Rape and sexual violence in war zones will be treated as a “grave” crime against humanity, it was announced yesterday , as the world’s major states, with some help from Angelina Jolie’s star power, launched a bid to end what William Hague labelled the “slave trade of our generation”, the Telegraph reports.
The Foreign Secretary hailed an “historic agreement” by G8 foreign ministers that represents the first international effort to tackle “one of the greatest and most persistent injustices in the world”.
New funds of £23 million would go towards developing an “international framework of deterrence and accountability”.
He paid warm tribute to fellow campaigner Angelina Jolie, the actress and United Nations special envoy for refugee issues, who visited the Democratic Republic of Congo with him last month to highlight the issue, which Britain has made a priority of its chairmanship of the G8 this year. She had been involved, he said, “every step of the way in developing the initiative”.
In response, the film star praised Mr Hague’s leadership.
“Rape is not a women’s issue, or a humanitarian issue, it is a global issue and it belongs here at the top table of international decision-making where he has put it,” she said at a press conference during the London summit.
Jolie said those raped had for too long “been the forgotten victims of war: responsible for none of the harm, but bearing the worst of the pain”.
The largest numbers of victims of rape in conflict were in Africa, Mr Hague said, with 250,000 women raped in DR Congo over the last decade and hundreds of thousands in the Rwandan genocide. But he recalled that tens of thousands had also been abused during the war in Bosnia.
Under the declaration, rape and sexual violence during conflict would constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, putting a responsibility on signatories to actively seek out and put perpetrators on trial.
The document committed the G8 to create a new protocol on investigating such crimes, provide new training for their militaries on how to deal with sexual violence and provide support for prosecutions.
Save the Children, which issued a report on sexual violence against minors this week, welcomed the declaration.
Brendan Cox, Save the Children’s director of advocacy, said: “It is great that G8 countries are putting funds behind their words on preventing sexual violence and the UK’s leadership has been instrumental in making this happen. The majority of victims of sexual violence, especially in conflict situations, are children so we must ensure these funds reach the most vulnerable children as a matter of urgency."

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