Hekma Hamed Guma Khater remembers exactly what time his mother, Khadija Mustafa Osman Said, died at the age of 59. The clock read 6:29 p.m. on May 18, 2023, when the house he lived in in Nyala, South Darfur, was riddled with bullets in fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitaries of the Support Forces. Fast. His two brothers and a neighbor also died in that incident. Hekma, who was the only survivor, suffered serious injuries to her eyes and arms. “They were murdered in a cruel way. “My mother and my older brother died instantly,” he recalls in a testimony collected by Amnesty International.
Khadija’s death last year fuels a tragic statistic. 40% of civilians killed in armed conflicts in 2023 were women, double the number in 2022; The percentage of boys and girls who lost their lives (30%) tripled. The remaining 30% were adult men, according to the annual report of the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, on the protection of civilians in contexts of war. This document also highlights an exponential increase in civilian victims, since at least 33,443 non-combatants died in 2023, 72% more than in 2022, according to the report. The increase is explained by the outbreak of new armed conflicts, and especially one: the war in Gaza. Seven out of every ten deaths recorded by the UN occurred in occupied Palestine and Israel.
The increase in the proportion of deceased women occurred “in all wars,” says Pablo Castillo, an expert from UN Women, an entity that has participated in the preparation of another Guterres report on women, peace and security published in mid-October and which recovers the disastrous figures on female mortality in war contexts. “The reason is the growing lack of respect for international law and humanitarian laws in a context of war – hot and cold – between superpowers and a general geopolitical climate that puts multilateralism in question,” he explains. “On the other hand, it reveals a tendency to attack everything that can be identified as feminism.” The complaint represents a change in the organization’s narrative, which normally focuses on stories of progress instead of presenting women as victims. “The situation is so ugly that we have had to return to the complaint.”
“The world is caught in a terrifying spiral of conflict, instability and violence. In 2023, more than 170 armed conflicts were recorded; Approximately 612 million women and girls lived within a 50-kilometer radius of the fighting, 150% more than just a decade ago,” the new document highlights.
Another “alarming” fact revealed by the study is the 50% increase in cases of sexual assault in war contexts. And the number of girls suffering serious rape in these countries increased by 35%. This is highlighted by Cristina Sánchez, law professor at the Autonomous University, expert in the interrelationship between war and gender. “They are not casual actions. Sexual violence is a specific and effective weapon of war. It not only serves to move the population of a place, but also operates as a currency; Women are sold to terrorist groups as a financing mechanism,” he notes.
The UN speaks of “a war against women,” who are affected in multiple ways, in addition to their death and rape. For example, access to medical care is increasingly restricted. Every day, 500 women and girls in conflict-affected countries die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. “At the end of 2023, in Gaza, already devastated, 180 women gave birth every day, most of them without basic necessities or medical care,” the UN denounces.
“A pregnant patient in a rural area had to wait two days to raise the money needed to receive care,” says Maria Fix, head of the Doctors Without Borders team in South Darfur, Sudan. “When he finally got to a health center, they had no medicine, so he returned home. After three days, her condition worsened, but she again had to wait five hours to be transferred. He was already in a coma when he came to us. He died of a preventable infection.”
Monographs such as that of the medical NGO, which collect testimonies of these dramas, are numerous and, however, are neglected by the international community. It is a criticism made explicit in the Secretary General’s document: “There is not even a basic public awareness of these injustices.” The authors also criticize the lack of media coverage: information about wars multiplied by six between 2013 and 2023, but only 5% of them focused on women’s experiences, and only 0.04% of articles mentioned the contribution of women as leaders.
“In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war has been reported for decades. And nothing happens. That also sends a message of impunity,” says Sánchez. In that country, the UN maintains, more than 123,000 cases of gender violence were reported in 2023, a 300% increase in three years. An increase that was not accompanied by more convictions. It is considered a milestone that, in May of that year, a Congolese court convicted a militia leader of the crime of forced pregnancy for the first time in the world.
Gender ‘apartheid’
The lack of attention also translates into less funding for organizations focused on equality and specific programs to reduce the impact of war on the female population, the document continues.
Likewise, they are relegated from peace negotiations, “despite the fact that it is known that, when there is more female participation, the agreements are more robust and lasting,” notes Castillo, from UN Women. “In the 2023 diplomacy there was no success and all processes practically excluded women,” she adds. They represented only 9.6% of the negotiators, 13.7% of the mediators and 26.6% of the signatories of peace and ceasefire agreements. The proportion of female signatories drops to 1.5% if the Colombian agreements are excluded.
Far from moving forward in this direction, attacks against women’s rights activists have intensified. “The anti-gender and anti-feminist movements are well organized and have considerable financial resources,” warns the UN. In several countries, such as Iraq, Libya or Yemen, local or national authorities have even banned the term gender and have restricted or persecuted activities that fight for equality. “This repression is accompanied by increasing attacks against human rights defenders, as well as against journalists and women artists in conflict-affected environments.”
In Afghanistan, “oppression of women is serious,” the report’s editors emphasize. There, those over 12 years of age have not had the right to education for three years, among other multiple restrictions that have led the UN to recognize the situation as apartheidgender. In surveys conducted by UN Women, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, 82% of respondents rated their mental health as poor or very poor, and 8% said they knew at least to a woman or girl who had attempted suicide since August 2021.
“Women continue to pay the price for men’s wars,” said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous in a statement following the publication of the data. “If we do not stand up and demand change, the consequences will continue to be felt for decades and peace will remain unattainable,” he concludes.
