Women in Conflict: Protected by Law, Abandoned by Enforcement

Spread the love

Women are not bystanders to conflict. They live beside front lines, line up for water under drones, and deliver babies under curfew. The latest global count is stark. About 676 million women and girls live within 50 kilometers of active conflict. That is the highest number in decades and it keeps rising.

The law says they should be protected. International humanitarian law requires distinction, proportionality, and precaution. It prohibits sexual violence, starvation, and attacks on schools and hospitals. The practice is different. Sexual violence in conflicts increased by roughly 25 percent in 2024 compared with the year before, according to the UN Secretary-General’s report. Underreporting is severe, so the real number is higher.

Peace talks still shut women out. In recent UN-led processes, women comprised a small fraction of negotiators and mediators. Some years saw single-digit inclusion. That is not a design flaw. It is a choice. The result shows up on the ground. Agreements that exclude women are less durable and ignore services that actually keep communities alive.

Schools should be safe. They are targets. Independent monitors recorded around six thousand attacks on education in 2022 and 2023, harming more than ten thousand students and educators, with a sharp year-over-year rise. The UN system logged over forty-one thousand grave violations against children in 2024, a thirty-year high. Girls carry the cost through forced displacement, early marriage risk, and permanent income loss.

Money tells the truth. World military spending hit about 2.718 trillion dollars in 2024, the steepest annual jump in decades. Funding for local women’s groups in crisis zones stayed close to zero point four percent of relevant aid. We pay for war at scale. We fund women’s protection with leftovers.

Korea’s policy frame matters here. Seoul adopted a Fourth National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security to expand women’s participation and protection obligations across defense, foreign affairs, and peacebuilding. That plan is a tool. It needs budgets, training, and measurable targets to become reality.

Accountability is the hinge. IHL already criminalizes the conduct that makes women’s lives unlivable. The gap is enforcement. The Security Council stalls. States decline jurisdiction. Evidence chains break in displacement. Survivors face retaliation. Until enforcement is treated as a non-negotiable part of warfare policy, the legal rule will stay a promise that collapses at the first checkpoint.

What works is not a mystery. Put women at the table for ceasefires and political talks and publish participation numbers by name and role. Protect schools and clinics as priority objects and tie assistance to verifiable compliance. Channel at least one percent of humanitarian funding directly to vetted local women’s organizations this year and move toward five percent within three budget cycles. Task national prosecutors to open structural investigations on conflict-related sexual violence and resource them to meet international standards for evidence, translation, and witness protection.

War on women is not a metaphor. It is a measurable pattern of exclusion, violence, and budget choices. The world knows the rules. Humanity shows up in the enforcement.