5
May
2022
Watch
The impact of the war against Ukraine on women (debate)
Mr President. Commissioner, thank you for your work and for those initiatives. They are appreciated and very important. Colleagues, the brutality of this war has shocked us all. A thousand people in the basement of a steel plant in Mariupol feeling the net tightening around them as Russian forces advance. A thousand people in mass graves across the suburbs of Kyiv, and millions of people with the scars that will be carried with them and their families for generations. Some of the worst atrocities in this barbaric war have been carried out targeting women. Perhaps the gravest of them all – rape and sexual violence – as a weapon of war. We all know the brutality. A woman gang-raped to death in front of her children. Children, both boys and girls, brutally raped while a screaming mother is forced to look on. A pregnant 14-year-old, who decides to keep the child because the brutality of the attack against her means she is unlikely to have children again. Unimaginable horrors. When we say ‘never again’, I have to ask, do we truly mean it? I think many people feel helpless, yet emboldened to take whatever action can be taken to stop these horrendous crimes against women. This cannot continue to happen. Every Russian soldier who commits rape in Ukraine must end up in The Hague at the International Criminal Court, and justice must be seen to be done. There can be no impunity for those who commit rape in the name of war. In the meantime, as the Commissioner has said, we must offer the very best support to victims of sexual violence, including healthcare, both physical and mental. We know that, for example, our NGOs across Europe are uniquely skilled to provide the kind of specialist help that many of these women need. I’ve seen it in rape crisis centres in Dublin, which worked in Bosnia after the war. We must fund these organisations so they can do this work. Women are victims of this war, as are the people of Ukraine as a whole and its diaspora around the world. Yes, we applaud, as the Commissioner has done, the strength of Ukrainian women and we stand with them. Slava Ukraini!