Sexual violence in war is almost always hidden deeper than the destruction of cities. It is not always visible in satellite images and rarely appears in the first footage after an airstrike. Yet it often shows most clearly how far armed power can go when a defenseless person is placed under total control.
The United Nations’ annual report on conflict-related sexual violence has become politically explosive this year. For the first time, Israeli and Russian security forces were added to the list of parties credibly suspected of patterns of rape, torture and sexual humiliation in wartime.
The same document also names Hamas, Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces and armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But the inclusion of Israel and Russia changes the political weight of the list: it is not only nonstate armed groups under scrutiny, but also the forces of states fighting major wars.
According to Daycom’s assessment, the central meaning of the report is not the diplomatic scandal around it, but a shift in the language of accountability. The United Nations is effectively saying that sexual violence can no longer remain a “shadow” crime of war, lost between battlefield updates, negotiations and casualty figures.
The report covers nearly 10,000 verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence in 2025, more than twice the number recorded the previous year. Even that figure does not capture the real scale. In these crimes, silence is often part of the trauma, and fear becomes an extension of the violence.
The sharp increase reflects more than the number of wars. The deeper problem is impunity. When punishment appears unlikely, sexual violence becomes a tool of control, humiliation and terror. It is used not only against bodies, but against identity, dignity and the social fabric around victims.
In Israel’s case, the report describes incidents involving Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, including during detention and interrogation. It cites rape, gang rape, attempted rape, violence against genitals, forced nudity and sexual threats.
These allegations are especially sensitive because they concern places where detainees are under the full control of security forces: military camps, checkpoints, prisons and police facilities. It is in such spaces that a state has the strongest obligations and the least room for excuse.
Israel has categorically rejected the accusations and described its inclusion on the list as evidence of institutional hostility. Its response was not only legal, but political: Israeli diplomacy moved to sever contact with the U.N. secretary general over the report.
The document also refers to accounts from people held hostage by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups after the October 7, 2023, attack. Earlier U.N. findings identified signs of sexual violence during those attacks, although access to some survivors and locations remained restricted.
That is why the report offers no convenient political picture for any side. It shows that sexual violence in conflict does not fit neatly into propaganda frameworks. It must be investigated regardless of the flag under which the suspect acts and regardless of how uncomfortable the truth may be for allies.
In Russia’s case, the geography is different: Ukraine, occupied territories, prisoners of war and civilian detainees. The report verifies 310 cases of conflict-related sexual violence linked to Russian forces and authorities in Russia and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
Most victims in those cases were men: prisoners of war and civilian detainees. The abuses described include rape, gang rape, genital mutilation, beatings and electric shocks to the genitals. This is not incidental cruelty. It is a method of breaking a person.
For Ukraine, the findings carry a double meaning. They strengthen the international evidentiary record of Russian war crimes, while also underlining the vulnerability of survivors. Every testimony in such cases requires not only legal precision, but protection from repeated humiliation.
Russian authorities have consistently denied accusations of war crimes and human-rights abuses. At the same time, international monitors have faced years of blocked access to occupied territories, detention sites and people who might speak without the control of security structures.
The report also documents 31 cases of sexual violence implicating Ukrainian forces. Ukraine was not added to the list, and the document notes steps taken by its government to address such crimes. That distinction matters: there is a difference between individual cases and a finding of a systematic pattern.
The political force of such a list does not lie in automatic punishment. It is not a court verdict. But it creates a framework of international pressure in which states and armed groups find it harder to hide sexual violence behind military necessity, battlefield chaos or the secrecy of detention sites.
The central problem remains unchanged: sexual violence in conflict is almost always undercounted. Survivors stay silent because of shame, fear of retaliation, distrust of investigators, dependence on occupying authorities or inability to leave dangerous territory. Any official number is therefore closer to a minimum than a full picture.
For international justice, this report is a test of consistency. If the world is willing to speak about sexual violence only when the perpetrator is politically convenient, the language of accountability quickly loses meaning. If the standard applies to all, it becomes one of the few tools capable of surviving diplomatic crises.
The wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Congo differ in origin, scale and history. But they share one feature: where weapons destroy control over life, sexual violence becomes an extreme form of control over the body. That is why documenting it is not a secondary humanitarian issue, but a central question of wartime responsibility.
This year, the United Nations did more than add new names to another list. It recorded a dangerous pattern: in a world where wars multiply and punishment slows, sexual violence becomes cheaper for perpetrators. Unless that logic is broken by courts, sanctions and evidence, it will become another front on which civilians lose first.
Північний сектор Гази у 2025 році — Сахер Алгорра
