SOMETIMES YOU BEGIN to use phrases and acronyms so often that they lose their meaning. However, there comes a time when their true meaning comes back and hits you with such a shock.

Last week, as a government minister, I sat with women survivors of conflict in Ethiopia, bringing that reality home.

My briefing documents for the visit made repeated references to SGBV (Sexual and Gender Based Violence). It’s not exactly a pleasant term, but it’s not until you sit across from women survivors that the true horror is brought to life.

Some of these testimonies are shocking and may upset you, but their stories matter. 

These witnesses told me how a woman in their village was gang raped by 15 soldiers. Another woman was thrown on top of the body of her dead brother and raped. Another person told how she was forced to watch a man have sex with her sister at gunpoint before they were both shot.

These shocking testimonies were difficult to listen to. Sadly, these are not isolated cases.

Rape continues to be used as a weapon of war. The reports we hear from Sudan, where women are subjected to inhumane levels of cruelty, are similar.

And it is not just in conflict zones.

In Addis Ababa, we visited a refuge whose youngest patient was two and their oldest was 70. The........

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