Thank you, Your Excellency, Ms. María del Carmen Squeff, Permanent Representative of Argentina to the United Nations,
Under-Secretary-General, Ms. Virginia Gamba,
Distinguished guests and participants, both online and in person,
A warm welcome to the eighth official commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, and my deep appreciation to Argentina whose leadership and vision were essential to establishing this Day, which is now widely commemorated the world over.
Indeed, every year since 2015, we have marked this occasion through expressions of solidarity with survivors, and those working to support them on the frontlines, often at great personal risk. Yet, as we survey the state of the world today, it is clear that we owe survivors more than solidarity, we owe them fast, effective and decisive action to eradicate these crimes and prevent their recurrence, once and for all. The question must therefore be asked: Are we bringing all political and diplomatic tools to bear to narrow the gap between commitments made on the world stage, and compliance by parties in theatres of conflict?
Today’s speakers will include the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, Ms. Siobhán Mullally, who will highlight the urgent challenge of preventing conflict-driven trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation, particularly the acute risks facing Ukrainian women and children, who comprise 90 percent of those forcibly displaced by this conflict; Ms. Fawzia Koofi, the first woman Deputy Speaker of Parliament in Afghanistan, a context where women are being progressively erased from public life, and a crisis that risks being eclipsed under the long shadow cast by the horrors unfolding in Ukraine; and Assistant Secretary-General of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, Ms. Gillian Triggs, whose perspective on protecting refugees and displaced persons from sexual violence is critical as the world contends with record numbers of civilians forced to flee their homes and homelands, due to violence, persecution, and the highest levels of conflict since the advent of the United Nations. I also wish to acknowledge our Women’s Protection Advisors and colleagues in the field who have mobilized in connection with this International Day to amplify the message of prevention, from the Central African Republic, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and elsewhere.
We are meeting at a time when conflict-related sexual violence is again in our daily headlines. New waves of conflict across the world have brought new waves of war’s oldest, most silenced, and least condemned crime. Increased militarization and an epidemic of coups have turned back the clock on women’s rights. Sexual violence as a tactic of war, terror, political repression, and reprisal, undermines the ability of women to contribute to conflict prevention and recovery, limiting the prospects for inclusive and sustainable peacebuilding and development. How we react to the first allegation of sexual violence in a conflict situation is the true test of our resolve. We cannot wait for statistics to scale-up international support. There is never accurate book-keeping on an active battlefield. In Ukraine, all the warning signs for the commission of atrocity crimes, including conflict-related sexual violence, are flashing red, and have been for over 100 days. The harrowing personal testimonies and pictures seen around the world, including of rape at gunpoint, and rape in front of family members, are a call to action. While 124 cases of conflict-related sexual violence have been recorded to date by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Team, we know that for every victim who comes forward, many more are silenced by social pressures, insecurity, and the absence of services. While the United Nations system is verifying allegations of sexual violence, I would like to reiterate that we do not need hard data for a scaled-up humanitarian response. We do not need hard data for all parties to take precautions and preventive measures, in line with International Humanitarian Law, to spare civilian populations, their property, and essential infrastructure, including healthcare facilities, from attack, and to ensure zero tolerance for sexual violence. This is a historically hidden crime, which we know is chronically underreported, in times of war and peace.
Accordingly, at the invitation of the Ukrainian authorities, I traveled to Lyiv and Kyiv in May, which resulted in the signing of a Framework of Cooperation on the prevention and response to conflict-related sexual violence with the Government. This is in line with the operational methodology of my mandate, which recognizes that the United Nations can support, but can never supplant, the primary responsibility of States to protect their populations. I also visited two of the frontline refugee-receiving countries, Poland and Moldova, given concerns that this humanitarian crisis risks becoming a human trafficking crisis, including for the purposes of sexual exploitation and prostitution, as access to services and livelihoods becomes ever-more precarious.
As other crises continue to escalate behind the scenes, in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Mali, Myanmar, and elsewhere, we must reassure populations at risk that they are not forgotten, and that international law is not an empty promise. Tackling the root causes of this violence requires a sustained investment of resources, and steadfast political resolve. It means evaluating our efforts not simply by demonstrating the absence of sexual violence, but by documenting the positive effects of prevention. This includes initiatives to reinforce individual and community-level resilience to withstand economic and security shocks. It means replenishing the relevant funding mechanisms, notably the Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Multi-Partner Trust Fund, which supports the operational arms of my mandate. For instance, my Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict works to strengthen institutional safeguards against impunity, and to build the technical capacity of police, prosecutors, and the judiciary. The interagency coordination network that I Chair, UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, brings together 21 UN entities for a multi-sectoral, system-wide approach. The deployment of Women’s Protection Advisers has improved reporting as an evidence-base for advocacy and action. Yet the fact remains: in no country is the level of human or financial resources equal to the scale of the challenge, or commensurate with the level of humanitarian needs.
Since 2008, significant progress has been made in enhancing global recognition of conflict-related sexual violence as a self-standing threat to collective security, and an impediment to the restoration of peace. This shift in paradigm and perspective is reflected in a series of robust resolutions, from 1820 in 2008 to 2467 in 2019, which require conflict-related sexual violence to be treated as a security issue that demands an operational security, justice, and service-delivery response. It can no longer be sidelined as a second-class crime committed against second-class citizens. In one word, the promise expressed by the Security Council through these resolutions is prevention. Since I took up this mandate in 2017, I have consistently emphasized the need to address the root causes of sexual violence, in particular structural gender inequality, poverty, political exclusion, and marginalization. Equally, I have stressed the importance of working directly with survivors, not as passive beneficiaries, but as the co-creators of solutions. I have always been struck by the quality and farsighted nature of their insights. The testimony of survivors that I have heard during field visits around the world contributed to the digital book that we launched last year, entitled – In Their Own Words: Voices of Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and Service-Providers. It is evident that in addition to responding to sexual violence when it occurs, survivors expect its eradication altogether, as articulated by one survivor, “so no other woman has to go through what I went through”. Whereas military and political leaders have for centuries dismissed sexual violence as an “inevitable byproduct of war”, many survivors have affirmed that what happened to them could have been prevented. Survivors have made concrete recommendations, which must be heard and heeded by the donor and diplomatic community. These include: ensuring that commanders issue clear orders to prohibit all forms of sexual violence; avoiding troop deployments close to civilian population centers; safely locating waterpoints and wells; and deploying patrols of police and trained peacekeepers to accompany women in the course of livelihood activities, among other measures. The most insidious effect of the myth that wartime rape is inevitable, is that it implies prevention is impossible. As a Ukrainian woman civil society activist put it: “We must do everything possible, and everything impossible, to end abuses and atrocities”. This is an important reminder to not just do what is easy, but what is necessary, and what is right.
Over the past year, I have led a system-wide effort through the UN Action network, to develop a comprehensive prevention strategy, which will draw upon these ground truths and the lived experience of survivors. The strategy responds to calls from governments and civil society organizations for a targeted prevention plan. It builds on our collective knowledge and experience, including our matrix of early-warning indicators of conflict-related sexual violence, which we have been rolling out in peacekeeping and political missions across the globe since 2009. It complements the pre-deployment scenario-based training resources that have been developed to help peacekeepers identify conflict-related sexual violence and safely refer survivors to available services. This framework is intended to serve as a “road map” for more tailored, timely, and effective interventions, as part of broader efforts to safeguard civilians from the effects of hostilities. I plan to widely disseminate and pilot the framework later this year.
For too long we have been locked in reactive mode, only mobilizing to address these atrocities after patterns have been documented. Prevention efforts, accountability measures, and protective legal frameworks are important signifiers of compliance with Security Council directives, yet the measures prescribed remain inadequately implemented and enforced. What is needed now, is not new standards of behavior, but better adherence to those that exist. We are not short on political commitments; we are short on concrete action, political courage, technical capacity, and financial resources.
Closing the compliance gap requires a two-track approach to prevention, as set out in our new prevention strategy. Firstly, all efforts must be brought to bear to prevent sexual violence from occurring in the first instance, by mobilizing a broad range of stakeholders from the highest political levels, to local action at the grassroots. Secondly, in cases when sexual violence does occur, sustained support is needed to mitigate harm, and prevent its secondary effects, such as re-traumatization, reprisals, stigma, and social ostracism.
The first track – preventing the occurrence of sexual violence – entails tackling the root causes and drivers of these crimes. Sexual violence does not occur in a vacuum; it is tied to the resurgence of hostilities, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, mass population displacement, as well as harmful, deeply rooted patriarchal norms related to honor, shame, and victim-blame. Prevention entails translating early warning signs into early response interventions; gender-responsive security sector reform, including vetting, training, and civilian oversight; the inclusion of relevant provisions in ceasefire and peace agreements to prevent these crimes from being amnestied as the so-called “price of peace”; leveraging the credible threat of sanctions, which can curtail the flow of arms and resources to perpetrators and spoilers to the peace, to incentivize corrective action, and raise the “cost” of war’s so-called “cheapest weapon”; and consistent and visible accountability measures as a form of deterrence, which signal to perpetrators that sexual violence will not go unpunished. Fostering prevention through compliance with international norms is key to breaking the vicious cycle of violence and impunity.
No single entity can tackle these formidable challenges alone; only partnerships at the regional, national, and community levels can move the needle. My Office has signed Joint Communiqués with the governments of a dozen affected countries, which include timebound commitments to end sexual violence. Beyond traditional political partnerships, we are also engaging actors with moral authority, such as religious leaders. To this end, I am pleased to announce that today I will sign a Framework of Cooperation with Religions for Peace, a multi-faith movement that aims to foster peaceful, just, and inclusive societies, including by advancing gender equality. This Framework outlines specific commitments to leverage the influence of religious leaders to change the behavior of parties to conflict, alleviate stigma, counter harmful social norms, ideologies, and attitudes, and ensure that faith-based communities provide a safe environment for healing and reintegration.
The second track – prevention as part of the response to sexual violence – should be grounded in survivor-centered programming. The stigma of rape is debilitating, severing victims and their children from vital socioeconomic support networks, and exacerbating their vulnerability to exploitation. Key to mitigating these risks are multi-sectoral services, such as medical care, sexual and reproductive health services, including safe abortion care, psychosocial support, safe shelter, and protection, which is lifesaving assistance that cannot be deprioritized in the face of competing demands.
In this respect, adequate assistance is also a form of prevention, in terms of reducing recourse to negative coping mechanisms, such as early and child marriage, in the face of insecurity and economic desperation. Peacebuilding efforts must include effective avenues for redress, and reparations, which is the justice intervention survivors request most, yet still receive least. Tragically, in the rare cases where reparations are disbursed, it is often years after the crime has occurred, when stigma, economic isolation, untreated injuries and STIs have already destroyed the lives of victims, and reverberated across generations. This includes to the children born of wartime rape, who face specific threats and risks, related to statelessness, poverty, exploitation, recruitment, radicalization, and abuse. Local women are often the first to raise the red flag about changes in the environment that may indicate, or contribute to, wider tensions and instability. It is vital to amplify the voices of affected communities, to ensure that local realities guide the global search for solutions. In this respect, we must defend women’s human rights defenders, and protect the protectors. It is critical to safeguard civic space, and the safety of victims and witnesses, as well as that of journalists who risk their lives to share these stories with the world. The central premise of our work, as outlined in the latest annual Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, is the need to foster a protective environment that inhibits sexual violence in the first instance, and enables safe reporting and response. Unpacking prevention entails the simultaneous reduction of risk factors, and the promotion of protective factors. Yet, in many contexts, we are moving in the opposite direction, and feeding the flames of conflict and violence through misogyny, militarization, impunity, and authoritarianism.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
Every speaker who adds their voice to this debate is helping to end centuries of silence and denial, which have made rape war’s ultimate “secret weapon”. Our purpose in putting these crimes on the public record is to give rape a history, in order to deny it a future. United action in this area tells survivors their lives matter, and tells perpetrators – and potential perpetrators – that the world is watching.
It is time to move from best intentions to best practice. The current context of emerging and entrenched conflicts makes it clear that no amount of protection is a substitute for peace. It is critical to enforce compliance with international norms; to forcefully denounce transgressions; and to mitigate the ever-rising risks of intimidation and reprisals against frontline actors and activists. We are here today in the shared belief that prevention is the best form of protection. In discharging my mandate, I am guided by the conviction that the earlier and deeper we sow the seeds of prevention, the better and more sustainable their fruits will be.
The problem of conflict-related sexual violence is too large and costly, and has too many urgent consequences, to wait for perfect answers. There is a compelling need for prevention now to rid the world of this scourge, and to protect generations to come.
Thank you.