the last bus to Tuzla before the war began.

“My dad came to my room and said, ‘Get dressed, the last bus is leaving Srebrenica and you’re going to Tuzla.’ My mother decided then to stay with my dad, and so the three of us were alone on the bus without our parents. I looked through the window and saw my dad crying. For the first time, I saw tears streaming down his face, and that’s the last time I ever saw him,” recalls Amra.

They managed to exchange letters before her father went missing in July 1995. His remains were identified in 2008, and he was laid to rest the following year.

Amra has since dedicated her life to preserving the memories of survivors and honoring the victims of genocide through her work at the Srebrenica Memorial Center.

She donated her father’s glasses and wristwatch—a gift from his wife—that were found with his mortal remains in the mass grave in Snagovo. “In the last letter that I received from my dad from Srebrenica, he wanted me to know that he’d been thinking of me that day and that all his thoughts were with me. These belongings remind me of my father and my grandfather, both victims of the genocide, and they will be permanently preserved at the Memorial Center in Srebrenica.”

Hajra Ćatić

Hajra donated the driver’s licence and ID of her son Nihad, known as “Nino,” to the Srebrenica Memorial Center. Nihad disappeared during the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. In 2021, Hajra passed away in Sarajevo, without ever finding his remains.

“He said, ‘Mom, see you in Tuzla.’ I searched for his bones for 25 years. I live for that day. As time passed, I got a lot of information from people who saw him wounded. I went to those places hoping to find his bones, but they wouldn’t let me search because of the landmines.”

As a journalist, Nihad reported from besieged Srebrenica for Radio Bosnia and Herzegovina. In his last broadcast on July 10th, 1995, as Bosnian Serb forces overran the enclave, he warned, “Srebrenica is turning into the biggest slaughterhouse.”

Hajra was the head of the Srebrenica Women’s Association, dedicated to raising awareness about the 1995 genocide. She fought alongside other mothers for the truth and to locate the missing, hoping to bury her son while she was alive. She also attended numerous war crimes trials and was an activist for commemorating the suffering of genocide victims.

Her husband, Junuz, was also killed in the genocide. His body was identified in 2005 after being discovered in a mass grave near the Drina River. Hajra also donated his wallet to the Srebrenica Memorial Center.

Zumra Mehić

Zumra lost her husband Husein and their four sons in the July 1995 genocide. All five had attempted to flee Srebrenica through the woods after the fall of Srebrenica, but none survived. Their remains were found in mass graves, and she was left with only photographs. She donated these photographs to the Srebrenica Memorial Center, in the hopes that they will show the world the tragedy of her loss—a mother left all alone.

“I loved them all equally. A mother can’t pick favorites. We joked about when it would be time for them to move away—one of my sons would say, ‘Mom’s coming with me!’ The other would say, ‘No, she’s coming with me!” Then my husband would ask what about him, and they would reply, ‘You’re coming with us, too! Somebody has to work.”

Dehumanization

Dehumanization is a critical element in the machinery of genocide, stripping individuals or entire groups of their humanity and moral consideration. It allows perpetrators to see their victims not as people with rights, families, and aspirations, but as subhuman, inferior, or expendable. This transformation of human beings into “others” paves the way for extreme violence, as it removes the psychological and ethical barriers to cruelty. Throughout history, dehumanization has been a precursor to mass atrocities—from labeling victims as vermin or parasites to depicting them as threats to society. By diminishing the worth of individuals, dehumanization justifies actions that would otherwise be unimaginable. It is a powerful tool in enabling genocide, as it erases the compassion and empathy that binds us as humans, making brutality and annihilation seem not only acceptable but necessary.

Dehumanization in Nazi Germany

Before the Holocaust, Jews were labeled as “parasites,” “disease,” and “vermin.” This dehumanization was not fringe rhetoric, but part of state policy. Propaganda, led by figures like Julius Streicher, created a climate where violence was justified. He was convicted at Nuremberg — not for killing, but for inciting hatred.

Dehumanization in Rwanda

In 1994, Rwanda’s RTLM radio became a deadly weapon. Hutu extremists used the airwaves to dehumanize the Tutsis, calling them “cockroaches” and urging their extermination.

We must exterminate them.”

RTLM Radio, Rwanda, 1994

Do not leave any of them. Cut them down like trees.”

RTLM, during the genocide

Day after day, ordinary citizens, fueled by this hate-filled rhetoric, took up machetes to murder their Tutsi neighbors. Radio broadcasts transformed the airwaves into a call for violence, turning words into action.

Genocide as a Strategy: Dehumanization and the Denial of Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995)

Bosniaks were often depicted as “traitors” and “Muslim rats,” terms that stripped them of their humanity and painted them as a threat to the ethnic and religious purity of the region. Serb propaganda portrayed Bosniaks as dangerous, unworthy of basic rights or protection, and even framed them as an existential threat to the survival of the Serb nation.

Before genocide begins, victims are stripped of their identity. On January 8, 1993, the self-declared Assembly of Republika Srpska declared:

Muslims are a Communist creation. We do not accept that artificial nation.”

Momčilo Krajišnik

By declaring a people as “fake,” the groundwork was laid for their removal. In Republika Srpska, genocide was not hidden — it was planned. During the Bosnian War (1992–1995), political and military leaders openly discussed the destruction of Bosniaks (Muslims).

We do not want to accept the Islamic state in Europe... we would spend the lives of our generations to neutralize Islam...”

Radovan Karadžić, President of Republika Srpska

We cannot cleanse, nor sieve only Serbs to remain... That is genocide.”

Ratko Mladić, General, Army of Republika Srpska

These admissions were made during the war itself, not after. The perpetrators openly acknowledged their actions as genocide and executed it nonetheless. The genocide was planned, executed, and justified through language and rhetoric. Language was used to normalize genocide. Orders like “Cleanse the territory. No Muslim must remain,” and “Do not waste bullets — kill them with knives. Make it personal” transformed mass murder into a “military operation.” Cold, bureaucratic language made atrocities easier to carry out.

I advised General Krstić to go straight into town and declare the fall of Srebrenica... I approved the radical task and do not regret it.”

Radovan Karadžić

This is genocide... I don’t know how we will explain it to the world.”

Ratko Mladić

History shows that genocides follow a pattern. The signs are clear — the warnings visible — but often ignored. The critical missing element is action.

Mirzet Hrustić

Before the war, Mirzet lived in a loving family with his father Salih, his mother Džulesma, and his brothers, Sadudin, Jasmin, and Dževdet. His father was a carpenter, and his mother was a housewife.

In December 1992, his father was killed on the front line, and in the winter of 1993, his mother died in an artillery strike. During the Srebrenica genocide, Mirzet lost his brothers, Sadudin and Jasmin, both of whom were later found in mass graves and laid to rest at the Srebrenica Memorial Center. Only Mirzet and his brother Dževdet survived the horrors of the Srebrenica siege and the genocide in July 1995.

The two brothers grew up in an orphanage. Mirzet donated photographs from his lonely childhood to the Srebrenica Memorial Center.

“The photos were spontaneous. We were just hanging out in the orphanage. The second one is from a celebration at Slavinovići Primary School. I loved being around people. The third was taken at a technical school, while we were making a mosaic for the ɫ��TV Park in Slana Banja, Tuzla. I donated these photographs to serve as evidence of everything I went through. The photographs tell their own story,” he said.

Kadefa Rizvanović

Kadefa donated hair clippers belonging to her late husband Mirsad, which he used to provide haircuts to Srebrenica residents during the war. Kadefa and Mirsad married in 1991. She fondly remembers her husband as quiet, handsome, and serene. When Srebrenica fell in July 1995, Mirsad decided to go seek safety through the woods, while Kadefa went to Potočari with their children.

“He hugged me and told me to keep our children safe. I never saw him again. He got those hair clippers from his father in Austria. He used them before the war as well. I don’t even know how I managed to bring them here. My children and I decided to donate them to the Memorial Center. He’s always with me in my thoughts,” Kadefa shared. Mirsad’s body was found in a mass grave in Pilica, near Zvornik. He was buried in Potočari in 2003, alongside his brother.

Mirza Bašić

Mirza Bašić was only 15 when the Srebrenica genocide began in 1995. His family was forced to separate, with his father and older brother fleeing through the woods, while he, his mother, and older sister sought refuge at the Potočari UN base.

“I was taller than my peers and looked older, almost 17. The fear of going to Potočari made everything seem worse. I kept telling my mother I didn’t want to go. We ran into a school friend and joined their group, heading toward Šušnjari,” he recalled.

About ten days after Srebrenica fell, during his journey through the woods, Mirza found a small notebook in an abandoned house. He began writing a journal, recording his thoughts and experiences. Mirza reunited with his father and brother in the woods but lost both during an ambush.

“Twenty-two days after Srebrenica fell, I found my father. I never saw my brother again; he is listed as missing. I used to read the journal often in the early years. Today, with genocide denial and fabricated narrative, having this material evidence means nobody can accuse me of lying,” he said.

Mirza read his journal for an audio project by BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina and donated the journal to the Srebrenica Memorial Center.

Šuhra Sinanović

Šuhra lost more than 20 family members in the Srebrenica genocide. As the president of the Bratunac chapter of the Podrinje Women’s Association, she has dedicated her life to the pursuit of justice for genocide victims from Bratunac and their families. She donated a cigarette case found in a mass grave alongside the mortal remains of her husband Muriz to the Srebrenica Memorial Center for the exhibition.

In July 1995, Šuhra and her husband said their goodbyes. Before setting off through the forest, Muriz took his children into his arms and held them close. “Šuhra, keep them safe,” he said, as if he knew he would never see them again.

Muriz was killed in Kravica.

“I talked to my children about donating the cigarette case to the Memorial Center. My children were against it because that’s the only item belonging to their late father that we have. But I think it’s important for it be exhibited at the Srebrenica Memorial Center, so that everyone can see what happened to him and learn from it, ensuring that the 1995 Srebrenica genocide never happens to anyone else.

Ramiz Nukić

During the ambush at Kamenica Hill in July 1995, near his native village, Ramiz lost sight of his father and two brothers, who ultimately perished. Ramiz survived the Srebrenica genocide after days of trekking through the forest to reach the free territory in Nezuk, near Tuzla.

After the war, Ramiz returned home, where he dedicated his life to searching for the remains of Srebrenica’s victims. Over the course of many years, he managed to find over 270 skeletons.

Ramiz donated a makeshift cigarette lighter that had been used during the siege of Srebrenica to the Srebrenica Memorial Center for the project Lives Behind the Fields of Death. In the UN-protected enclave, where lighters and matches were in short supply, this rudimentary device relied on steel plates and mushrooms to create a spark, which could then be used to light a cigarette.

“On July 11, 1995, when Serb forces overran the Srebrenica enclave, I put this lighter in my pocket because I didn’t have anything else. On the seventh day after leaving Srebrenica, I arrived in Nezuk, and I even used it there for a while. It’s important to me that there is a memento of mine in this museum, to show that I survived what I did and that I carried this,” he said.

Ramiz passed away in 2022, but his legacy lives on through his dedication to the victims of Srebrenica and his efforts to ensure that their stories are never forgotten.

From Words to Violence

In 2019, the United Nations Secretary-General launched the United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech with two overriding objectives:

1. To enhance UN efforts to address the root causes and drivers of hate speech in a coordinated way, with a focus on education as a preventive tool to raise awareness and build unity.
2. To focus on the United Nations response to the impact of hate speech on societies, with an emphasis on engaging with relevant actors, strengthening advocacy, and developing guidance for counter-narratives.

The Strategy recognizes that hate speech is a precursor to atrocity crimes, including genocide. This was the case in the Holocaust, the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and Bosnia & Herzegovina, in the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica. The United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect is the focal point for the Strategy and supports its implementation across the United Nations system and with other relevant actors.

What can you do? Here are a few ideas:

1. Educate yourself: Learn about the warning signs and causes of genocide. Use your knowledge to counter the spread of disinformation and misinformation.
2. Get involved: Become familiar with organizations that work to protect human rights and prevent genocide. Follow the United Nations #NoToHate campaign to learn more and counter the spread of hate speech.
3. Foster a culture of mutual respect: Promote a culture of peace and non-violence that includes respect for diversity and non-discrimination. This way we can build societies that are resilient to the risk of genocide.

How Hate Speech Works

Hate speech is not just harmful words—it is a potent weapon that can incite violence, fuel discrimination, and divide societies. Its power lies in its ability to dehumanize and create an “us versus them” mentality that justifies injustice and hatred. Throughout history, hate speech has fueled atrocities, from the genocide in Rwanda to the rise of extremist movements across the globe. In our modern world, the digital age amplifies its reach, making its consequences even more widespread. We must recognize that silence in the face of hate allows it to grow, while action—through education, empathy, and standing up against intolerance—can dismantle its power. It is our collective responsibility to confront hate speech head-on, ensuring that future generations inherit a world built on respect, unity, and understanding. The time for action is now.

Hate speech is a precursor to violence. It labels people as “foreign,” “fake,” or “dangerous,” dehumanizes, calls people animals or pests, justifies violence, turns murder into “defense,” and spreads through media, politics, and silence.

Language becomes policy and, eventually, action. Words shape the narrative that justifies the unthinkable. Words Have Consequences

Words Have Consequences

The power of language cannot be underestimated. Words can divide, dehumanize, and incite violence. The rhetoric of hate must be recognized and resisted before it leads to destruction. History teaches us that unchecked language can lead to unspeakable horrors. We must never forget that words have consequences.

Genocide does not begin with bullets. It begins with words that dehumanize, divide, and incite. It is, therefore, important to remind how hate speech and political rhetoric evolved into genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Nazi Germany. Through real quotes and historical records, we confront how language was weaponized and how it must never be ignored.

It happened, therefore, it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.”

Primo Levi, Holocaust survivor

Never Again Means Now

“Never Again” is more than just a phrase—it’s a solemn vow to prevent the horrors of genocide from ever being repeated. It is a collective commitment to uphold human dignity, justice, and the universal rights of all people, regardless of ethnicity, religion, or identity. The atrocities of the past, from the Holocaust, the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and other subsequent genocides to the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, serve as painful reminders of the consequences of indifference and inaction. To say “Never Again” means not only remembering the victims, but also actively working to dismantle the systems of hatred, fear, and intolerance that allow such horrors to take root. It calls upon each of us to speak out against dehumanization, challenge discrimination, and ensure that the lessons of history are never forgotten. “Never Again” is a call to vigilance, compassion, and a shared responsibility to protect the most vulnerable because the price of silence is too high, and the cost of forgetting is unimaginable.

We have the tools. We have history. We know how genocides begin — and how they are justified.

To prevent future atrocities, we must:

• detect and condemn hate speech early,
• educate media, politicians, and citizens on its dangers,
• strengthen laws that hold inciters accountable,
• support international mechanisms for early warning,
• never normalize language that dehumanizes.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

attributed to Edmund Burke

We must remain vigilant in recognizing and responding to human rights violations when they start to occur. It is our individual and collective responsibility to react properly and timely so that “Never Again” holds true meaning.

The time to act is now.

This exhibit was launched in July 2025

Perceptions of Sentience

AKAHNJOC — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 21:12:52 +0000

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Holocaust Remembrance: A Commitment to Truth and Lest We Forget

AKAHNJOC — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 20:18:24 +0000

Holocaust Remembrance
Lest We Forget

These portraits show lives that were lived before the Holocaust.

The photographs capture moments of kindness and compassion, of life enjoyed, and the intimate connections that existed before the Holocaust.

The images stand as stark evidence of the deep loss and destruction wrought by the Nazis and their racist collaborators during the Holocaust.

The photographs reflect the humanity of the victims of the Holocaust. They ask us to remember our common humanity, and our responsibility to defend the right of all to live with dignity and in peace.

Beloved

Two photographs give us a glimpse of a little boy, much loved by his family.

Teri Zinger and her son, Yehonatan, in Rozsnyo, former Czechoslovakia, 1936. Credit: Copyright Yad Vashem Photo Archives, Archival Signature 10011/4. Courtesy of Yocheved Chapnik.

The Nazis murdered Yehonatan and his mother, Teri, in the gas chamber in Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940–1945) on 15 June 1944. The fate of Yehonatan’s grandparents is not known.

Yehonatan sits on his grandfather, Itzhak Haim Moshe Lemberger’s knee as his grandfather and grandmother, Yoheved Yolin, encourage him to look at the camera. They sit in the sunlight. Rozsnyo, former Czechoslovakia, 1936. Credit: Copyright Yad Vashem Photo Archives, Archival Signature 10011/5. Courtesy of Yocheved Chapnik.

Brothers and sisters - the Meyer family

Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #32868. Courtesy of Yaakov and Jeannette Meyer. Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The four Meyer children pose on the balcony of their home in 1934 in Bonn, Germany. From left to right: Yaakov, Erika, Herbert, and Theresia. Seated next to Theresia is her husband. Yaakov, the youngest of the four Meyer siblings, was born in 1928. His oldest sibling, Theresia, was born in 1914; brother Herbert in 1918; and sister Erika in 1921.

In 1934, the children’s father, Albert Meyer, was murdered by Nazi thugs. The family fell into poverty. Theresia, her husband, and Erika left for England – Theresia to work as a nurse, and Erika as a maid.

Yaakov left on a Kindertransport in March 1939. His mother, Karolina, took him to the train station. He never saw her again.

Herbert was murdered with his wife in Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940-1945).

Brothers and sisters - the Kornhauser family

Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #14678. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Provenance: George Pick.

These photographs show the family of Pal and Aranka (Shatz) Kornhauser.

The first photograph was taken between 1929-1930. It shows the four Kornhauser siblings posing on the beach at Lake Balaton, near Budapest, Hungary. Big brother Endre Kornhauser holds Janos and Tamas in his arms. Below them is their sister, Lilly.

A formal family photograph taken in 1931 in Budapest, [Pest-PilisSolt-Kiskun], Hungary. Pictured from left to right are mother Aranka (Shatz) with Janos, Endre and Lilly. Their father, Pal, sits next to Lilly and Tamas leans next to Pal.

Pal Kornhauser was a lawyer and served as the legal adviser to the German ambassador in Budapest from 1940 to 1944. He was deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz and killed in the spring of 1944.

Endre, his eldest son, was murdered in 1943.

Over 100 members of the extended Kornhauser family perished during the Holocaust.

Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives # 14670. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Provenance: George Pick.

Friends

Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives # 16713. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Courtesy Yad Vashem.

This photograph taken before 1941 captures a glimpse of the friendship of a group of girls. They are in a yard in the town of Eisiskes, Lithuania.

None of the girls survived the Holocaust.

Every girl in this photograph was murdered by the mobile killing squads – the Einsatzgruppen – on 25–26 September 1941. Of Eisiskes’s 3,500 Jews, only a few dozen survived the Holocaust.

This exhibition was created by the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, established by Member States of the United Nations through General Assembly Resolution A/RES/60/7 in 2005.

Credits: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center

“Please don’t forget us... If you survive, tell the world what happened.”

- Nesse Godin, survivor of Stutthof concentration camp, Germany and a death march

Oral history with Nesse Godin, Washington, D.C. 14 December 1995. In Beth B. Cohen, Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007, p. 157. Courtesy of Beth B. Cohen.

The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme

The United Nations General Assembly voted unanimously to establish the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme in 2005 to “mobilize civil society for Holocaust remembrance and education, in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide”. The Outreach Programme is an expression of the United Nations’ commitment to counter antisemitism, Holocaust denial and distortion, and to protect the right of all people to live with dignity and in peace.

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 in 2005 designated 27 January as the annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and established the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme. Resolutions adopted in 2007 and in 2022 reiterated the United Nations’ commitment to counter antisemitism and Holocaust distortion and denial.

General Assembly Hall (UN Photo)

Survivors who graciously shared their testimonies with the Outreach Programme:

Ms. Lyubov Abramovich
Ms. Inge Auerbacher
Mr. Yehuda Bacon
Ms. Elizabeth Bellak
Mr. Maurice Blik
Ms. Ella Blumenthal
Judge Thomas Buergenthal
Dr. Irene Butter
Mr. Boris Feldman
Ms. Rena Finder

Ms. Ruth Glasberg Gold
Mr. Zoni Weisz
Mr. Max Glauben
Mr. Jacques Grishaver
Ms. Nesse Godin
Mr. Kurt Goldberger
Ms. Margarete Goldberger
Mr. Yoram Gross
Mr. Pinchas Gutter
Ms. Frances Irwin
Ms. Vered Kater
Mr. Roman Kent
Mr. Serge Klarsfeld
Ms. Gerda Klein
Mr. Noah Klieger
Ms. Agnes Kory
Professor Robert Krell
Ms. Jona Laks
Mr. Arthur Langerman
Congressman Tom Lantos
Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau
Ms. Eva Lavi
Ms. Johanna Liebman
Mr. Leo Lowy
Mr. David Mermelstein
Mr. Dumitru Miclescu

Judge Theodor Meron
Ms. Joanna Millan
Ms. Marianne Muller
Mr. Shraga Milstein
Mr. Leon Moed
Professor Mordecai Paldiel
Mr. Alex Moskovic
Mr. Christian Pfeil
Ms. Hella Pick
Mr. Jack Polak
Ms. Rita Prigmore
Mr. Haim Roet
Mr. Leonid Rozenberg
Ms. Irene Shashar
Rabbi Arthur Schneier
Dr. Nechama Tec
Ms. Selma Tennenbaum Rossen
Dr. Edith Tennenbaum Shapiro
Mr. Marian Turski
Madame Simone Veil
Ms. Agnes Vertes
Mr. Zoni Weisz
Ms. Marta Wise

The Global Impact of the Holocaust

A warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism, and prejudice."

- United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/76/250

The United Nations was established in response to the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The Holocaust has had a profound impact on International Human Rights Law, resulting in the United Nations’ adoption of foundational documents in 1948: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights represents the universal recognition that basic rights and fundamental freedoms are inherent to all human beings, inalienable and equally applicable to everyone, and that every one of us is born free and equal in dignity and rights. Whatever our nationality, place of residence, gender, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status, the international community on 10 December 1948 made a commitment to upholding dignity and justice for all of us. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, or Genocide Convention, is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to enforce its prohibition. It was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1948.

The World That Was

Only one-third of Jewish men, women and children in Europe survived the Holocaust.

Mother and son, Henrietta and Ivan Rechts. 1939 Former Czechoslovakia. They were subsequently deported to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, where they perished. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #47570. Courtesy of Gabriella Reitler Rosberger, Source Record ID: Collections: 2004.7. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Mother with daughter on swing, Zwickau, Germany, circa 1937. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives # 64847. Courtesy of Shoshana Loeb. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

We had a family life. I had four grandparents. Family...there were a lot of certainties. But the certainties ended when I was fourteen years old. They never came back again, of course.”

- Frieda Menco-Brommet (1925–2019). Oral history conducted by Debórah Dwork, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, June 1986. Debórah Dwork, “Children With A Star” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p.7

Two Jewish brothers on vacation in Italy, April 1935. On the left is Paul Barber and his child, and on the right Gyorgy Barber with his infant. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #17193. Courtesy of Charles & Herma Ellenboghen Barber. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Jews had lived as a minority in Europe for two thousand years before Hitler and his Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933. Maintaining Jewish and national identities, Jews were diverse. Some were pious, some secular; some were poor, some working class, others middle class.

After the Nazi regime took control, all Jews caught in their web were at risk. By 1945, six million – two-thirds of Europe's prewar Jewish population – were annihilated, and the life and culture that had existed for millennia irrevocably ruptured.

The Nazis persecuted Europe’s Roma and Sinti communities, murdering some 500,000 - one-third of Europe’s Roma and Sinti population - by war’s end.

Portrait of two Jewish sisters, Budapest, Hungary, circa 1930–1935. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #45560. Courtesy of Provenance: Gabor Kalman Source Record ID: Collections: 2001.335. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Roma family, Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany, 1936. Despite this photograph having been taken in the garden of the "Racial-Hygienic and Heredity Research Centre" in the Reich Health Office, Berlin, and the identity and intention of the photographer unknown, the close-knit nature of the family and their affection and joy shine bright. Credit: Bundesarchiv, R 165 Bild-244-59/Photographer unknown.

Sophie Kimelman poses with her twin cousins holding their dolls, Lvov, Poland, circa 1929–1930. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #65589. Courtesy of Dr. Sophie Kimelman-Rosen. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Children from the Beit Ahavah Children’s Home in class, Berlin, Germany, circa 1922–1930. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #48873. Courtesy of Ayelet Bargur. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Josef Cohn and his grandsons, Leo and Haim, study the Talmud, Hamburg, Germany, circa 1932–1933. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #93800. Courtesy of Noemi Cassutto. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Teenagers at a Purim party, Frankfurt, Germany, circa 1933–1936. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #56413. Courtesy of Walter Wolff. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Elly and Henri Rodrigues (front center) at a birthday party in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1936. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #96361. Courtesy of Carolyn Stewart. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A group of young Greek Jews in front of a tobacco store, Salonika, Greece, circa 1930-1939. Among those pictured are Yehuda and Miriam Beraha (front row, left). Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #42481. Courtesy of Jack Beraha, Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Members of the ice hockey team of the Jewish sport's club, Hagibor. Prague, former Czechoslovakia, circa 1925–1930. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #65440. Courtesy of Andrea Renner. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A Jewish youth band performs in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, 1932. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives # 25106. Courtesy of Gavra Mandil, Source Record ID: Collections: 2002.158. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Fubini family poses by a riverbank, Torino, Italy, circa 1930–1939. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #49040. Courtesy of Franco Fubini. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Members of a French-Hungarian Romani musical band, Lyon, France, circa 1920–1930. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #33341. Courtesy of Rita Prigmore, Source Record ID: Collections: 2004.226.1 Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Greta Stoessler Engel stands next to her horse, Austria, circa 1920–1930. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #42064. Courtesy of Katie Altenberg. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A Jewish family walks down a street in Bialystok, Poland, 22 June 1938. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Photo Archives #79262. Courtesy of Ewa Kracowska. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Holocaust (1933-1945)

Identification and Segregation during the Second World War

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, ideologically driven persecution and murder of six million Jews across Europe and half a million Roma and Sinti by Nazi Germany (1933–1945) and other racist states. Nazi ideology built upon pre-existing antisemitism and antigypsyism/anti-Roma prejudice. The Nazi regime dismantled the democratic institutions of government and used state mechanisms to put its racist ideology into practice and to justify its abuses of human rights.

Nazi racism demanded the murder of people with disabilities, the forced sterilization of Germans of African descent, the murder of Soviet prisoners of war, and the enslavement of Slavs. The Nazis persecuted all they deemed as regime opponents including political dissidents, those identified as homosexual and lesbian, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

But in the Nazi imagination, Jews loomed as the primary threat. The Nazi government enacted its racist antisemitic agenda and, after 1941, embarked upon the murder of every Jewish child, woman, and man.

This notice states, “This beautiful city Hersbruck, on this gorgeous spot on the Earth, was created only for Germans, and not for Jews. Jews are therefore not welcome here.” Caption: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #74592. Courtesy of John Howell. Source Record ID: Collections: 2002.216.1

Once in power, the Nazis began the process of social and economic disenfranchisement and segregation of Jews in Germany, thus facilitating the growing abuse.

From 1934 on, signs prohibiting Jews from using public spaces including libraries, swimming pools, theatres, cinemas, and park benches appeared throughout Germany and, after the 1938 Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Germany, in Austria as well.

Once in my lifetime I want to still have a whole loaf of bread. That was my dream.”

– Itka Zygmuntowicz (1926–2020), Survivor of Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940–1945) RG-50.030*0435, Oral history interview with Itka Zygmuntowicz, (1926-2020). Oral History Interviews of the Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.

A young baby, Marianne Harpuder (now Price) lies on a park bench in Berlin marked with a “J” to indicate it is only for Jews, 1938, Berlin, Germany. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #62547. Courtesy of Ralph Harpuder.

Suddenly, even my best friends didn’t know me anymore. Antisemitic signs appeared in cities and towns exhorting citizens to view Jews as ‘the Other’”

– Heinz Sandelowski (1921–2000), Rastenburg, Germany, 1933. Oral history conducted by Beth B. Cohen, Providence, R.I., 7 April 1994. Courtesy of Beth B. Cohen.

Class portrait of Jewish children attending Carlebach School in Leipzig, Germany. In 1935, Nazi segregation laws prohibited Jewish children from attending state schools. In Leipzig, the Carlebach School was only Jewish day school available. Among those pictured are Irene Mayer, Esther Heppner, Paula Grunewald, Akiva Zwick and Hans Koch. Erich Petruschke (later Peters) is next to the teacher. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #67856. Courtesy of Irene Lewitt. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Provenance: Irene Lewitt.

In 1935, the Nuremburg Laws provided a racist basis to classify Jews, legalized racist antisemitism, and stripped Jews of their citizenship. The racist laws declared that Jewish people could not have so-called German or Aryan blood, and therefore could not be German citizens. The Laws outlawed marriage or sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews, and further excluded Jews from daily life.

By late 1938, the German State cancelled German Jews’ passports, requiring them to carry new identity cards showing their heritage by the addition of the name Sara or Israel, and with a stamped letter “J.”

Both these additions are evident in Ellen Markiewicz’s passport below:

Ellen Markiewicz and her brother managed to leave Germany in 1939 on a Kindertransport, a rescue effort that brought thousands of children from Germany, Austria, and former Czechoslovakia to France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Britain. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives # 61853B. Courtesy of Ellen Gerber. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

After Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Jews were ordered to wear identifying badges. These badges were decreed in every occupied country. In 1941 this law was extended to Germany. The Nazis intended the badges to humiliate the Jews, and to facilitate the identification of Jews for roundups to ghettos and deportation to camps.

A few examples of identification badges imposed on Jewish people by Nazi decree.

Badges Jews were forced to wear in France, circa 1942 - 1945. Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #1991.70.3. Courtesy of Claudine Cerf. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Badges Jews were forced to wear in Berlin, Germany, circa 1942 - 1945. Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #1991.141.5. Courtesy of Fritz Gluckstein. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Badges Jews were forced to wear in Sveti Ivan Zelina, Croatia, Yugoslavia, circa 1942 - 1945. Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #2002.432.3. Courtesy of Theodora Basch Klayman. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Badges Jews were forced to wear in Belgium. Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #65977. Courtesy of Michel Reynders. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Political “Enemies”

The Nazi government set out to dismantle democracy including shutting down the free press and perverting the legal system. The regime used terror and a network of concentration camps to impose and maintain control. The Nazis banned trade unions and persecuted all whom they considered political opponents including Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Helene Gotthold with her children, Gisela and Gerd. Helene, a Jehovah’s Witness, was arrested for her anti-Nazi views and beheaded in the Ploetzensee prison, 8 December 1944. Her children survived. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives # 20499. Courtesy of Martin Tillmans. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Source Record ID: Collections: 1991.204.

State harassment of men labelled as homosexual, became increasingly brutal. Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim was arrested, humiliated, tortured and forcibly castrated. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives ID5364. Courtesy of Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim, Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Nazi persecution of LGBTIQ+

The Nazi regime radicalized existing laws against male homosexuality persecuting tens of thousands of men and deporting up to 15,000 to concentration camps. The Nazis viewed homosexuality as a threat to a growing "German race". If homosexual men were also identified as Jewish, they faced persecution as Jews and often immediate deportation. While the regime primarily targeted gay men, lesbian women and transgender individuals were also at risk of being reported by neighbours, colleagues, or even family members.

Persons with Disabilities

The Nazis targeted people with disabilities, considering them a threat to so-called racial purity and a financial burden. Nazi propaganda encouraged the German population to view people with disabilities in this way. Between 1939 and 1945, doctors and nurses murdered nearly 300, 000 people with disabilities through starvation, lethal injection, mass shooting or gassing.

Studio portrait of Lotte and Robert Wagemann, c. 1942-1943, Berlin, Germany. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #71708.

Robert Wagemann was born on 23 May 1937 in Mannheim, Germany to parents who were Jehovah's Witnesses. The Nazis persecuted Jehovah’s Witnesses because they refused to take a loyalty oath to Hitler and to serve in the German army. Robert was born shortly after his mother’s release from imprisonment for distributing pamphlets denouncing the Nazi regime. Damage to Robert’s hip during birth went unnoticed until he was almost four. After an unsuccessful attempt to replace Robert’s hip, Robert’s mother Lotte was summoned to bring him for a medical examination. Lotte overheard the doctors discussing “euthanizing” Robert. “Euthanasia” was a Nazi euphemism for murder. Realizing the doctors intended to kill Robert because of his disability, Lotte fled with him to his paternal grandparents.

On his first day of school Robert refused to salute Hitler. His teachers alerted the police. Robert and his mother escaped again and spent the remainder of the war on Robert’s maternal grandparents’ farm.

Robert survived. 10,000 German children with disabilities did not, murdered by Nazi doctors and nurses.

Roma and Sinti

Romani peoples in Europe suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. The Nazis viewed Roma as a "biological" threat to the so-called “superior Aryan” people. Building on centuries-old-anti-Roma prejudice and violence, the Nazis stripped Roma and Sinti of their rights, and criminalized and persecuted them. Under the July 1933 “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Defects,” physicians sterilized Roma and Sinti against their will. Roma and Sinti were subjected to segregation, classification by “racial scientists”, and internment in concentration and labour camps.

We had no rights in any aspect of our lives. We could no longer attend school. We could only go shopping in the hours between 11:00 and 12:00. We could not go to any dances, cinemas, or any public events. In short, we were outcasts. I was then 13 years old.”

- Hermine Horvath, a Roma woman from Burgenland in Austria, describing the situation for her family after the German annexation of Austria in March 1938. Horvath gave this testimony to the Wiener Library in the 1950s.

Racism, persecution, and terror

The Nazi regime’s racism extended to include other minorities deemed inferior especially Roma and Sinti and Germans of African descent. Persecution took many forms, including forced sterilization and incarceration in a concentration camp.

Joseph Muscha Mueller was born in 1932 in Germany to Roma parents. In 1942 two strangers removed him from his classroom. He was forcibly sterilized and deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944. Joseph was smuggled out and survived the remainder of the war hiding in a garden shed. Credit: Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ID Cards.

Radicalization of Persecution

The November Pogrom (9–10 November 1938) was the first instance of state-organized violence against Jews in Germany, German-annexed Austria and the Sudetenland (part of former Czechoslovakia) and marked a radicalization of Nazi antisemitic policy.

Synagogues, businesses owned by Jews, and Jews’ homes were burned and ransacked. 30,000 men were arrested. Hundreds died. Those who found a way to leave Germany were released.

Emigration from Nazi Germany became more urgent but increasingly difficult, as country after country tightened its immigration policies. Some Jews escaped from Germany to nearby countries where they were trapped when the Second World War began. By 1941, approximately two-thirds of German and Austrian Jews had fled their homelands.

A Jewish-owned business in Berlin, Germany destroyed in the November Pogrom, 1938. 10 November 1938. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #86838. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Exterior view of the old synagogue in Aachen, Germany. The old synagogue was built in 1862. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #29814. Courtesy of Stadtarchiv Aachen Copyright Public Domain.

View of the old synagogue in Aachen, Germany, after its destruction during the November Pogrom, 1938. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #29818. Courtesy of Stadtarchiv Aachen Copyright Public Domain.

Listen here to the impact of the November 1938 Pogrom on 8-year-old Arthur Schneier.

Arthur Schneier. Credit: Rabbi Arthur Scheneir

A bedroom of a flat in Vienna, Austria (taken 10 November 1938). Courtesy Wiener Library and Stadtarchiv Nurnberg.

Listen here to Professor Debórah Dwork describe the impact of the November 1938 Pogrom.

Sites of incarceration and forced labour under the Nazi regime and its allies, 1933-1945

From 1933 to 1945, the Nazi regime and its allies created approximately 44,000 sites to confine Jews, political prisoners, POWs, Roma and Sinti, and many others. The map above shows 4,231 locations with one or more sites, including those in North Africa – less than 10% of the total estimated by 2023 by researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. All camps and ghettos in the maps were established by the German forces or Axis-aligned powers. The camps shown in North Africa were established by occupation forces.

Camps (orange dots) could be the size of a city or a single building. Wehrmacht sites (black dots), like some camps, held both POWs and civilians. Ghettos (purple dots) could fill a Jewish neighbourhood or be just a field or barn. At the six SS death camps (red squares – Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka), millions of civilians were murdered, often immediately upon arrival.

Whatever their form, these places collectively held millions of people against their will in brutal, inhumane conditions.

Disclaimer: The designations employed, including geographical names, and the presentation of the materials in the present publication, including the citations, maps and bibliography, do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the United Nations concerning the names and legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries and do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations.

Credit: Present-day physical geography data courtesy of Natural Earth. Projection: Europe Albers Equal Area Conic. Main map and graph by Maja Kruse and Anne Kelly Knowles, 2024. Copyright Anne Kelly Knowles and Maja Kruse. Map of Auschwitz complex and subcamps by Maja Kruse, 2024. Copyright Maja Kruse. This map was originally developed for Sarah Cushman’s forthcoming book, Women in Auschwitz.

Auschwitz camp system

The concentration camp known as Auschwitz has long been a symbol of the Holocaust in its entirety. What many people do not realize is that “Auschwitz” was in fact a complex of three main camps as well as a system of several dozen subcamps. Nor do many know that this system was one of many camp and ghetto systems that in total spanned the width and breadth of Europe. What the Germans called the Auschwitz “Zone of Interest” (Interessengebiet) lay between the Soła and Vistula rivers. It was centered on Auschwitz I, a concentration camp that opened in January 1940 near the Polish town of Oswieçim. (The Nazis cleared the town of its Polish residents to isolate the camp.) The 25-squaremile zone included Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where the Nazis murdered approximately one million Jews and thousands of Romani people, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a site intended to manufacture synthetic rubber for industry and the military. At these three main camps and six local subcamps, shown above, tens of thousands of prisoners labored and struggled to survive, including men, women, and children from across Europe: Jews, Romani, political prisoners, Soviet POWs, and German “anti-social” prisoners. The small map in the bottom left shows the location of all 39 subcamps in the Auschwitz system. No still map can convey the dynamism of this system. During the early 1940s it was constantly expanding, adding new sites, structures, purposes, and prisoner populations. These changes reflected the shifting priorities of war and genocide.

Both prisoner experiences and the places they were held were incredibly varied. Some prisoners endured captivity for weeks, others for years; some were shunted from place to place. The sites did not all exist at once, and many facilities changed purpose and location over time.

Seeking Refuge

The Frank family: (left to right): Margot, Otto, Anne, and Edith Frank, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1941. Courtesy of the Anne Frank Fonds, Basel, Switzerland.

The story of the Frank family illustrates the vulnerability of refugees seeking safety from the Nazis. Otto and Edith Frank and their two young daughters, Margot and Anneliese -Anne - left for Amsterdam, the Netherlands shortly after the Nazis came to power in Germany.

For a few years, it seemed the family would be safe. Otto grew increasingly worried about the stability of the region, and in 1938 applied to the United States for visas for his family. American restrictive immigration policies, and the changing events in Europe destroyed that hope. Germany attacked the Netherlands in 1940 and Otto’s visa applications were destroyed. Unable to leave, Otto created a hiding place in the secret annex of his business’s warehouse. The annex provided shelter for over two years for the Frank family, the van Pels family, and Fritz Pfeffer. They were betrayed in August 1944. Of those who had hidden in the annex, only Otto survived the Holocaust.

Ghettoization

Child in the Lodz ghetto, Poland, circa 1940–1944. Credit: Photograph by Mendel Grossman (1913-1945) who died on a death march, 30 April 1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #24635, Courtesy of Moshe Zilbar, Source Record ID: Collections: 2005.214. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Our bread ration has been reduced and vegetables don’t arrive anymore. Hunger is ever more terrifying.”

– Dawid Sierakowiak, (1924–1943), entry dated 18 March 1942.

The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto. 18 March 1942. Courtesy of Oxford University Press.

The start of the Second World War in September 1939 was a decisive moment in Nazi anti-Jewish policy. After the Germans conquered Eastern Europe, they concentrated Jews in restricted areas called ghettos; in western Europe they incarcerated Jews in transit camps.

Over 1,100 ghettos existed across Europe, with the largest in Poland. Most ghettos were situated on rail lines that facilitated later mass deportations to killing centers. In many ghettos, Jews sought to maintain vestiges of prewar life, despite squalid conditions. Nonetheless, conditions were a torturous means of annihilation through starvation, slave labour, disease, and executions.

Deportation

Germany and its racist allies began deporting Jews and Roma and Sinti from the ghettos and transit camps to killing centers that had been constructed in occupied Poland.

Rounding up the children from the Lodz ghetto, Poland, for deportation to the Chelmno death camp, Poland, September 1942. None of the children survived. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #50328. Courtesy of Instytut Pamieci Narodowej. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Jewish women and children from Subcarpathian Rus awaiting selection after arrival at Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940-1945), May 1944. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #77255. Courtesy of Yad Vashem (Public Domain). Source Record ID: FA 268/055. Published Source: The Auschwitz Album – Peter Hellman, Random House. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Anna Maria “Setella” Steinbach, a young Romani girl, stares out of a cattle car used for deportation from Westerbork transit camp, the Netherlands, 1944. Setella was murdered with her mother and siblings, in Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940–1945). She was nine years old. Credit: Copyright Yad Vashem Photo Archives, Archival Signature 1475/30.

Systematic mass murder

Mass murder began in June 1941 with Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. As German troops moved into the Soviet Union, mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) followed, massacring Jews in more than 1,500 villages and towns, often in broad daylight in the presence of local witnesses. Nazi policy now encompassed the implementation of the “Final Solution” the Nazi euphemism given for the policy of annihilation of Jewish children, women and men.

To murder more efficiently, the Germans created killing sites in occupied Poland: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940–1945). Most of the people deported to these sites were murdered by poison gas immediately upon arrival.

Portrait of four-year-old Malvina Babat and three-year-old Polina Babat, who were killed at the mass shootings at Babi Yar. c.1940-September 1941. Kiev, former USSR – now Ukraine. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Babi Yar Society. Copyright: Public Domain

They resisted dehumanization

Victims resisted Nazi brutality and dehumanization in many different ways – even in the face of death. These are but a few of the stories we know. Some we will never know.

A portrait of students attending a clandestine school in Mielec ghetto, Poland, 1940. Credit: Yad Vashem Photo Archives, Archival Signature 5187_3. Courtesy of Irena Eber. Copyright Yad Vashem.

Photography as resistance

During the Holocaust, despite the grave risk they faced, Jewish photographers – some professional, some amateurs – recorded what the Nazis and their collaborators perpetrated. These photographers captured on film how the victims responded. The photographs stand as invaluable historical evidence and a form of resistance against the Nazis who wished to remove any trace of Jews.

Shoes left after a deportation from the Kovno ghetto, Lithuania, circa 1943. The photograph was taken by Kovno ghetto survivor, George Kadish. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #81082. Courtesy of George Kadish/Zvi Kadushin, photographer. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Mendel Grossman (1913–1945) imprisoned in Lodz Ghetto in Poland, died on a forced death march, 30 April 1945. Saying goodbye in the Lodz ghetto, Poland, before deportation, September 1942. Photograph by Mendel Grossman. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #23698.Gift of Hana Greenbaum and Shmuel Zilbar in memory of Rozka Grosman Zilbar and Moshe Zilbar (Zilberstein), and Mendel Grossman. Source Record ID: Collections: 2005.214. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Henryk Ross (1910-1991) survived the Lodz ghetto in Poland, and the Holocaust. Deportation of Jews from the Lodz ghetto, Poland, September 1942. Photograph by Lodz ghetto survivor Henryk Ross. Credit: Copyright Yad Vashem Photo Archives, Archival Signature 2631/27.

Vladka Meed – underground resistance courier. False identification card issued in name of Stanislawa Wachalska, that Feigele Peltel (now Vladka Meed) used while serving as a courier for the Jewish underground in Warsaw. 9 October 1943, Warsaw, Poland. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Benjamin (Miedzyrzecki) Meed. Vladka Meed was born Feigele Peltel on 29 December 1921, in Warsaw, Poland. In 1940, she and her family were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. Her mother, Hanna, her younger sister, Henia, and her little brother, Chaim were among the more than 265,000 Jews the Germans deported to Treblinka death camp between July and September 1942. Left in the ghetto, Feigele joined the Jewish Coordinating Committee. She was able to “pass” as a non-Jewish Pole and moved in and out of the ghetto smuggling illegal literature, correspondence, and weapons into the ghetto, and taking out news about ghetto conditions. Vladka managed to evade detection, torture and death. After the Holocaust, she immigrated to the United States. Vladka died on 22 November 2012.

Faye Schulman (1919-2021), pictured here before the war with her nephew, Schelemale. Lenin, [Belarus; Pinsk] USSR. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Faye Schulman (Faigel Lazebnik). Faye Schulman was born Faigel Lazebnik on 28 November 1919, in Lenin, Eastern Poland (now Western Belarus). When Germany invaded in 1941, Faigel and her family were forced into the Lenin ghetto. In August 1942, the Germans killed 1,850 Jews from the ghetto. The Germans spared Faigel because of her photographic skills. She managed to escape and joined a partisan group. During a subsequent partisan raid of Lenin, Faigle retrieved her photographic equipment. Through her photographs, Faigel documented the suffering and resilience of Jewish victims and partisans. After the war, she immigrated to Canada. She died at the age of 101.

They sought to help

In an increasingly hostile world, a range of individuals, and in a few instances, communities, tried to rescue victims – some through hiding those at risk or smuggling them to safety. Some forged identity documents, some engaged in acts of sabotage, some provided travel documents that could help them escape. These courageous and humane actions were rare. Many local people collaborated willingly. Most were witnesses. Those who sought to help the victims stand as examples of what can be done, even in the face of grave danger.

A few members of the diplomatic community tried to help. Some, like Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara, Japanese consul-general in Kovno, Lithuania, and Aristides De Sousa Mendes, Portuguese consul stationed in Bordeaux, France, defied their own government’s official policy in their efforts to save Jews.

Among those recognized by Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, as Righteous Among the Nations are diplomats Carl Lutz, vice-consul of Switzerland in Budapest; Selahattin Ülkümen, Turkish consul-general on the island of Rhodes under German occupation; Ho-Feng Shan, Chinese consul-general in Vienna; Luis Martins de Souza Dantas, Brazil’s Ambassador to France, and Raoul Wallenberg, legation secretary of the Swedish diplomatic mission in Budapest, Hungary.

Whosoever saves a single life, saves an entire universe"

– Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5

Per Anger poses in front of a portrait of Raoul Wallenberg in his office in 1985. Second secretary at the Swedish legation in Budapest, Anger worked alongside Raoul Wallenberg to rescue thousands of Hungarian Jews from arrest and deportation. Raoul Wallenberg was captured by the Soviet Army after the war. His fate remains unknown. 1985, Stockholm, Sweden Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Per and Ellena Anger.

The Aftermath

Former women prisoners in bunks in Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940–1945). After 27 January 1945. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #31450. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

Here I am waiting to be liberated…and everything is gone."

– Sara Kay (1926–2019). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland Section, RG-50.091.0082.

After the Holocaust, survivors confronted a ruptured world. Entire families had been murdered and communities erased. The defeat of the Nazis had not meant the defeat of antisemitism. Survivors unable or unwilling to return to their former homes made their way to displaced persons (DP) camps where they might wait for years before it was possible to immigrate to destinations around the world.

Sherit Hapleita -the Saved Remnant

Drawing upon the Biblical term referring to survivors of the Assyrian destruction of the Kingdom of Israel, Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) called themselves Sherit Hapleita, the Saved Remnant. They began the process of re-establishing their culture: language, religious observance, Jewish customs, creative expressions. And they documented the atrocities they had survived. The projects and programmes initiated by DPs and supported by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and other organizations, were steps towards reconstituting a community, and reclaiming and constructing an identity.

Even as they moved forward establishing new homes, families, and communities, the memory of the Holocaust cast a long shadow over their lives.

Displaced persons, displaced camps

Anticipating the humanitarian crisis that would follow after the Second World War, the Allied countries established (1943) the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) - the first-ever multinational attempt to co-ordinate such support. Hundreds of displaced persons (DP) camps were set up in Germany, Austria, and Italy.

United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) official, Greta Fischer (1910-1988) with Jewish children at Kloster Indersdorf, Germany. Greta Fischer was born in Budišov (former Czechoslovakia) in 1910. She fled to London in 1939. Her parents perished in the Nazi ghetto/camp Terezin. In June 1945, she went to Germany as a member of United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration's Team 182 to work at the International Displaced Person’s Children's Center established at Kloster-Indersdorf. In 1946 the DP Camp was converted to a home for Jewish refugee children from Eastern Europe. Fischer became director of the International Children’s Center Hotel Kronprinz Prien. Credit: UN Archives, S-1058-0001-01-00117

Living and grieving

Holocaust survivors living in the Displaced Persons’ (DP) camps had survived years of extreme violence. The psychological impact of this assault became evident in the DP camps. Even as DPs engaged in daily life – attending educational classes, creating art, celebrating weddings, forming relationships – they mourned all they had lost. Survivors experienced a complex set of emotions that included feelings of powerlessness, bafflement about survival, and fear that the experience of joy was a betrayal of those who did not survive. For some, mourning was perceived as an act of treason against their loved ones as it suggested an acceptance of their deaths. Survivors carried simultaneously the desire to rebuild and reconstitute, and the ache of deep grief, a grief for which some would never find solace.

Bride and groom, Hinda Chilewicz and Welek Luksenburg in the Weiden DP camp, Germany, weep during the recitation of a prayer in memory of their parents, 2 March 1947. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #28710. Courtesy of William and Helen Lukensenberg. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A reminder of our common humanity

To remember the victims of the Holocaust is to remember their humanity, and to defend the rights of all to live in peace and with dignity.

To remember is everyone’s responsibility.

The Holocaust, like all genocides, was not inevitable. Warning signs abounded long before the mass killing, and began with the process of “othering”. The Holocaust cautions us to heed these warning signs and to challenge hatred, bigotry, racism, and prejudice.

We can draw on our knowledge of the past to counter the fear and suspicion spread today through the manipulation of information, hate speech and the distortion of history.

With such knowledge, what will you do?

Credits

Photographs sourced from:

Anne Frank Fonds, Basel, Switzerland

Bundesarchiv

United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum

Weiner Library

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center

With thanks to:

Mr. Peter Agoos, Designer of Permanent Exhibition, United Nations

Dr. Beth B. Cohen, Historian

Professor Debórah Dwork, The Graduate Center – City University of New York (Holocaust scholar and advisor)

Professor Anne Kelly Knowles, History Department, University of Maine (Holocaust scholar and geographer)

Ms. Maja Kruse, Interdisciplinary PhD candidate, University of Maine (geographer and map designer)

This exhibit was launched in January 2025

Holocaust Remembrance: A Commitment to Truth

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Teaser image:

A Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) Survivor’s Journey: 15 Years On

AKAHNJOC — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 20:37:18 +0000

What is conflict-related sexual violence?

The term “conflict-related sexual violence” (CRSV) refers to rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage, and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls, or boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict. Under international law, CRSV is a war crime, crime against humanity, crime of torture and can be a constitutive act of genocide.

Among its most prevalent root causes are pre-existing gender-based inequality, patriarchal social structures, poverty, and economic inequality.

Sexual violence in conflict is a despicable tactic of war and repression that destroys lives, terrorizes populations and fractures communities. We must listen to survivors, replace impunity with justice and indifference with action.”

- UN Secretary-General António Guterres on the commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, 17 June 2022

CRSV Data, Trends and Patterns

In 2023, the UN classified 21 situations of concern - current conflict-affected areas, those that are post-conflict, and other situations of concern where CRSV trends and patterns exist.

95%

Against women and girls

32%

Against children

4%

Against men and boys

.6%

Against LGBTQI+ individuals

Unfortunately, these statistics do not reflect the full scale of this crime.

UN’s Response to CRSV

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC), and its subsequent Office, was established in 2009 through Security Council resolution 1888. The Special Representative serves as the UN’s spokesperson and political advocate on CRSV. She chairs the United Nations Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict (UN Action) Network and her work is supported by the United Nations Team of Experts on the Rule of Law/Sexual Violence in Conflict (TOE) and a programmatic team.

TOE

The TOE was also created by Security Council resolution 1888 (2009) to assist national authorities in strengthening the rule of law, with the aim of ensuring criminal accountability for perpetrators of CRSV.

UN Action

UN Action was established in 2007 and is noted in various Security Council resolutions as the critical interagency coordination mechanism to address CRSV, comprised of 25 UN entities across the humanitarian, development and peacekeeping nexus.

Programme and Communications Team

The OSRSG-SVC’s Programme and Communications Team compiles the information that the UN collects and analyses data on CRSV for the purposes of improving early warning, prevention and response to CRSV, particular in tailoring response services for survivors.

The Story of CRSV

This exhibition illustrates a journey that a CRSV survivor may go through, starting from actions taken prior to the occurrence of CRSV, the incident of the crime, and the various short- and long-term pursuits to help promote a survivor’s safety, healing, and recovery.

Every survivor is unique, having been through their own experience and having different needs and ways of coping. This exhibition outlines a potential journey – one that is not linear – that survivors of CRSV could endure. It should not be forgotten that not all survivors have the opportunities, family, social or community networks, or capacity to move along the path to recovery. Survivors hold the decision to choose, or not choose, to undertake any services or activities.

Ultimately, there are as many stories as there are survivors.

Prevention of CRSV

What happened to me could have been prevented.”

- Survivor from Bosnia and Herzegovina reflecting on the CRSV incident perpetrated against her in November 1993

CRSV occurs before, during, and in the aftermath of conflict. It is driven by both armed conflict and gender inequality. As such, prevention measures and risk factors associated with CRSV draw from both conflict and gender-based violence, and include addressing root causes associated with political, economic and social inequalities, human rights violations, and drivers of insecurity and displacement such as climate change. Early signs of CRSV include threats against women human rights defenders, the outbreak of violence, and economic or political instability.

Therefore, preventing the occurrence of CRSV requires preventing the outbreak of conflict itself.

UN Action-funded trainings were conducted for more than 40 senior members of opposition forces in Diel, Central Upper Nile, in 2019 to identify concrete actions to help eliminate CRSV. UNMISS Photo

Officer beneficiaries who received trainings on the judicial handling of CRSV crimes in the DRC as part of UN Action-funded project in 2023. JHRO Photo

Multiple actors have a critical role to play in the prevention of CRSV, including governments, the UN system, non-governmental and civil society organisations, women’s groups, survivor representatives, the private sector, and individuals.

Prevention can be accomplished by:

Addressing stigma and root causes by targeting actions to advance gender equality

Regulating availability and misuse of illicit small arms

Increasing investment in human security and social support

Ensuring accountability through laws and prosecution

Securing commitments from conflict parties to prevent CRSV, and supporting sanctions against persistent perpetrators

Supporting early warning systems and capacity building

Engaging with vulnerable groups

UNODA's regional centre in Latin America and the Caribbean conducts a Firearms and Ammunition Evidence Management Course in El Salvador in December 2019. A series of technical elements were shared to incorporate a gender perspective in investigation processes of crimes committed with firearms with special attention to cases of violence against women. UNODA Photo

The Occurrence of CRSV

This video produced by the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) relays testimonies from conflict-related sexual violence survivors about the crimes committed against them and their effects. Anyone can be a CRSV survivor: women, girls, men, boys of all ages, those from the LGBTQI+ community, and persons with disabilities. Due to high rates of underreporting, CRSV is often a silent crime that results in low visibility among all actors that are positioned to help.

Video by Sonam Tharchen | Photo by Nektarios Markogiannis

After CRSV: The Survivor’s Journey Begins

All forms of assistance must be conducted in a survivor-centred approach. This means that the survivors’ rights, needs, and wishes are prioritised across any action with the objective to support them. The most recent resolution on CRSV, Security Council resolution 2467 (2019), articulates a survivor-centred approach for the first time in the UN’s framework of responding to CRSV, recognising the importance of viewing survivors as leaders and agents of change, rather than just victims. Adopting a survivor-centred approach means creating a supportive environment for survivors, where they are the primary decision makers and can safely identify and express their needs and wishes.

Survivors know best what they need to heal and recover.”

– Nadia Murad, Yazidi survivor, activist and Nobel Prize laureate

Stage 1 - Immediate Assistance for Survivors

After the occurrence of a CRSV crime, survivors may be assisted by a range of actors. These include local non-governmental and civil society organisations, social workers, humanitarian workers, government agencies, police, and the military. In situations where the UN has a field presence, such as a peacekeeping operation or special political mission, the UN can provide assistance, including through its agencies and partners through Women’s Protection Advisers or CRSV focal points.

To emphasise the collective effort to provide assistance and address the immediate needs of CRSV survivors, the OSRSG-SVC Conflict's Programme and Communications Team will work with the national authorities or non-state actors who signed communiqués to develop implementation plans, in collaboration with civil society organisations. These plans further articulate concrete actions to ensure that there is a cohesive approach to preventing and responding to CRSV.

Immediate and Short-Term Assistance

In many instances, the aforementioned actors may assist survivors to access more specialised services, such as sexual and reproductive health care, medical and psychosocial services, and referrals to legal assistance. It is important that survivors are provided with comprehensive information so they can make informed choices, including choices about using multisectoral response services and the possible consequences of accessing those services.

One-Stop Centre Model

One-Stop Centres or mobile health clinics are types of service centres that may be available to survivors. They can cover a spectrum of multisectoral care and support for survivors of CRSV. The centres or mobile clinics can provide urgent, integrated and ethical services and facilitate timely response services under one roof.

Dignity Kit

Humanitarian actors often distribute Dignity Kits that typically contain menstrual hygiene materials, soap, underwear, and information on available gender-based violence services, including where and how to access those services. These kits can be tailored to each context, taking into consideration local languages, cultural, and religious garments.

Stage 2 - Medium- and Long-Term Assistance

Pursuing Justice & Accountability

As part of their journey, CRSV survivors may also wish to pursue legal action against their perpetrators. It is critical that legal services are available should they wish to utilise them. This includes access to legal aid centres and hotlines in local languages, the provision of materials and individual reparations, and participation in transitional justice processes in the long term. It is also critical that CRSV survivors are made aware of their rights to legal aid and assistance. Trials to prosecute CRSV crimes should be held in strict compliance with international standards, including in relation to procedural fairness, the full participation of victims, and the security and protection of all parties.

These are the veils and disguises that were worn during the Minova Rape Trials in the DRC. CRSV survivors wore them to protect their identities from the public due to stigma associated with sexual violence and risks of retaliation.

The Guinea Trial

In September 2023, current Special Representative Patten travelled to Guinea for the opening of the trial on the 13th anniversary of the massacre at the Conakry stadium (28 September 2009) that saw 150 deaths and countless rapes of women and girls. Through the Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict, the Office of Special Representative Patten supported the investigating judges until the closing of the investigation and the establishment of a Steering Committee for the organisation of the hearings.

Video produced by ONU Guinée (Video in French with English subtitles)

Undertaking Livelihood Activities, Skills Training, and Education

The majority of survivors come from socioeconomically marginalised communities, whereby stigma and discrimination surrounding survivors of sexual violence may restrict their access to education and economic life. It is therefore vital that efforts to assist CRSV survivors on their road to recovery include the provision of education, livelihood activities, and skills training, such as economic empowerment initiatives.

The impact of survivor empowerment and reintegration:

Participate in existing markets and education systems

Access educational and work opportunities

Voice agency in economic decision-making

Exercise control over their resources and political future

Bolster individuals’ agency and independence

Help survivors reintegrate within groups or communities

Empower survivors to become active contributors and agents of change

Through the UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, there are numerous multi-stakeholder initiatives undertaken to support CRSV survivors to become employed, self-sufficient, and educated. The following information showcases an example of how CRSV survivors participate in livelihood activities, skills training, and education through engagement with the UN Action Network.

Somalia

In a gathering space, discussions included early marriage, the roles of women in the security sector, and the roles of mothers in protecting their children from violence.

A cultural heritage event allowed participants to present their unique traditions, foods, arts, and dances to strengthen relationships among communities.

A pot-breaking exercise stimulated discussions about trust and responsibility.

Running between 2020 and 2021, UN Action funded a project that leveraged the strength of women in Somalia to mitigate CRSV and prevent violent extremism implemented by the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) and IOM. The project used culturally grounded approaches to assist women, who were formerly associated with violent extremist groups, recovering from trauma and provided economic empowerment support to ultimately ensure that the women became active contributors to sustainable peacebuilding in their societies. Survivors received individualised services, such as medical support, referrals, and specialised mental health counselling, and also participated in education, business development, and livelihood skills training to enable them to rebuild their lives, tailored to adapt to each woman’s unique interests, needs, and goals.

Photography by IOM Somalia

Stage 3 - Survivors’ Political Participation in ɫ��TVbuilding and Development Efforts

The Special Representative supports survivors to become agents of change and travels extensively to meet with CRSV survivors in various situations of concern, including in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America. These conversations with survivors help inform the Special Representative's advocacy efforts with UN Member States, including at the UN Security Council, as well as the strategic priorities and initiatives of their Office.

The UN has also worked to ensure that survivors and service providers are heard and present at the decision-making tables, including at Security Council briefings, political gatherings, and advocacy events.

At the 10th anniversary of the CRSV mandate in 2019, survivors were invited to speak at the UN Headquarters in New York to showcase how they were able to overcome their trauma, become agents of their own change, and participate in wider peacebuilding activities to advance the mandate. Many of these survivors have used their stories to help other survivors, including by founding non-governmental organisations, men’s groups, and associations.

Badryia, a survivor from Iraq: “Nobody can stop me. Not even ISIS.” UN Photo

A women’s shelter in Iraq being opened with advocacy support from Special Representative Patten in 2018. Photo/UNFPA Iraq

Aimé, a survivor from the DRC, has used his experience to form a male survivor-led support group that brings together male survivors of CRSV. UN Photo

Ángela, a survivor from Colombia: “With our empowerment and leadership, we have not only managed to confront stigmatisation and support other victims who see us as an example, we have also become advocates for the rights of girls and women.” UN Photo

15-Year Anniversary

UN Photo

2024 marks the 15-year anniversary of the creation of the UN’s agenda to prevent and respond to CRSV, and specifically the creation of the role of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Attention is needed to bolster and reinforce the UN's work on CRSV, specifically in supporting survivors in their journey to recovery and healing. Although this exhibition detailed a potential journey of a survivor, the majority of survivors do not receive any treatment or services in the immediate, short, medium or long term. Many of the survivors who are able to physically recover are still waiting for justice and accountability. It is critical that their stories are heard and their needs are met.

Sponsors and Collaborators

This exhibition, A Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) Survivor’s Journey, is presented by the United Nations Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict (UN Action) Network, a coordinated body of 25 UN entities, hosted under the UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. The exhibition was organised in collaboration with frontline service providers, Women’s Protection Advisers, SEMA (the Global Network of Victims and Survivors to End Wartime Sexual Violence), the Dr. Denis Mukwege Foundation, the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, the Government of Japan, the Government of Norway, Bibliothèques Sans Frontières, and VMLY&R.

This exhibit was launched in June 2024