Arminka Helic, campaigner against sexual violence in war: Rape is used as part of genocide
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2026
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“Rape and sexual violence against women and girls, babies, men and boys, is used as a part of ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
We are in a new era where human rights have been replaced by trade and big businesses and they have almost entirely depleted our ability to show humanity to people on the other side.
Lucy Hockings speaks to Baroness Arminka Helic, Member of the House of Lords and campaigner for refugees and victims of war.
A former Bosnian refugee, she saw first hand the legacy of conflict-related sexual violence and the importance of ending impunity for rape and assault committed as a weapon of war. She tells of her warm welcome to the UK in 1992 and wants us always to remember the human beings behind the refugee statistics.
Baroness Helic talks about the progress in raising awareness of the crimes and her own work in launching the ‘Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative’ in 2012. She says that it’s really hard for victims to speak out because of the stigma around rape but when they do, their voices need to be heard and the crimes documented.
She also speaks about the plight of asylum seekers and the use of starvation in conflict zones like Gaza and Sudan. A Conservative peer, she’s keen to take the politics out of immigration and remember our humanity.
The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.
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(Image: Baroness Arminka Helic. Credit: Roger Harris/House of Lords)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | Hello, I'm Lucy Hawkins, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:11.0 | The best conversations coming out of the BBC, people shaping our world from all over the world. |
| 0:16.9 | Today we are spending trillions on war and peanuts on peace. |
| 0:20.2 | Wind power in the United States has been subsidized for 33 years. |
| 0:23.8 | Isn't that enough? |
| 0:24.8 | Solar for 25 years. |
| 0:26.3 | That's enough. |
| 0:27.2 | I don't have army. |
| 0:29.0 | I don't have missile rockets. |
| 0:31.3 | I have my body. |
| 0:32.3 | I have my voice. |
| 0:33.2 | I love singing and so my goal was always to do better and better at it. |
| 0:37.1 | I was still in an induced |
| 0:39.1 | coma in hospital when the world was defining me. For this interview, I met Baroness |
| 0:44.6 | Aminkahelich at our studios in London. She came to the UK as a refugee from the Bosnian War |
| 0:50.3 | and ended up as a member of the House of Lords, having worked as a special advisor in the |
| 0:54.5 | foreign office. She serves on the International Relations Committee and campaigns on behalf of |
| 0:59.8 | refugees and against rape and sexual assault as a weapon of war. She was instrumental in setting up |
| 1:06.7 | the preventing sexual violence and conflict initiative in 2012 during David Cameron's government |
| 1:11.6 | aimed at tackling sexual violence in war zones across the world. |
| 1:16.5 | But 15 years on from that, Aminka is dismayed by the increasing prevalence of these crimes |
... |
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