International Day of Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict 2025: Know the date, theme, history, and significance
As a result, the United Nations General Assembly established International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict on June 19, 2015.
The day was designated to commemorate the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008) on June 19, 2008, which denounced sexual assault as a war strategy and a barrier to peacebuilding.
Fear and cultural shame continue to impede the great majority of survivors of conflict-related sexual assault from reporting such victimisation, with according to UN field practitioners, 10 to 20 occurrences of rape reported during a war go unrecorded.
This day raises awareness about the need to eliminate conflict-related sexual violence, honour and stand in solidarity with the victims and survivors of sexual assault globally, and the ones who have courageously dedicated and sacrificed their lives campaigning for the abolition of such crimes.
This year will mark 11th year of the observance, falling on Thursday, June 19, 2025, under the theme of Breaking the Cycle, Healing the Scars: Addressing the Intergenerational Effects of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence which seeks to instil hope, knowledge, and inspiration as the globe raises its voice to declare, '#EndRapeInWar'.
This year's focus is on the significant and long-lasting intergenerational traumas caused by conflict-related sexual assault, as highlighted in the message of António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General.
According to the UN, the term 'conflict-related sexual violence' can be defined as rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilisation, forced marriage, and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated.
For too many women and children, war is not over when it's over. Its effects echo long after the final battle and far beyond the battlefield. We see it in the eyes of survivors, in the children born of war, and, in fractured families. pic.twitter.com/owQVM5iQMv
— UN Against Sexual Violence in Conflict (@endrapeinwar) June 18, 2025
It also includes human trafficking, which occurs in conflict contexts for sexual assault or exploitation. All these can be defined as and are examples of 'conflict-related sexual violence' against women, men, girls, or boys, and are directly or indirectly linked to a conflict.
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