Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, Founder and Chair of the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes Against Women and Children, presented her report “Silenced No More” at UN Watch’s official side event at the 62nd session of the UN Human Rights Council, “Women’s Rights Under Extremism and Conflict,” urging the international community not to turn a blind eye to the sexual violence committed against Israeli women.
Prepared Remarks:
Distinguished colleagues, friends,
For more than two years, the Civil Commission has worked to document the sexual atrocities committed on October 7 and during captivity thereafter.
For months, we immersed ourselves in the depths of human suffering. We spent hundreds of hours bearing witness to testimonies and confronting some of the most devastating acts of cruelty imaginable.
We reviewed testimonies, photographs, videos, and accounts from survivors, witnesses, and families. We identified thirteen distinct patterns of sexual violence, including rape, gang rape, sexual torture, mutilation, prolonged sexual abuse in captivity, and forms of violence that exposed the limits of both our laws and our language.
Victims were filmed as they were murdered, tortured, and abused. Families were forced to witness the suffering of their loved ones in real time and, in many cases, continue to endure the circulation of those images and videos today.
Women’s bodies became spectacles of war.
This was terror designed not only to kill, but to be seen. To be celebrated. To be glorified.
As we carried out this work, we found ourselves confronting acts for which we simply lacked adequate legal definitions. We ultimately had to coin a new concept - the concept of kinocidal sexual violence - to describe the deliberate use of sexual violence to torture families, and to maximize their pain and suffering.
Our report, *Silenced No More*, became one of the most extensive independent efforts ever undertaken to document these crimes.
Yet today, after completing this work, I do not wish to speak only about what we documented. I want to speak about what we learned.
When we began this work, I believed our greatest challenge would be confronting the reality of these crimes - documenting the truth and addressing the immense pain and trauma they caused. And in many ways, it was.
But what I did not anticipate was discovering how easily human suffering can become visible and invisible at the same time.
I discovered that one of the greatest challenges of sexual violence in conflict is the human capacity to bear witness - to look directly at suffering and recognize it.
This reality manifested itself in many forms.
We encountered silence. We encountered hesitation. We encountered unprecedented levels of active and often aggressive denial.
And, at the same time, among those who were willing to support our work, very few have agreed to bear witness to these crimes.
Many who believe and want to support our work struggle to engage with the evidence.
I often hear people say that the report is too painful to read. The images too difficult to confront. The testimonies too devastating to absorb.
I agree. I couldn’t agree more. But what are we left with?
If we look away because reality is unbearable, we leave the future and our children unprotected.
This report is not only about the past. It is about the future.
It reveals some of the most dangerous developments in contemporary terrorism. The truth is that Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations created a blueprint of brutality for some of the most horrific crimes of the twenty-first century - a model that others may study, imitate, and refine.
I often say that we cannot begin to address what we do not know. We cannot confront what we refuse to understand.
And therefore, I believe we have to insist that the responsibility now would shift from the victims to those with power:
To governments.
To international institutions.
To security experts.
To counterterrorism professionals.
To all those responsible for protecting human life.
You probably also think like me - I wish it was that simple.
If the past two years have taught me anything, it is that responsibility alone does not guarantee action.
Perhaps the most painful lesson was watching institutions created to protect victims struggle to recognize them.
On a personal level, I must admit that this experience has been profoundly heartbreaking.
I have devoted my professional life to human rights. I have studied them, taught them, written about them, and believed in their promise. For years now, I teach generations of students that human rights belong equally to every human being; that the international system exists to protect the vulnerable and safeguard human dignity.
Watching the response to October 7 forced me to confront a painful reality.
The softest mechanisms failed. The mechanisms that should have been the fastest to respond with - the ability to listen, to acknowledge, to express solidarity, to recognize suffering - failed when they were needed most.
I witnessed victims of unimaginable violence struggling to be believed. I watched compassion become conditional. I watched the willingness to acknowledge suffering depend on the identity of the victims and the politics surrounding them. So much politics surrounding them that it was absurd.
And there were moments when I wanted to stand before the world and say:
Shame on us.
Shame on us for debating the humanity of victims. Shame on us for allowing ideology to eclipse compassion. Shame on us for failing those whose suffering should never have been controversial.
Most concerning, I watched Israeli and Jewish victims receive neither the protection nor the solidarity that this system was created to provide. Many found themselves confronting a wave of hatred, denial, and dehumanization that continues to spread across the world.
And I wish that had been our only challenge.
Unfortunately, what the past two years have taught me is that we are witnessing something even more troubling: elements of the international system are no longer merely failing us - they are actively working against us as a people. They contribute to a climate in which reality is manipulated, terrorism is rationalized, antisemitism is normalized, and basic moral principles are steadily eroded.
This is not merely the failure to confront terrorism, but the normalization of narratives that excuse it.
There were moments when it seemed that certain parts of the international system had ceased to function as safeguards against hatred and extremism and had instead become vehicles through which they were legitimized.
We have found ourselves repeating truths that should never have required repetition - that:
The deliberate targeting of civilians is never justice.
That rape is never resistance.
And today, I genuinely fear that the worst may still lie ahead if we fail to recognize what is happening and confront it.
When human rights become contingent upon politics, identity, or ideology, the human rights system ceases to function as a universal safeguard. It begins to collapse into the very hierarchy of human worth it was created to prevent. It undermines the moral foundation upon which the entire human rights project rests.
That realization was heartbreaking.
Somewhere along the way, the international system lost sight of its most fundamental purpose: to respond with compassion.
The ability to look at another person and say:
I see you.
I believe you.
You are not alone.
I know you have been through hell.
And what happened to you matters.
And this brings me to the final, and perhaps most important, lesson of all:
If there is one thing I hope you carry with you today, it is a deeper appreciation for the extraordinary power of human courage.
Because if the past two years have taught us anything, they have taught us something profound about finding our voice and speaking our truth. About pursuing what’s right.
In many ways, this journey taught us a lot about solidarity. It was a story about individuals who showed up and refused to look away. Who refused to remain silent. Who chose empathy over indifference.
From the very beginning, we found our sisters. We found women who understood. Women who had experienced persecution, violence, captivity, extremism, and war.
Women from the Yazidi community.
Women from Iran.
Women from Ukraine.
Women from Muslim communities around the world.
Women who did not wait for permission to show compassion. Women who recognized our pain because they had carried their own.
Some of the first people to stand beside us were women who knew exactly what it meant to be doubted. Exactly what it meant to have their suffering questioned. Exactly what it meant to wait for the world to listen.
Their solidarity reminded us of something essential:
That human rights are not built in institutions. They exist in the relationships between people. In the bonds and communities that we create as we come out of trauma and pain. They are built when we refuse to look away from another person’s suffering.
That is where healing begins.
That is where justice begins.
That is where humanity begins.
And perhaps this is the most important lesson I carry with me after these two years.
The world often speaks about sexual violence in conflict as though it is merely a legal problem. Or a political problem. It is both.
But before it is either of those things, it is a question of power.
It is about what happens when the most extreme forces acquire the power to shape reality itself.
The struggle for women’s rights is ultimately a struggle over power.
The power to shape the future our children will inherit.
The power to challenge extremism.
The power to confront hatred.
The power to rebuild after devastation.
The power to choose humanity over cruelty.
And we must continue to fight for that power.
