REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, LONDON -- Sexual violence in conflict is a "horrendous and barbaric crime" that must be treated as seriously as genocide or slavery, a British parliamentary report said on Tuesday, calling for redoubled efforts to stamp it out.
Britain must keep up the momentum of a high-profile campaign kick-started by Hollywood star Angelina Jolie and former British Foreign Secretary William Hague to end the global scourge or risk squandering progress, it said.
The report also urged Britain to resist any peace settlement in Syria that proposed amnesties for perpetrators of sexual violence during the conflict.
It also called for the creation of a new tribunal to try peacekeepers accused of sex crimes, and said the next U.N. secretary general should put the issue at the top of the agenda.
Peacekeepers and humanitarian staff have been accused of sexual abuse, rape, paedophilia and trafficking in 11 countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Britain should push for the "naming and shaming" of states that fail to investigate or take action against peacekeepers accused of these crimes, said the report by a committee of the House of Lords, Britain's upper parliamentary chamber.
Conflict-related sexual violence, as distinct from peacekeeper abuses, is happening in at least 19 countries, according to the United Nations.
Committee chairwoman Baroness Emma Nicholson said this had been accepted for far too long as "just something that happens" in war.
"It is not; it is a war crime. Like genocide, slavery and torture it must be challenged and eradicated," she said. "This is on a par with the elimination of slavery - that's the campaign we're calling for."
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Launching the report at the House of Lords, Nicholson said the horror had been brought home to her when she saw an 18-month-old boy who had been reduced to a "tiny quivering mass of terror" after being repeatedly raped.
"I got the impression it would be better if he died very quickly. It was horrific. That cannot be allowed, but it is being allowed," she said.
Nicholson said sexual violence in conflict not only destroyed individual lives but broke up communities and prevented societies from building sustainable peace.
Many survivors gave evidence to the committee including three Yazidi girls who were kidnapped by Islamic State in Iraq.
They said they had been repeatedly raped and sold on to other men. Many girls were gang-raped and mothers were raped in front of their children, they said. Some girls were so traumatised they committed suicide.
The report said sexual violence in conflict was "as prevalent, if not more prevalent" than when Jolie and Hague founded the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative in 2012 to protect survivors and press for perpetrators to be held to account.
Hague told BBC Radio that any solution to the Syrian war should allow for the prosecution of sexual violence perpetrated by parties to the conflict - even if this could not happen for many years.
Any peace deal built around an amnesty would be "deeply flawed and doomed to create greater conflict in the future", he added.
The committee called for more work on the ground to tackle the stigma faced by survivors of sexual violence who are often ostracised.
It emphasised that many boys and men are also victims of sexual violence.
Aid agencies welcomed the report but some asked why it neglected the plight of children born of rape who can suffer a lifetime of stigma, shunned by their communities and even their mothers.
"The children themselves have to come to terms with the fact that half of their DNA belongs to a war criminal - while facing perpetual blame for something they played no part in," said World Vision child rights expert Erica Hall.
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