Baroness Arminka Helic: Preventing sexual violence in war

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? the History Bureau Putin and the Apartment Bombs listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts with the European Athletics Championships the Men's FIFA World Cup and the Commonwealth Games all taking place 2026 is shaping up to be a terrific year for global sport and the More Than The Score podcast will be following all the action bringing you interviews with sports stars and exploring the stories beyond the score sheets with the BBC's expert sports journalists More Than The Score from the BBC World Service.

1:05Listen now. Search for More Than The Score wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:31has been subsidized for 33 years. Isn't that enough? Solar for 25 years, that's enough. I don't have army. I don't have missile rockets. I have my body. I have my voice. I love singing. And so my goal was always to do better and better at it. I was still in an induced coma in hospital when the world was defining me. For this interview, I met Baroness Armin Kahlic at our studios in London. She came to the UK as a refugee from the Bosnian War and ended up as a member of the House of Lords, having worked as a special advisor in the Foreign Office. She serves on the International Relations Committee and campaigns on behalf of refugees and against rape and sexual assault as a weapon of war.

2:14She was instrumental in setting up the Preventing Sexual Violence and Conflict Initiative in 2012 during David Cameron's government, aimed at tackling sexual violence in war zones across the world. But 15 years on from that, Aminka is dismayed by the increasing prevalence of these crimes and ongoing wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa. The problem is we have never had as many conflicts and I think the issue of accountability is yet to be addressed until and unless people who are responsible for these crimes, people who have ordered or who have looked away when these crimes were happening and who can be identified until they are taken to courts and until they are being prosecuted for the crimes that have been committed, we are going to have a problem.

3:07It's very difficult for those who have gone through these crimes to speak about it because of the stigma that is attached to it. There are some extremely powerful examples like Rohingya women, like women of Bosnia and women of Kosovo who have come out and spoken. and so many women have spoken now on what's happening in Sudan. But we mustn't consider this issue to be of a lesser importance. Arriving in the UK as a refugee in her 20s, Armika tells me how the experience shaped her, how proud she is to be British and how she now brings a different perspective to the UK's second chamber on issues around asylum, genocide and war.

3:50Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service. with Baroness Armin Kahelic. I think I was in a state of emergency and trying to survive and find safety, that I didn't have time to really think about who I am, what was I doing, and what my life was about. I actually lived in a now all the time. The important thing was to make it that day and stay focused. But those were my formative years and they were not fun years, but they were years when I learned a lot about myself, what I was capable of. And I also learned about other people, how good people can be and how open and warm and welcoming they can be.

4:41and I had wonderful experiences of people who helped me in their own way wanting to make sure that I feel kind of looked after, whether that was a family that opened their home to me and that I lived with, whether that was someone who took me out to lunch and asked me about myself and my family because I was here just on my own and with my sister actually, but we were living in two different places and all my family were scattered somewhere in Bosnia, somewhere refugees in Croatia, someone who took me out and bought me a jacket and trainers. It was all part of who I would eventually become, someone who can see beyond where people are from, what their religion is, what their skin colour is, what their story is.

5:32I think it has given me a gift of seeing humanity before I see anything else. And that has really helped me be who I am today and make a contribution that I'm hoping I can make in the House of Lords. And that moment of entering the House of Lords as Baroness Halic, how was that? Well, that was... Actually, I remember what happened is I was in Foreign Office working at my desk and someone came in and said, Foreign Secretary would like to see you. and I thought like I must have leaked some piece of news that I wasn't supposed to or I've spoken out of turn etc and I went in and he said to me you're going to receive a call from prime minister he was sounding me as they say and sending me out and say like we think that you would be an excellent member of the upper house of the house of lords and I felt really slightly shocked and honoured.

6:29And when I entered the chamber to be introduced, I was really proud. I was proud because I thought the Britain I idealised and the country that I love is really the country that I haven't made up in my mind. It really exists. And look, for every single reason that if you were to ask today, should someone who was born in Bosnia-Herzegovina, whose parents were communists, whose grandparents were Muslim, whose former refugee, if you want, should that person be in one of the oldest institutions in the United Kingdom, people would go like, well, let's talk about it. Let's have a discussion about it.

7:12Would that work? That's when I recognized that Britain is an extraordinary country, because it gave me an opportunity to stand up. And based on my experience, which was there were good days and there were bad days, to try to bring in a perspective that probably my colleagues, whether they're hereditary peers or whether they're someone who worked in the field of law, business or science, would have never had. And there I am. I'm an example of a person who came from a different region and a different background. And I was given an opportunity to be part of that institution. And I really take it seriously because it is extraordinary honour and I work very hard to prove to myself, to everyone else, that I'm worthy of sitting on those benches.

8:01And when you look back at your life so far and think about your experience as a refugee coming here, how would you say that experience has shaped your worldview? It has given me a particular perspective of knowing what lies on the other side. It has given me ability to, when I watch news or when I read a report or when I see numbers and stats, I know that, and this sounds like a cliche, but it is true, behind every one of those faces and numbers, etc., there is an individual, there is a human being. And that human being did not ask to be ethnically cleansed, did not want to leave their home. That human being has had life well before they found themselves in another country, whether that is a neighboring country, which is usually the case for people who are displaced, or elsewhere.

8:57They had a family, they had a street, they had a school, they had friends, they had their shop. All that gets taken away from them. And I always hope that when I have an opportunity to make a contribution, I remind my colleagues and people who are decision makers, do not forget that these are people just like us. It's just that you and even I have been lucky to live in a country that can offer you safety and security. And they haven't. And they could be maybe even better doctors, better leaders, better musicians than some of us are. It's just that they have been taken that away from them, not because they asked for it to be taken, not because they offered, but it was being taken by force.

9:39And I always hope that that will, in a way, be a little reminder to people who make decisions. And I believe that until we are all safe, and this may sound realistic, no one is safe. And in the world where there's so much injustice, we cannot live behind walls. We cannot leave behind strict, inward-looking ideas because at some point what is happening abroad will come to us, whether because we will be in a perpetually unstable world, whether because of the movement of people, whether because of the inability to go and see the world because it's not safe any longer. it will all come to haunt us.

10:23So I believe that it is better to try and deal with problems when they are small rather than when they pile up and we have very little opportunity and very little power to make a quick, impactful change. You were instrumental in the Preventing Sexual Violence and Conflict Initiative. Can you just tell our listeners, though, what is conflict-related sexual violence? It is basically, in its most horrendous way, it is use of rape and sexual violence against women and girls, babies, men and boys, in order to destroy families, communities, individuals. It is used as a part of ethnic cleansing and genocide because it is a horrific, cheap crime committed in majority of conflicts today and throughout history.

11:17It is a crime that is yet to be punished the way it deserves to be punished. Accountability still is missing while the stigma on groups of people and women and men is growing bigger. And why is this the issue for you? Why do you have this passion? Because first I knew very little about it. I grew up in a country that used to be safe. I grew up in Yugoslavia, a country that doesn't exist anymore. And Bosnia is one of the republics of that former federation. I found about women, Bosniak women, mainly in Bosnia-Herzegovina, who during the war were taken to, became to know as rape camps. And rape was used against them and their daughters and, you know, They're manfolk as well, in order to insert this horror and to aid ethnic cleansing and genocide.

12:20I found out about it, but I kind of didn't spend much time thinking about it because just like everyone else, I thought there were more immediate issues to be dealt with because there were sieges, there's denial of aid and food, etc. And people who were wounded and they needed to be looked after first. and after the war I kind of read about it and then a film came out called In the Land of Blood and Honey that was directed by Angelina Jolie. It actually is a film about what was happening in Bosnia in the 1990s and I saw it and then we kind of brought together her and William Hague and they came up with the idea of setting up an initiative that is an initiative that is even today of trying to find ways of not entirely stopping this, because no one can stop it, but trying to handle and tackle this issue that has become prevalent in all the conflicts.

13:19And through education, through accountability, through destigmatizing this, and through helping survivors not only to tell their stories, but in a way heal. but we are nowhere near defeating this evil. There was a UN report just a few years ago that found that 63 actors in 21 countries and territories were credibly suspected of conflict-related sexual violence. It's still happening. It's not going away. Why? It isn't. It even feels like it's getting worse. It is getting worse, I think. We have managed to raise the awareness but we haven't managed to defeat it. The problem is we have never had as many conflicts, and I think the issue of accountability is yet to be addressed.

14:07Until and unless people who are responsible for these crimes, people who have ordered or who have looked away when these crimes were happening, and who can be identified until they are taken to courts and until they are being prosecuted for the crimes, we are going to have a problem. So that's one issue. And the other issue that it's very difficult for those who have gone through these crimes to speak about it because of the stigma that is attached to it. There are some extremely powerful examples like Nadia Murad, like Rohingya women, like women of Bosnia and women of Kosovo. So, you know, so many women have spoken now about what's happening in Sudan.

14:52We mustn't consider this issue to be of a lesser importance. Like when I first heard about it, I was like, well, there are other things that need to be done. I was guilty of the same attitude. It is important to hear what women have been through. It is important that they are there when we have a peace agreement, whether that is in Ukraine or elsewhere, that this mustn't be an issue that is a footnote. It is an issue that matters. But what response do you get? I mean, you've raised the issue of Sudan and sexual violence in the House of Lords. What kind of response do you get? Well, I get a response, you know, we are sending, we are analysing, we are supporting, etc.

15:25Doing what we can do. But I think we cannot say enough about it. We cannot raise it enough. We've got to talk about it. And it has to be an issue that is front and centre, if you will. So this is a political challenge. It is a political challenge. You have to have political leadership. And there isn't any? I don't think that there is as much political leadership now. For example, we used to have a very good friend and ally in Secretary Kerry. He talked about it. I don't hear Secretary Rubio talking about it. To be honest, at this stage, I don't even expect to. You need to have someone or a group of countries that are going to take this as a serious issue and really not give in and give up.

16:08And I see how difficult that is because we are not talking about issues like ethnic cleansing or genocide. Other considerations come into play. Is there any progress? Is there a place that you can point to where you are seeing some progress? Like I know in Ukraine, for instance, there is a stronger push there for some accountability. There is a stronger push and there is a collection of evidence and there is a prosecutors in Ukraine have been helped by different international organizations and by our own government here. There is progress that has been made in Colombia, for example, particularly with sexual violence committed against men.

16:44There is a progress that Nadia Murad is making when it comes to Yazidi women who were victims of ISIS atrocities and criminality that took place now over a decade ago. there is some progress. It is what Dr. Dennis McWaggy in DRC is doing, that is progress. The fact that he and Nadia are, you know, Nobel Peace laureates, that is progress. But we need to treat this issue the way we would treat landmines or cluster munition, etc. It needs to be outlawed. And for as long as we turn a blind eye to it, or we consider it to be a lesser crime, we cannot make progress.

17:25You're listening to The Interview from the BBC World Service.

17:55first covered this story? What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. With the European Athletics Championships, the Men's FIFA World Cup and the Commonwealth Games all taking place, 2026 is shaping up to be a terrific year for global sport. And the More Than The Score podcast will be following all the action, bringing you interviews with sports stars and exploring the stories beyond the score sheets with the BBC's expert sports journalists. More than the score from the BBC World Service. Listen now, search for more than the score wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

18:43Baroness Amin Gahelic came into our BBC studios in central London during the busy run-up to Christmas. She arrived early, which is rare these days, so we began talking as we waited for the studio and we never really stopped. She was warm, approachable and strikingly direct. And once something caught her interest, you felt the full force of both her attention and her intelligence. In fact, we had so much to talk about that we ran over our allotted time and she ended up late for her next appointment. Okay, let's return to my conversation with Baroness Halich. Would you say the issue of starvation as a weapon of war has had more attention.

19:21I mean, in your country of birth, it was used as a weapon of war when Sarajevo went through 1 ,400 days being cut off from food, water, medicines, and power. But we have seen this discussed when it comes to Sudan recently and Gaza. Would you say more attention is being given to that as an issue, which I know you also feel passionately about? Their attention is there, but attention is not enough. You have to have a concrete action being taken. We cannot possibly considered to be acceptable or accepted to be normal that food, water, shelter, warm clothes and shoes are sitting on the border with Gaza and the babies are dying in Gaza.

20:07Why is it not getting the attention that it deserves right now then? I think that people are feeling probably mentally exhausted and they feel powerless. And some people also feel nervous to talk about it because sadly, if you speak about injustice towards people in Gaza or West Bank, you are almost in certain circles considered to be a person who doesn't appreciate just how it came about or doesn't accept a particular narrative of how it came about. and you may end up being labelled anti-Semitic, for example, which is actually really problematic because anti-Semitism is a serious issue. We know what it resulted in in the Second World War.

20:56It has to be treated with an utmost seriousness. You can't label people who have a problem with food not being allowed anti-Semitic because in a way you devalue the whole concept of anti-Semitism. It's horrendous. So when we use that word, we have to be using it because we know that the person on the other side or the group on the other side is practicing something that is utterly unacceptable. We cannot use it against people who are saying like, well, you know what, I cannot bear the fact that we have, even the UK government has sent aid that is sitting in Jordan while people are starving or freezing across the border.

21:37Given the silos that people are in on social media and online as well, these are big ideas and messages that you're trying to get across. How do you breach this world that we're living in right now where people's attention is so focused on the thing that they care about, the thing that they're following, the thing that's being pumped to them on their social media? I mean, where do you see the leadership with some of these bigger ideas? I mean, I don't, it's, you know, you see leadership, there are people who are trying to cut through and explain. I think education matters. I think political leadership matters.

22:17Treating people not on the basis of where they come from, what their religion is, what the color of their skin is, where they kind of, quote unquote, belong, or where they come from is a starting point. And to have the situation, for example, in Sudan, going on for two years, even longer, to have a situation like this, allowing not only to fester but to develop even further, to have mass graves, to have sexual violence being committed against women and girls in front of their families, and not to sanction those who enable it, and not to speak up against it, not in a passionate way. This passionate way of, we have a problem, human beings on the other side there are being ethnically cleansed, genocide is being committed in Sudan.

23:08What are the levers of power that we are going to use to influence it in the same way that we rightly have done when it comes to Ukraine? But do levers of power also need to be used as a deterrent? Absolutely, absolutely. And I think deterrent comes not when you have a crisis. You want to act before a crisis and you use what levers of power you are on an international level or on here in the United Kingdom or with our allies and friends, etc. And you say, well, this is not something that can be tolerated. And that doesn't mean that we are going to be sending British troops to defend anyone. I know how unpopular that would be, but it means that we have other levers of power that we can use diplomatically through trade, through sanctions, etc.

23:51This shouldn't be an afterthought. Why the unwillingness? Why the fear then to do it, to use those levers of power? I think that there are too many interests that come into play. We are in a new era where human rights have been replaced by trade and economic interests, and they have almost entirely depleted our ability to show humanity to people on the other side. 30 years on from the war in Bosnia, it was such a different time, obviously. Do you feel that there has been progress, though, for women who are in conflict situations and in war in terms of women having a voice or there being mechanisms in place that allow women to have a voice?

24:38Yes, not only because of the initiative itself, but because of what the initiative did to help others speak and that someone is going to record it, that someone is going to potentially have that record preserved so that one day justice can be done.

25:00Thank you for listening to The Interview from the BBC World Service. You'll find more in-depth conversations on The Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including episodes with Nobel Prize winner Maria Reza, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Carina Machado and Microsoft founder and global philanthropist Bill Gates. Until next time, bye for now.

25:30If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it? It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. With the European Athletics Championships, the Men's FIFA World Cup and the Commonwealth games all taking place, 2026 is shaping up to be a terrific year for global sport.

26:16And the More Than The Score podcast will be following all the action, bringing you interviews with sports stars and exploring the stories beyond the score sheets with the BBC's expert sports journalists. More Than The Score from the BBC World Service. Listen now. Search for More Than The Score wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

26:39Thank you.