On 19 June, the world must confront the reality of sexual violence in conflict and refuse the silence that allows it to continue.

Each year, on 19 June, the world marks the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. We speak of dignity, justice, and solidarity. We say the right things. But if those words do not change what happens to women and children who flee places like the DRC and Sudan, then they remain little more than ceremony. For survivors, this day is not about symbolism. It is about whether anyone will truly see them, whether anyone will believe them, and whether the countries they run to will offer safety or simply another form of rejection.

Some stories are so painful that they should stop us in our tracks. In Sudan, UNICEF reported that children as young as one year old were among survivors of rape during the conflict, with more than 220 child rape cases recorded since the beginning of 2024. UNICEF’s own words were that children that young being raped by armed men should shock anyone to their core. They are right. A one-year-old child should never become part of a discussion about war crimes. And yet, in Sudan, that is exactly what has happened. This is what conflict-related sexual violence looks like when it is left unchecked, it reaches even the smallest bodies, even the most defenceless lives, and leaves behind terror that no child should ever have to carry.

The same truth lives in the eastern DRC, where women and girls continue to bear the violence of a conflict that has gone on for far too long. The stories are devastating not because they are unusual, but because they are painfully common. Médecins Sans Frontières recorded the account of a displaced woman in North Kivu, who said armed men entered at night, attacked her, and shot her husband dead when he tried to protect her. UNFPA shared the story of a woman, who was raped at gunpoint while collecting firewood near a displacement camp, alongside her teenage daughter, who was also assaulted. These are not stories of isolated cruelty. They show a pattern in which women’s bodies are turned into battlefields, and ordinary acts of survival, such as fetching firewood, trying to sleep, and moving from one shelter to another, become moments of mortal danger.

What makes this even harder to bear is that for many survivors, the violence does not end when they escape the conflict itself. Leaving Sudan or the DRC does not mean leaving behind the full weight of what has happened. It means carrying it across borders: the fear, the shame forced onto them by others, the grief of families torn apart, the silence that follows sexual violence, and the uncertainty of whether anyone in the next country will respond with care. Survivors often arrive already exhausted by loss and already stripped of their dignity. What they need at that point is not suspicion, and even worse, violence. They need refuge. They need systems that understand that trauma does not speak in clean sentences, and that pain does not always arrive in a form that is easy to process.

This is where South Africa must look at itself honestly. We cannot talk about conflict-related sexual violence elsewhere as though it has nothing to do with us. We are a country already living with a brutal crisis of gender-based violence and femicide. We know what it means to mourn women after the violence has happened. We know what it means to hold public outrage while still failing to build a society in which women are truly safe. That failure at home matters here, too. A country that has not yet learned to respond properly to violence against its own women and children will struggle to respond properly to women arriving from war zones with trauma that is also severe. The weaknesses and failures are connected. The same gaps in care, urgency, and moral imagination that fail South African victims can also fail Congolese and Sudanese survivors, in fact, all women who come here seeking protection.

And that is why this issue is not only about war “over there.” It is also about conscience “over here.” South Africa may not be able to stop armed groups in North Kivu or end the war in Khartoum. We cannot physically stand between every woman and every armed man in a conflict zone. But we can ensure that when a survivor reaches our borders, she is not made to feel unwanted, invisible, shamed, or burdensome. We can ensure that South Africa does not become one more place where women arrive after unimaginable suffering only to meet disbelief and indifference, even worse, hatred dressed in violence. That is within our power. That is within our control. That is within our debt to the generation of women who paved the way to freedom in South Africa and the African Diaspora. Our debt to women who marched the streets in 2018, demanding an end to Gender Based Violence and femicide, and again in 2025. In their demands, they did not say only South African women need protection; they said, “All women should feel safe, all women should be protected” in their call for better systems.

Too often, countries speak as though protection is an act of generosity. It is not. It is the minimum duty owed to another human being who has escaped from horror. When a woman flees rape used as a weapon of war, she is not asking for a favour. She is asking for the basic chance to live without fear. When a child survives sexual violence in conflict, that child is not a made-up tragedy in an international report. That child is a test of whether the rest of the world still has ubuntu and believes in humanity. If South Africa cannot end conflict abroad, the least it can do is refuse to send survivors back into danger, refuse to treat them as numbers, and refuse to reduce their suffering to paperwork.

The stories from Sudan and the DRC should unsettle us because they reveal how widespread and how normalised this violence has become. UNICEF reported that in eastern Congo, a child was raped every half hour during the most intense period of violence in early 2025. UN officials have also warned that sexual violence is being used systematically in the conflict there. In Sudan, the rape of children, including infants, shows a level of cruelty that strips conflict of any last pretence of humanity. These facts are ordinary information. They should move us. They should make us angry. They should make it impossible to speak about “protection” in statements alone and annual commemorations.

There is also something deeply painful about what survivors must endure after the violence. A woman who has been raped in conflict does not simply arrive in another country and begin again. She often arrives carrying injury, trauma, fear of men, fear of authority, fear of telling her own story, fear of being blamed, fear of being sent back, fear of being shamed. Many have lost homes, children, spouses, and communities. Some are pregnant from rape. Some are rejected by families or cast out by communities because of the very violence inflicted on them. What they need is safety that feels real, not abstract sympathy, not carefully worded speeches, and not systems that wait for them to “prove” their pain in acceptable ways.

This is why the commemoration of 19 June must be more than remembrance. It must be a challenge, especially for countries like ours. South Africa cannot claim to care about women’s safety while remaining casual about the suffering of women who flee conflict-related sexual violence and arrive here. It cannot condemn rape as a weapon of war in international spaces while failing to make protection real at home. It cannot express sympathy for survivors in the DRC and Sudan while allowing them to face further exclusion once they arrive in our country. That contradiction is too stark, and it cuts too deep.

What is needed now is not another polished statement. It is a different posture. It is a willingness to treat survivors with seriousness, urgency, and humanity. It is a recognition that our response to them says something about who we are as a country. When the world fails to stop sexual violence in war, the least a receiving country can do is make sure that those who survive it are not abandoned again and further exposed to perpetuated violence. The least we can do is make sure they find safety here.

Because the most painful truth is this: we may not be able to silence the guns in Sudan or end the violence in eastern Congo today. But we can decide what happens when survivors reach our shores tomorrow. We can decide whether South Africa becomes another stop in a journey marked by fear, or a place where dignity is restored and healing can begin. On a day dedicated to eliminating sexual violence in conflict, that choice will say more about us than any statement ever could.

And on a day meant to honour survivors, that choice is the one that matters most.

It is for this reason that all women and girls in this country, regardless of race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, or any other difference, must stand together in solidarity against conflict-related sexual violence, gender-based violence, and femicide. This is not a struggle that belongs to some women and not others. It is a shared struggle, and it demands a united action.

Lawyers for Human Rights will host a webinar on 19 June 2026 to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, reflecting on the devastating impact of conflict related sexual violence and the urgent need to strengthen protection for women and children. The discussion will also serve as a call for a united front and greater solidarity in confronting all forms of sexual violence, gender-based violence, and femicide through survivor centred, rights-based responses.

Join us here : https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/2df50f2d-26a9-41f1-ac64-69c67c8eee7d@b46151da-40f4-4d18-aff6-56919063888d

About the Author

Khomotso Molapo is a Candidate Attorney at Lawyers for Human Rights, where she works under the Penal Reform and Detention Monitoring Programme as well as the Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme. Her work focuses on promoting and protecting the rights of detained persons, monitoring detention conditions, and supporting refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants in accessing legal protection and justice. She is also a Master of Laws candidate in Labour Law, with a strong interest in human rights, dignity, and access to justice for vulnerable communities.