Sexual violence punctures the lives of women in every conflict and crisis zone across the globe. Yet the women in these crisis areas who become pregnant from rape are almost universally unable to obtain safe abortions, even when they are legally entitled to them. As global crises escalate and refugee situations become ever more protracted, this problem only becomes more significant for a greater share of the world’s women, who often turn to unsafe self-induced procedures, risking their lives and health and driving up rates of maternal mortality.

Photographer Nichole Sobecki and writer Jill Filipovic have reported this story from Colombia, Bangladesh, Honduras and Uganda, each of which illustrates a different aspect of this overlooked global health emergency.

In this event, Nichole and Jill present their reporting on the issue, and discuss what they consider to be the most effective ways to tell this story. How can the trauma of women’s experience be visualised respectfully? How, when injustice needs to be witnessed, do reporters navigate the issue of what can and cannot be shown? And how do these considerations translate into a story with visual impact?

You can read Jill and Nichole’s reporting in the NY Review of Books (16 June 2021), UnHerd (June 2021), Les Glorieuses (June 2021), and Politico (June 2019).