This page offers tools, outreach materials, participatory facilitation guides, and resources for engaging with diverse groups — including women and girls, men and boys, adolescents, older adults, persons with disabilities and sexual and gender minorities — to promote safety, respect and community-led action.
Stigma is not an inevitable consequence of sexual violence; it is a choice - a choice made by communities and societies when the responsibility for the violence creeps unjustly from the perpetrator to the victim. Informed by the lived experiences of victims/survivors of sexual violence from several conflict-affected countries where ICRC works, this video presents some of the harmful consequences of the 4 layers in which stigma operates: fear of stigma, individual, family, and societal. By choosing supportive practices over stigmatizing ones, we all help survivors, their families, and their communities to recover and thrive.
Sexual violence in conflict leaves deep scars, but stigma makes them worse.