Jess Davidson, RCN Fellow, adds:

Sexual Assault Nurse examiners, and clinical nurse specialists in forensic examination and SARCS and all nurses who work with sexually traumatised civilians and serving personnel in conflict, are not just nursing professionals, they are front line responders, forensic experts and human rights defenders.

In conflict zones, their presence can be the difference between silence and justice, between ongoing trauma and the first step toward healing. Their role is essential in addressing the needs of survivors and building accountability systems in post conflict recovery.

Registered nurses provide skilled and professional, sometimes expert witness to sexual violence. Nurses have a uniquely trusted position in society and can plan and deliver services that respond to sexual violence, and the gathering of evidence that is immediate. It does not have to stand alone but can become part of the nursing armoury that documents and protects chains of evidence alongside other emergent healthcare needs. If this evidence is lost, it is lost forever.

In Sarah Helm's book, 'If this is a Woman' , in 'A Woman in Berlin' , in Primo Levi's books, in 'Nurse at the Russian Front' by Florence Farmborough, in 'The Roses of No Man's Land' by Lynn Macdonald to pick only a few - include important witness and lived experience testimony of experience and response during times of war of women who responded to the needs of people experiencing sexual violence, in streets, in camps, in war zones. It has always been thus.

In a world that is increasingly hostile toward women and girls and routinely using sexual violence including homicide, as a weapon of war, a tolerance and a blind eye toward states and systems using sexual violence in conflict and in the construction of social oppression, nursing is needed more than it ever has been to bear witness, gather evidence and build an equitable professional, female voice in emerging states and in the Theatre of War , as important as that of armed forces , governments, lawyers and doctors.

Sexual violence against women and girls is as much a threat to global economy as is microbial illness. Testimony of voices through the debris, banality and chaos of conflict, are often left unheard. Increasing use of sexual violence, an erosion of women's reproductive rights and the emergence of gender apartheid where systems perpetuate inequality and the denial of fundamental human rights for women, set the scene for this unique collaboration between the Royal College of Nursing and the Imperial War Museum , London to explore what nursing can do, and does do in responding to sexual violence in conflict for all people who have been hurt by sexual violence.