The UK Government is to spend a further £10 million on tackling war-zone sexual violence and violence against women and girls.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said the commitment was necessary to "end the treatment of rape and sexual violence as a secondary issue and to put women and women's rights front and centre in conflict resolution".

The Foreign Office is putting up £5m, which is 50% of the funding, with the rest coming from the Department for International Development. It is part of a £23m package pledged by the G8 nations in London.

Mr Hague said: "We need to shrink and eradicate safe havens for those responsible for war-zone rape and this is a step towards that."

Part of the funding would go into training the military to respond to conflict sexual violence. That training would be extended to peacekeeping groups of other nations, he said.

"This is a crucial step, since members of the armed forces are often the first to come into contact with survivors and could have an important role to play in helping to change male attitudes," Mr Hague said.

"Now that we have put war-zone rape on the international agenda, it must never slip off it again and it must be given even greater prominence.

"Ending the 17th and 18th-century slave trade was deemed impossible and it was eradicated. Achieving global action against landmines, cluster munitions, climate change, was thought impossible, yet the world acts on these issues."

Meanwhile, actress Angelina Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said rape in war zones was preventable and urged foreign ministers to boost efforts to bring sex offenders to justice.

"Hundreds of thousands of women and children have been sexually assaulted, tortured or forced into sexual slavery in the wars of our generation," she said. "Wartime rape is not inevitable. This can be prevented, and it must be confronted."