Before I begin, I want to honour the lives lost to war. The women, men, girls, and boys whose futures were taken from them. And our own colleagues, who lost their lives while trying to save others.
Every day, war and violence unfold before our eyes:
On our phones. On our television screens. In an endless stream of images of destroyed homes, grieving mothers, injured children, and families fleeing for their lives.
We see it all. And yet we are not seeing the whole picture.
Today, the report we are launching, the UN Secretary-General’s report on Women, Peace and Security, puts evidence behind those images and confronts us with a devastating reality:
War is getting deadlier for women and girls. And the world is allowing it to happen.
Last year, more than 37,000 civilians were killed in armed conflicts.
One in four was a woman or a girl.
That proportion has doubled since 2021.
At least 25 women and girls are killed every day.
Today, more than 750 million women and girls live within 50 kilometres of an active conflict.
For them, war is not something they can scroll past. War is outside their door.
War follows women into maternity wards. Into classrooms. Into kitchens. Into the places where families should be safe.
Bringing a child into the world should never be a death sentence.
But a woman giving birth in a conflict-affected country is five times more likely to die from maternal causes than a woman giving birth in a stable country.
In Gaza, the destruction of hospitals and maternity facilities, and the collapse of access to essential supplies, have contributed to a 41 per cent decrease in live births and a 300 per cent increase in miscarriages.
Across crisis-affected countries, girls are two and a half times more likely to be out of school.
In Afghanistan, the most severe women’s rights crisis in the world today, girls are being denied the education that could transform their lives.
We must also not forget the wars and crises that rarely make the headlines. The conflicts that have disappeared from our screens, but not from the lives of the women and girls enduring them.
And for the women and girls who survive wars, the burden is relentless:
Finding food when markets have been destroyed.
Finding water when infrastructure has collapsed.
Caring for children, older relatives, and the wounded when health systems no longer function.
In conflict-affected countries, women and girls spend five times as many hours on unpaid domestic and care work as men and boys.
And then there is the violence that too often goes unseen.
In 2025, the United Nations verified 9,788 cases of conflict-related sexual violence.
More than twice as many as the previous year.
Almost four times as many as in 2022.
And we know the real number is far higher.
In Haiti, reported cases of sexual violence rose by 163 per cent.
These are women and girls whose bodies have become targets of war.
Whose suffering continues long after the attacks.
Women are paying the price of wars they have almost no power to end.
But women are also showing us what peacebuilding looks like.
They mediate disputes before they turn violent.
They negotiate safe passage for families trapped by fighting.
They protect survivors of sexual violence.
Women hold communities together when institutions collapse.
Yet, when peace negotiations begin, when ceasefires are drafted, when the future of their countries is decided, women are not part of the conversations.
In 2025, women made up just five per cent of negotiators across 57 peace processes.
And not one of the 13 ceasefire agreements explicitly prohibited conflict-related sexual violence.
Today, we are seeing so much suffering that we risk becoming numb to it.
But we cannot allow the extraordinary scale of human suffering to become ordinary.
We cannot scroll past the suffering of women and girls as though it were inevitable. And those with the power to stop it cannot look away.
We cannot have security measured by the weapons a country possesses, but by whether a girl can walk safely to school, a woman can live free from violence, and families can go to sleep without fear of war.
The numbers in this report are shocking. But they are not inevitable.
They are the result of decisions.
Decisions about who we protect. Whose voices we hear. Whose lives we value.
And where we put our resources.
Our message today is simple.
End the wars.
Stop the killing of women and girls and all civilians.
Uphold international law. End impunity.
Bring women into every peace negotiation – as decision-makers.
And fund the women’s organizations that are saving lives and building peace every day.
The world does not need more statements about the suffering of civilians. It needs action to stop the suffering.
The UN Charter was born from the devastation of war. Its promise was that future generations would not have to endure the same horrors.
We cannot honour that promise while accepting endless war as the world’s new normal.
War is a human choice. So is peace.
And our call is for peace. For every woman, for every girl. For every civilian. In every country. Without exception.
Thank you.
Full report available on 26 October by close of business, EDT. For an unedited copy, contact the media team at [ Click to reveal ]
