Distinguished guests,
Let me begin by thanking Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin of the Office of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General for his message on CRSV. My office, including my Team of Experts, are proud to support the dedicated unit within his office and, dear Andryi, we will continue to do so.
After this very successful conference, I must again thank the sponsors of the conference, the Government of Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom, as well as the directors and staff of the Peace Palace for making this conference possible. But more importantly, this conference would not be successful without you – the participants. I really want to thank all of you for your active participation and substantive contribution as demonstrated by the very rich and lively discussions that have happened over the past three days. Your deep interest and dedication to address crimes of conflict-related sexual violence regardless of legal tradition or continent gives me great hope for our future ability to address these crimes.
The goal of this conference is to ensure that justice for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence becomes the rule rather than the exception. To reach this goal and to ensure that these successes at national level are replicable, we must work together and support one another. This conference is a first step toward this goal, but I wish to reassure you as we close this conference, it is not our last step. We would like to maintain and foster the connections made at this conference amongst prosecutors from different legal backgrounds globally into a community of practice. This community of practice would be an established forum amongst like-minded global practitioners to share their experiences and best practices, including novel developments in domestic legal frameworks and jurisprudence; to foster both informal and formal judicial cooperation; and to provide solidary and support amongst colleagues that are working on some of the most heinous crimes imaginable and in some of the most challenging of contexts.
In the coming days and weeks following this conference, my office, through the TOE, will seek your views on how to make such a community of practice amongst prosecutors relevant to you. Our goal is not to create yet another informal professional network but to be able to genuinely exchange with one another on a regular basis and most importantly to be practical and based on your experience. It will also be a community you can draw on for relevant expertise that can help you in your cases.
For my part, I urge you to continue to put the survivors at the center of your work. The United Nations Security Council in its resolution 2467 emphasized the importance of that approach in justice mechanism. Sexual violence as a tactic of war and terror is used precisely because it removes agency from survivors, families, communities, and even nations. A justice system that indeed puts survivors, front and center, acts impartially and with due process of law, returns the agency to that survivor that has been so cruelly robbed from them. The face of the United Nations mandate on conflict-related sexual violence is the face of the survivors and satisfying their urgent demand for justice is one of my strategic priorities. Those survivors are our moral compass. Let us act together with them and for them.
I wish you safe travel home and reiterate my thanks and gratitude for your participation.