Sexual violence is one of the most brutal tools of war, which is becoming more and more widespread in Donbas
For almost six years of war in Donbas, more than 100 cases of acts of sexual violence were recorded in Donbas. It is possible that there are thousands of unsolved facts of such crimes. There are even known cases when girls and women became pregnant after being raped by the Russian military.

The Rome Statute clearly defines that rape, forced prostitution, forced sterilization and other types of sexual violence, which constitute gross violations of the Geneva Conventions ( if they are committed in the context of an armed conflict and are related to it), are war crimes. This means that persons who have committed such crimes can appear before the International Criminal Court.

The Eastern Ukrainian Center for Public Initiatives reported that sexual violence in various forms has been widespread since 2014, from the very beginning of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine, but now the number of victims is increasing every day. 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, gynecologist Denis Mukwegereceived an award for helping women who were raped during the Congolese wars. Mukwege started helping women in 1994, when armed men started entering Zaire during the Rwandan genocide. He became the world’s leading expert on how to treat the effects of sexual violence and was one of the first to speak out about the fact that the military does not rape for sexual pleasure, but to intimidate the population, and began to speak out against such means of warfare. Dr. Mukwege helps women from many countries around the world, including Ukrainian women. He emphasized, that the Russian occupiers do this not to get sexual pleasure, but to show that they have the power and strength to mentally destroy their victim. To humiliate, to break the people’s ability to resist, so that the community cannot resist the enemy.