Thank you, Lord Ahmad; it is my great pleasure to co-host this roundtable, and I would like to start by commending and congratulating the UK-PSVI, under your leadership, for its historic efforts to bring sexual violence in conflict out of the shadows and onto the agenda of the top tables of diplomacy and foreign policy. I would also like to thank all the participants here today for your shared commitment to the cause of – once and for all – preventing the scourge of wartime sexual violence.
The one-year countdown to the international meeting, to be held in London in 2019, provides a critical opportunity to reinvigorate and refocus our collective efforts. It is a chance to celebrate progress and identify challenges five years on from the 2014 Global Summit, which was the largest conference ever organized on this subject. Five years is a short time in the history of warzone rape – a crime as old and enduring as war itself. Likewise, recorded efforts to outlaw and punish this crime date as far back as the 14th Yet, it is only in recent years that we have seen dramatic and tangible progress to reverse deeply entrenched cultures of silence, impunity and denial. For instance, we have seen the inclusion of sexual violence in the mandates of peacekeeping missions, and peacekeepers being trained to react swiftly and appropriately to this threat in their areas of operation. We have seen landmark convictions of political and military leaders, in settings such as the DRC, for their failure to prevent and punish sexual violence by their subordinates. We have established monitoring, analysis and reporting arrangements on conflict-related sexual violence in the field, to deepen the evidence-base for action, and early-warning indicators of impending sexual violence have been mainstreamed into broader protection structures. Women’s Protection Advisers (or “WPAs”) have been deployed to mission settings to pursue a protection dialogue with the parties to armed conflict, in order to leverage compliance and behavioral change. Sexual violence has increasingly been reflected in ceasefire and peace agreements as a crime that cannot be amnestied, as well as in the designation criteria of sanctions regimes. Through successive annual Reports of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, compiled by my Office since 2009, we have created a public, historical record for a crime that has been omitted from official accounts of war and peace. Critically, the issue has been integrated into the work of national justice, defense and security sectors following a series of Joint Communiqués my Office has signed with Governments such as the DRC, Côte d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan and Somalia, as well as Frameworks of Cooperation with regional bodies, such as the African Union and the League of Arab States. We continue to provide capacity-building and technical support through our Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict, and to enhance the coordination of multi-sectoral services through the interagency network I chair, known as UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict.
Above all, today we are reaching and supporting thousands of survivors – women, girls, men and boys – who were invisible a decade ago. Slowly but surely, we are turning groundbreaking resolutions into solutions on the ground. We should all draw inspiration from this progress and sustain the momentum until crimes of sexual violence are consigned to the history books, and out of our daily headlines.
Since taking up this mandate last June, I have articulated three strategic priorities for my tenure: Firstly, converting cultures of impunity into cultures of deterrence through consistent and effective prosecution; Secondly, fostering national ownership and leadership for a sustainable, survivor-centered response; and Third, addressing structural gender-based inequality as the root cause and invisible driver of sexual violence in times of war and peace.
Indeed, as Secretary-General Guterres has stated: Prevention is not just a priority; it is the priority. This means both the prevention of armed conflict itself, and of atrocity crimes committed in the midst of war. However, when it comes to prevention, we have not yet moved from rhetoric to results. We have concentrated much more on the consequences, than the causes, of this violence. Although recent years have seen important milestones in the quest for gender justice, the fact remains that we have not yet reached the tipping point at which fear of accountability restrains the behavior of belligerents. Accountability must become the rule, rather than the rare exception. The law should cast a long shadow – ultimately changing the calculation that has made rape a cheap and effective tactic of war and terror. It is shocking that not a single member of ISIL or Boko Haram has yet been prosecuted for sexual violence, despite ample evidence of the widespread and systematic scale on which it has been committed. Moreover, we need to transform the underlying conditions that produce and reproduce wartime sexual violence. This means fostering gender equality and social justice in communities, not just courtrooms. This must include livelihood support and efforts to build women’s economic resilience, as well as reparative justice, which is the response survivors want most, yet receive least. The survivors I have met with, from settings such as the DRC, Nigeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, Myanmar, South Sudan, Darfur, Sudan, and elsewhere, are locked into cycles of poverty, vulnerability and violence that echo across generations. We must, therefore, also prevent the secondary traumas that follow in the wake of rape, such as victim-blame, reprisals, exclusion, and stigma, which can have life-long – sometimes lethal – repercussions. Rape is a crime that can turn victims into outcasts, undermining social cohesion and unraveling family ties. It is time to take a more proactive and operational approach to tackling stigma as a specific harm. And it is time for socioeconomic reintegration support for survivors and their children to infuse all of our peace-building and conflict-recovery efforts.
To conclude, and building on the vision set-out by Lord Ahmad, I would like to highlight three critical challenges to bear in mind as we set the stage for 2019:
- Firstly, we need to ensure a comprehensive approach that embraces the “forgotten victims” of this scourge, including men and boys (noting that over 60 countries still have no legal protection for male rape victims); children born of war (which only Colombia legally recognizes as war victims in their own right); indigent, rural and displaced women (who comprise the majority of victims, and yet have the least access to justice and redress); LGBTI victims; those living with disabilities; and victims of conflict-driven trafficking in persons, which has become part of the political economy of war and terrorism. Concerted efforts are needed to amplify the voices of all those affected, to ensure their views and priorities inform the search for solutions.
- Secondly, we need to expand and diversify the circle of champions and partners for prevention. This should include working with local and international journalists to ensure safe and ethical reporting of sexual violence crimes, as well as mobilizing the moral authority of progressive religious and traditional leaders, and empowering women’s human rights defenders and grassroots civil society organizations.
- Third, we need to marshal resources for a response that is equal to the scale of the challenge. The international community should invest not only in reacting to sexual violence, but also in prevention and building resilience. I believe we should give serious consideration to a reparations fund for victims, particularly in cases where the perpetrators are unidentified or insolvent.
We are here today because we agree that sexual violence is preventable, not inevitable. We are here today to not only help the victims, but to help ensure there are no more victims. This is an ambitious goal, but I am convinced that where there is political will, there is a way. So, I sincerely thank you all for your active engagement in this meeting and look forward to hearing your interventions and ideas.
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