Rehabilitation, compensation, and, perhaps more importantly, the satisfaction that justice has been served. For survivors of wartime sexualized violence worldwide those are the essential aims of any reparations program.
However, aims don’t always match outcomes. Survivors rarely receive comprehensive reparations. Instead, they often spend years in courtrooms, seeking at least some form of justice, while their attackers — and the states they were representing — often evade accountability.
On the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, RFE/RL tells the stories of survivors from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine, Kosovo, Chechnya, and Afghanistan and their personal struggles to seek justice.
Ukraine: ‘I Want To See Them Punished’
Human rights activist Lyudmyla Huseynova, a survivor of wartime sexualized violence, is now one of the leading voices advocating for the rights of survivors in Ukraine.
Since 2014, when Russia seized control of Crimea and began backing separatists in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, she has also been helping orphans living near the front lines.
It was in the Donetsk region in 2019 that she was abducted by separatists. Falsely accused of espionage and extremism, Huseynova was brought to the infamous Izolyatsia prison in the city of Donetsk.
The Russian military and separatists in charge of the prison routinely subjected those under their control to physical and psychological abuse and torture, including of Huseynova, who said she suffered torture and sexualized violence.
“For example, everyone, just everyone, went through forced stripping at Izolyatsia, that’s for sure,” she recalled. “And then — it’s impossible to say who was or wasn’t lucky, because it will sound cynical — then there were many women who survived [sexualized violence]. The militants blackmailed some women, so to speak, with the chance of seeing or speaking to their children. It’s so cynical and so disgusting.”
In 2022, she was released as part of an all-female prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia, along with 107 other women. Now, Huseynova is fighting for reparations and punishment for the rapists, not only in her own case but in those of other survivors.
After her release, she filed a case against Russia both with Ukrainian prosecutors and at the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
“One of my personal hopes is to see them punished. I was so happy when I received confirmation that my complaint had been accepted for consideration by the [ECHR] court. And there it says [on the document]: Huseynova Vs. Russia,” Huseynova said.
“In it, I documented everything that happened to me: the illegal detention, the inhumane conditions, and the instances of sexualized violence, as well as the total lack of any medical care.”
In April 2024, Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament commissioner for human rights, announced the launch of an interim program to compensate the wartime survivors of sexualized violence at the hands of the Russian Army. According to a statement, up to 500 survivors will receive onetime compensation of 3,000 euros ($3,200) and additional psychological assistance from the Global Survivors Fund, a survivors-focused NGO administering the program.
“Reparations to survivors of gross human rights violations, especially victims of conflict-related sexual violence, are not limited to economic support. It is an important step toward establishing justice,” Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska said in early March while discussing the program.
Alongside this, Ukrainian authorities are seeking full reparations from Russia, according to Iryna Didenko, who heads the department of the Prosecutor-General’s Office handling cases of war-related sexual violence.
“We are collecting evidence for the international courts mostly. Our survivors are ready to go and testify in another country. This is what we are trying to achieve in all possible ways,” Didenko told RFE/RL.
Didenko’s office has documented nearly 300 cases of sexualized violence committed by invading Russian forces since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, although the true number is feared to be much higher and growing.
Survivors of sexualized violence are also seeking other forms of compensation from Russia as well, says Khrystyna Kit, director of Ukrainian female lawyers association JurFem.
“We are also talking about other forms of reparations, in line with international law,” Kit said.
Igor Cvetkovski, a specialist from the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) who is currently working in Ukraine, says reparations can include “psychosocial support” and “vocational training,” along with “helping children born from rape.”
Given the fact that many survivors of sexualized violence may not come forward, it is important that they have the option to seek help and justice even decades later, Cvetkovski says.
Bosnia-Herzegovina: Not Paying Up
Ms. A, as she was referred to in court documents, was sexually assaulted near Sarajevo in 1993 in an area controlled by ethnic Serb forces. She was 32 at the time of the attack and has been waiting nearly as many years for compensation.
She came closer to finding justice in 2015, when her attacker was found guilty in a Bosnian court of wartime rape and sentenced to eight years in prison. He was also ordered to pay his victim the equivalent of some $16,000 but has not yet paid, claiming he did not have the money.
Four years later, Ms. A also appealed to the UN Committee Against Torture, which issued a recommendation in 2019 that Bosnia-Herzegovina compensate her instead. But that too has not happened.
Nearly 30 years after the end of the war in Bosnia, survivors of wartime sexual violence are still struggling to access the assistance and protection they need.
“The working group [in Bosnia] appointed to implement the decision and create a strategic plan of measures for implementation was truly dysfunctional,” said Ms. A’s lawyer, Ajna Mahmic, who works with Trial International, a Geneva-based NGO that helps victims and seeks justice for international crimes.
During the Bosnian War, which lasted from 1992 to 1995, it is estimated that between 20,000 and 50,000 women, girls, and men were raped. Many of them never received proper medical and psychological care or financial support. Bosnia does not have a countrywide law to support victims of war, including those who have suffered sexual violence.
Thirty-two individuals were convicted for crimes of sexual violence by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which ceased functioning in December 2017. Since then, more than 90 convictions on sexual-violence charges have been handed down by local courts. In some cases, perpetrators were obliged to pay compensation ranging from $8,200 to $33,000.
While across the former Yugoslavia efforts have been made to bring perpetrators of wartime sexual violence to justice, their victims have largely been forgotten, Cvetkovski says.
“There has been no regional reparations program, nor an adequate national reparations program — except for laws in Croatia and Kosovo, and some efforts in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Cvetkovski told RFE/RL.
“However, there has been no comprehensive approach to reparations for victims of sexual violence or any other type of victims.”
In its findings, the UN Committee Against Torture also recommended that Bosnia create a fund to compensate all wartime victims of sexual crimes, a system of psychological support, as well as issue a public apology.
However, since the UN recommendations were made five years ago, a working group has been created but made little progress.
Jasna Zecevic, the president of Vive Zene, a Bosnian NGO that provides comprehensive support for rape victims, says that survivors are still struggling to receive compensation for their suffering.
Those efforts are hampered by Bosnia’s complicated administrative system, with separate applicable laws for each of the country’s three entities: the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, and the Brcko District.
Those differences in legislation have led to uneven access to rights, according to Trial International, as well as varying compensation awards. Depending on where they live, survivors of sexual violence in Bosnia can receive monthly compensation as low as the equivalent of $75 or as much as the equivalent of $373.
Progress on the issue is slow, according to Cvetkovski, not because of a lack of funds but more a lack of political will.
Kosovo: Delayed Justice Is Denied Justice
Since 2023, April 14 has been observed in Kosovo as the Day of Sexual Violence Victims who suffered during the 1998-99 Kosovo War, where Serbian forces terrorized the ethnic Albanian population.
While the number of sexual-violence survivors from the conflict remains unknown, a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the figure as high as 20,000 people.
This day, Kosovar officials say, serves to “recognize the pain” of all survivors of sexual violence during the war and to contribute to collective memory.
Kosovo has taken some steps to help survivors. In 2018, Kosovo instituted a reparations system, paying victims of wartime sexual violence the equivalent of $245 a month. But advocates say this falls short of what those affected need.
“While survivors of sexual violence are eligible to receive this monthly payment as…recognition of their suffering during wartime as rape victims, it ruled out them receiving old-age pensions,” said Feride Rushiti, executive director of the Kosovo Rehabilitation Center for Torture Survivors (KRCT), a Kosovar NGO providing aid and support to survivors of sexual violence.
However, just recently, the Basic Court of Pristina, Kosovo’s top judicial body, ruled in favor of three survivors of sexual violence, awarding them not only compensation but a pension as well, Rusiti says.
Fitorja (not her real name) had her status confirmed as a victim of a war crime, entitling her to a monthly payment of the equivalent of 230 euros.
She was already receiving a lower standard pension, but she gave that up after the government informed her that she was entitled to just one pension.
Since 2021, with the help of KRCT, she has been fighting to keep her pension and the monthly payment. “The stress and waiting destroy you. [The termination of one pension] should not have happened,” the 71-year-old Fitorja said.
The court’s ruling in her favor, along with two other survivors, was a partial victory. Another seven similar cases are now going through the judicial system.
Chechnya: Living In The Shadows
In 2000, Russian Army Colonel Yury Budanov, together with two of his subordinates, kidnapped and later strangled 18-year-old Elza Kungayeva, a resident of the Tangi-Chu village in Chechnya.
During his trial in 2003, the colonel, who was part of the Russian force fighting separatists in the republic, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of murder, kidnapping, and abuse of power. He was stripped of his rank and ordered to pay the family 330,000 rubles (about $11,000 at the 2003 exchange rate).
Budanov was released from prison on parole in 2009, yet Kungayeva’s family got nothing from the ex-army colonel, who was assassinated in 2011, and they have also not received anything from the state.
In Chechnya, that is a familiar story. Following the conflicts of the 1990s and 2000s, thousands of people who suffered war crimes or who lost their homes and families are still waiting for compensation from the authorities.
The exact number of sexualized-violence survivors during both wars is unknown, largely due to a reluctance to report such crimes in Chechnya due to social stigma and the overall distrust of the authorities.
The Kungayeva’s family lawyers insisted on including two reports from independent forensic experts that confirmed that Kungayeva was raped. The rape charges, however, were eventually excluded from the indictment.
Afghanistan: Silence And Stigma
Survivors of wartime sexual violence in Afghanistan, where women’s rights have been dramatically curtailed by the ruling Taliban, are almost invisible.
To date, no aid or support has been provided to survivors. And since the Taliban seized power again in 2021, no institution exists to address the rights of war victims, says Shaharzad Akbar, the last chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The commission was dissolved when the fundamentalist militia returned to power.
Now in exile, Akbar, who heads the human rights watchdog Rawadari, says that, even before the Taliban’s rise to power, there was no effective system to deal with victims of wartime sexual violence. Some officials, she says, appeared to blame survivors for failing to come forward to demand justice.
“There was no official mechanism to address their issues. The only thing that the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission could do was document all cases of war crimes, which included sexual violence and rape during the war,” Akbar said. “There was no political will or inclination to address the rights of war victims.”
Over the last 30 years, Afghanistan has endured a series of devastating conflicts, with the civil war of the early 1990s, two periods of Taliban rule, and the prolonged conflict following the U.S. invasion in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
It was Afghan women that suffered the most, says Shinkai Karokhail, a former member of Afghanistan’s now dissolved parliament and a former Afghan ambassador to Canada.
“Unfortunately, there was no mechanism in place to identify those women who were sexually assaulted during the war, to listen to their demands, and to give them the courage to come forward and speak about the sexual assault they experienced,” Karokhail said.
“In Afghanistan, victims of sexual assault often hide their identities, while the perpetrators often boast about their actions,” she said, adding that in the deeply conservative country, survivors fear the stigma of coming forward.
According to Karokhail, Afghanistan’s democratic government, which was in power before the Taliban takeover in 2021, did little to help female survivors.
It was commonly known that women were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and some even sold at markets in Pakistan, Karokhail says. But one of the reasons why the issue of sexualized violence was ignored was that the people committing these assaults were in power themselves, Karokhail says.
And while women are now reluctant to come forward, Karokhail is convinced a few brave voices could trigger more.
“If a woman comes forward and says she has been sexually assaulted, I am sure that survivors of previous wars will also come forward and share their stories,” Karokhail said.