Militarization, Conflict Driving Surge in Violence against Women, Girls, Says Deputy Secretary-General at High-Level Meeting on Ending Violence

Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed's opening remarks, as prepared for delivery, to the high-level meeting of the Group of Friends for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls, in New York today:

Thank you to the delegation of the European Union to the United Nations and the Permanent Missions of Mongolia, Morocco and New Zealand for bringing us together to mark five years of the Group of Friends for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls. Conflict-related violence, political violence and the violence woven through daily life come to us under different names, in different settings, with different perpetrators. Yet, they grow from the same old assumption that women's lives can be discounted, women's bodies can be used, women's voices can be contained and women's freedom can be traded away when power decides it has other priorities.

That assumption is never more visible than in times of war. We are living through a moment in which war is too often narrated through the language of strength, victory and domination. That language asks us to admire force and look away from consequence, inviting a kind of moral deafness. But, as we know, the lived reality is something else entirely: homes torn open, schools reduced to rubble, bodies violated, communities displaced and futures cut short. Women and girls carry that violence in ways that are more intimate and lasting.

This wider climate should disturb us. Global military spending has reached over $2.7 trillion in 2024, the highest level ever recorded. That expansion does more than fill arsenals. It directs money, political energy and public prestige towards systems organized around force and away from the equality of genders. It enlarges the standing of institutions that have treated women's suffering as collateral to larger strategic aims.

Rhetoric demands scrutiny. When public life begins to romanticize militarization, it becomes easier to sanitize what militarization does: it maims, it rapes and it kills. The language grows cleaner as the reality grows dirtier. The latest reporting from the United Nations leaves no room for evasion. The Secretary-General's report on conflict-related sexual violence verified more than 4,500 cases in 2024.

We also know, and the report stressed, that the true number is almost certainly far higher because fear, stigma, retaliation and collapsed reporting systems conceal so much of the harm. The report is explicit that sexual violence continues to be used as a tactic of war and political repression. As a heinous tool of torture. That pattern is visible across crisis after crisis.

In Sudan, UN experts warned in May 2025 of widespread conflict-related sexual violence, abductions, killings and attacks on women human rights defenders and front-line workers. In the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported in April 2025 that a child was being reported raped every half hour. In Haiti, UNICEF documented a 1,000 per cent increase in sexual violence against children between 2023 and 2024.

In Ukraine, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) reported in February 2026 that more than 5,000 women and girls have been killed since the full-scale invasion began. In Gaza, UN-Women estimated that more than 28,000 women and girls had been killed between October 2023 and May 2025, an average of one every hour.

We could go on and on, filling every moment of this event with statistics more horrifying than the last. But, even then, we would not be confronted with the full force of the crisis we are facing. Because the assault does not end in conflict zones, it reaches women who document crimes, women who organize, women who testify. It reaches the women who defend human rights and preserve the possibility that those in power will be named and will face justice.

Yanar Mohammed - an Iraqi feminist and human rights champion murdered on 2 March - was one of those women. Condemnation alone will not shift the ground beneath women's lives. This agenda has to enter the places where power is exercised and decisions are taken. It has to shape ceasefire talks, peace processes, sanctions regimes, accountability mechanisms, humanitarian planning, financing decisions and national laws.

Women and girls cannot keep appearing in the margins of those discussions and simply left to endure the consequences of priorities that are being set by others. Their dignity and authority belong at the centre of the decision itself. This is where women-led peace becomes indispensable.

It's time to pull the world back from the brink of celebrating war while abandoning women and girls. That begins with calling out the forms of power that we are rewarding. It continues with refusing impunity in every guise. It deepens when we protect those who speak out for justice.

It endures when women help write the terms of peace, instead of being left to survive terms written by others and often don't. Men come back from war as heroes and women are often discarded. So, on this fifth anniversary, let us hold tight to the courage of our convictions while narrowing our tolerance for excuses.

Now is the time to secure what has been achieved in the last five years and to forge ahead for all women and girls. Today, let us double down and say no to violence of any type against any women or girls. Let us demand the investments that are needed for us to succeed in the promises that we have made to leave no one behind.