UNITED NATIONS — Major cuts in humanitarian aid have left victims of sexual violence in conflicts around the world without lifesaving help as clinics and shelters close, a senior U.N. official warned Tuesday.
Pramila Patten, U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, lashed out at the U.N. Security Council and the broader international community for making essential services for survivors the “least accessible at the very moment they are needed most.”
In conflict-torn eastern Congo, clinics are forced to turn away rape survivors because they aren’t able to provide basic care, she said.
And in conflicts in Sudan, Ukraine, northeastern Ethiopia and Gaza, “health care systems have been decimated” and humanitarian groups are having to do more with less to help victims, Patten said.
She decried humanitarian assistance being slashed without naming any countries, but she was clearly referring to the United States and other major donors.
President Donald Trump has decided to pull the U.S. back from its position as the world’s single largest aid donor, drastically curtailing funding that kept millions of people alive around the world. Even before his move, many other donor nations had reduced humanitarian spending.
Acting U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Dorothy Shea stressed Trump’s commitment to eliminating sexual violence in conflicts globally and expressed support for the work of Patten’s office — but her remarks to the council made no mention of funding.
Patten warned that as “militarism is on the march and the clock is being turned back on women’s rights,” organizations helping women affected by conflict “are going from underfunded to unfunded.”
“We are told there is no money for lifesaving aid, even as military expenditure soars, and the world spends more in 24 hours on arms than it does in a year on addressing gender-based violence in conflict,” she said.
Patten was presenting U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ annual report on sexual violence in conflicts, which was released last week and showed a 25% increase in cases last year.
The U.N. chief reported that more than 4,600 people survived sexual violence in 2024, with armed groups carrying out the majority of the abuse but some committed by government forces.
The highest number of cases were in the Central African Republic, Congo, Haiti, Somalia and South Sudan.
Patten stressed the unseen faces behind the figures, citing as one example a young woman who boarded a bus in Sudan’s capital to collect her college diploma and was dragged off by four members of a paramilitary force, gang-raped and left unconscious in a dark alley. She became pregnant and is struggling to care for her baby and deal with her trauma.
Patten said she wished she could say the U.N. Security Council and international community would take responsibility for the suffering and stand with survivors and the organizations that help them.
“I wish I could say that the donor and diplomatic community will uphold its values and hold the line on funding for protection and assistance,” she said. “But we shall see.”