Rape in Conflict

Explainer: How Does Family Planning Save Lives?

When a war forcibly displaces tens of thousands of people, UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, equips displacement camps and medical personnel with critical supplies—including condoms, oral and injectable contraceptives, contraceptives implants and intrauterine devices. 

When an earthquake tumbles whole city blocks, UNFPA puts contraceptives onto emergency relief convoys, alongside kits for delivering babies and medicines to stop internal bleeding.

When a cyclone slashes through remote island communities, UNFPA sends contraceptives just as it sends sterile medical equipment.

Why? Because contraceptives are part of life-saving humanitarian care.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio Will Be a Disaster for Women

and

On Wednesday, Marco Rubio appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his confirmation hearing as the next secretary of state. Rubio is expected to be confirmed without any serious opposition, thanks to the rarity of Cabinet nominee rejections and public support for Rubio, even among Democratic senators. (Rubio served for years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a senator from Florida, and Democrats like Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Cory Booker of New Jersey greeted him warmly on Wednesday.)

But make no mistake—Rubio’s history of hostility toward reproductive autonomy and his recent embrace of “America First” nationalism heralds a State Department that decimates women’s health, human rights and well-being.

Trump’s Second Term Blueprint: Using the Helms Amendment to Enforce Total Global Abortion Bans

The Helms Amendment turns 51 years old on Dec. 17. As the second Trump administration gets underway, Project 2025 looks to Helms as a tool.

At the same time, there’s also a bill pending in Congress to repeal the Helms Amendment: the Abortion is Healthcare Everywhere Act—led in the House by Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and in the Senate by Cory Booker (D-N.J.)—which would remove Helms’ language from the Foreign Assistance Act and specify that U.S. foreign assistance funding can be used for the provision of abortion in countries where abortion is legal.

Men in Detention Face Sexual Torture Amid War in Ukraine

The world is seeing “heightened levels of conflict-related sexual violence, fuelled by arms proliferation and increased militarization,” a recent United Nations report notes. Although the vast majority of victims of this crime are women and girls, this kind of violence is also all too common—and severely underreported—among men, boys and people of diverse gender identities.

“Most of the reported incidents against men and boys occurred in detention settings,” the U.N. report states. 

When It Comes to Sexual Violence, the Truth Matters

Much of the denialism of the sexual violence perpetrated against Israeli women on Oct. 7 is rooted in a fear that recognizing one group’s suffering may somehow take away from, or even justify, another’s. It doesn’t.

There is no perfect recipe for breaking these awful, untenable cycles of violence and retribution. But a few ingredients seem necessary, and one is a willingness to acknowledge suffering, instead of avoiding the instances of it that are inconvenient or that complicate a good-guys-versus-bad-guys narrative. One is facing difficult truths, especially those that complicate your politics or your worldview. One is refusing demands for silence, and rejecting with-us-or-against-us ultimatums.

Rape as a Weapon of War: A Ms. Reading List

Feminists have long been sounding the alarm on the use of rape as a weapon of war—and firsthand accounts of what happened in Israel on Oct. 7 are spurring an urgent conversation once again, reminding us that the battle to secure justice for the victims of rape through war crimes prosecutions continues to this day. Below, we’ve curated some Ms. reporting from the last decade, to help readers better understand the feminist fight to designate rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity.

Combating Terrorism and Misogyny Together

and

In the grim landscape of global conflict, one element stands starkly at its core: the systematic oppression and subjugation of women. The narrative of international security and foreign policy ignores gender, overlooking the crucial role women play in the fabric of societal stability.

The war that begins with women’s bodies does not end there. To effectively counter the scourge of terrorism, we must reject the false dichotomy between human rights and national security. Instead, we must recognize that the protection and empowerment of women are not just moral imperatives but strategic necessities. 

Eyes on Everywhere Else: Sudan, Pakistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Eastern Congo

The world is not confined to Israel and Palestine, and it should be possible to give that conflict the attention and outrage it deserves—which is a lot—while not treating other people as trivial or disposable because they happen to live in places that are not as geopolitically relevant to U.S. interests, or are not as psychologically or biologically tied to as many Americans and Europeans, or are not as connected to the American and European telling of history.

It does not have to be this way. We do not have to turn our eyes away.

Who Pays the Price for Men’s Wars?

The people who are least responsible for this war—women, children, innocents of all kinds—are bearing the heaviest burdens of this war.

I’m on the side of the women whose children’s lives have been stolen, of the women who were told to flee but had nowhere to go, of the women who fled but were bombed anyway, of the women who don’t have clean water or medicine or electricity or a safe place to hide, of the women who like so many women are desperate down to the marrow to protect their children, of the women who cannot do that one singular thing, of the women scrawling names on their children’s limbs so someone might be able to identify them, of the women who are pulling their children’s bodies out of piles of rubble, of the women who lost their lives to a war they didn’t start and wanted nothing to do with.