Lord Ahmad, Excellencies, Distinguished participants,
Thank you for the opportunity to share some reflections at this inaugural high-level meeting of the International Alliance on the PSVI. I commend the United Kingdom for its steadfast leadership on this agenda, and extend my appreciation to all members of the Alliance for their commitment to the cause, notably to Colombia and Ukraine for their active contributions as Vice-Chairs.
In my capacity as an observer of this Alliance, I have endorsed the Statement of Solidarity with Survivors, which will be a key outcome of today’s meeting. From day one of my tenure as SRSG, I have made the survivor-centred approach our top priority. The lived experience of survivors must shape the global search for solutions. After centuries of suppression and denial, we must draw attention to ground truths, and navigate a way forward that is guided by the survivors as our moral compass. Indeed, the most recent in the series of Security Council resolutions on conflict-related sexual violence, resolution 2467 of 2019, marked a turning point in recognizing the need to adopt a holistic approach that respects survivors’ rights, needs, and wishes, and ensures their full and meaningful engagement in policy and decision-making processes.
This Alliance is coming together at a time of great global turbulence, marked by the highest number of conflicts since the Second World War, levels of forced displacement reaching a grim milestone of 110 million displaced persons globally, increased militarization, backlash on gender equality, and an epidemic of coups and unconstitutional seizures of power. At the same time, we are seeing rising authoritarianism, shrinking civic space, and increasing political violence, including reprisals against women’s human rights defenders and journalists who report these stories to the world.
Even as entrenched cycles of violence remain unbroken, new threats have emerged, including digital insecurity, with sexual harassment and gender-based hate speech surging in the relatively ungoverned digital space; an array of new battlefield actors, such as mercenaries and private military and security companies, which complicates attribution and accountability; as well as climate-driven insecurity, displacement, and competition for scarce resources, which has exacerbated intercommunal violence, including sexual violence. Moreover, the security umbrella for humanitarian protection and assistance activities is closing, as peacekeeping missions draw down in Mali and the DRC.
Against this backdrop, we are compelled to recognize that conflict-related sexual violence is not a ‘niche’ technical issue that can be addressed separately from prevailing geopolitics. Global macrotrends are turning the clock further and further back on women’s rights, and leaving survivors further and further behind. We cannot allow the plight and rights of survivors to be eclipsed beneath the shadow of deepening global crises. It is vital to the credibility of the multilateral system that we demonstrate to survivors that international law is not an empty promise, and to perpetrators that it is not an empty threat.
Across the globe, we see that every new wave of warfare brings a rising tide of sexual violence. Yet, the attention bandwidth of the international community is limited. As the world turns its gaze to the deplorable violence in Israel and the Gaza strip, other protracted crises risk becoming ‘forgotten conflicts’.
In relation to the escalating violence in the Middle East, since the attacks of 7th October, in my capacity as Chair of the UN Action interagency coordination network, I have requested partners on the ground to remain alert to the risk of sexual violence, which we know is often invisible and chronically underreported, and to share relevant UN-sourced and verified information. I am aware that disturbing allegations, including forced nudity, have surfaced in the context of abductions and hostage-taking. As always, we call for such incidents to be independently investigated, with a view to ensuring that survivors have access to specialized services and justice, and for parties to abide by international humanitarian and human rights law.
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There are currently more than 20 contexts within the remit of my mandate, and in each of these settings, I use my public advocacy platform and diplomatic outreach to galvanize action on the basis of credible, UN-sourced and verified information on incidents, patterns, and trends.
For instance, I visited Ukraine as soon as the first reports of sexual violence surfaced last year, and returned again this March. I heard firsthand the searing accounts of sexual violence perpetrated by Russian soldiers, including as a form of torture to extract confessions, and to punish and intimidate men and women in detention. The ages of the victims ranged from just 4 to 84 years old. When I visited refugee reception centers in Poland and Moldova, I witnessed the vulnerability of women and children to criminal and trafficking networks, for whom the forced exodus was not a tragedy but an opportunity for exploitation.
In Sudan, since the conflict erupted on 15th April between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, sexual violence against displaced and refugee women and girls has dramatically increased. Last month, I visited the border area of Aweil, in South Sudan, where I met a 7-year-old girl who, after fleeing with her grandmother, was raped in the refugee camp, where conditions remain crowded and precarious, and assistance is limited.
In June, I visited the DRC, following alarming reports of a spike in sexual violence in the east of the country due to the resumption of hostilities involving the M23 armed group. Many of the women and girls I met had been recently raped and were visibly traumatized and receiving treatment. They stressed the daily risk of sexual violence while undertaking livelihood activities around the camps, such as searching for food, or collecting wood and water. They faced an impossible choice between economic subsistence and sexual violence – between their livelihoods and their lives. Another disturbing trend was the proliferation of brothels in and around IDP camps. I was shocked by the extent of sexual exploitation, including forced prostitution, into which women and girls are driven by economic desperation.
In May, I visited Colombia, where historic progress is being made in terms of transitional justice. I heard from survivors of wartime sexual violence about the transformative power of official recognition, acknowledgment, and reparations.
Over the past three years, the war in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, has been one of the deadliest on the planet. Sexual violence, including rape, sexual slavery, mutilation, and forced pregnancy have been used as tactics of war and terror on a widespread and systematic basis. According to the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, the conflict has left more than 10,000 survivors in desperate need of assistance and redress.
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Each year, my Office compiles the Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, which provides a public historical record for a crime that has been chronically underreported and overlooked. The latest annual report, debated at the Security Council in July, records 2,455 UN-verified cases committed in the course of 2022, 94% of them targeting women and girls; 32% affecting children. For every survivor who comes forward to report, humanitarians in the field estimate that 10 to 20 others are never able to reach a clinic, let alone a courtroom.
The report includes a list of credibly suspected perpetrators as a basis for targeted action by sanctions regimes and accountability mechanisms. The latest report lists 49 implicated State and non-State parties, of which 75 percent are persistent perpetrators who have remained on the list for several years without taking any remedial or corrective action. Despite numerous resolutions calling for the deployment of Women’s Protection Advisers, to engage with parties to foster compliance, just 8 of the 20 countries of concern currently have this frontline capacity.
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Excellencies,
It is critical to send a signal that the normative framework is clear and the prohibition on all forms of sexual violence is categorical. We do not need more standard-setting exercises, but better awareness of, and adherence to, the standards that exist. Our challenge is to translate commitments made in New York, London, or Geneva into action on the ground that improves the wellbeing of survivors and those at risk. Our singular focus, as we have heard many times at WPS events this week, must be to bridge the gap between resolutions and realities, between aspirations and operations. The persistence of sexual violence on 21st Century battlefields, as a tactic of war, torture, terror, and repression, is not due to a lack of normative frameworks or institutional arrangements. It is because existing norms are inadequately enforced, and existing institutions are not backed with the requisite level of resources.
States bear the primary responsibility to protect their citizens, yet conflict decimates the very institutions meant to deliver justice, services, and security. As a contribution to gender-responsive security sector reform, my Office has established a dedicated Security Sector Hub. I thank the Government of the United Kingdom for seconding a military expert from the Ministry of Defence to this unit, to help bring national security forces into compliance with international standards, in line with the Joint Communiqués my mandate has signed with a dozen affected countries to date.
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Today, we know more than ever before about the drivers and dynamics of wartime sexual violence. To translate this into practical results, my mandate has developed a range of tools to build the skill and will for effective action. These include model legislative provisions and guidance to help harmonize national laws with international standards; guidelines on private sector engagement; and a prevention framework, which sets out a two-track approach to preventing sexual violence in the first instance, and mitigating its secondary harms, such as stigmatization. Last year, we also published a Special Report on women and girls who become pregnant as a result of sexual violence in conflict and children born of such violence, which sets out a platform of legal, policy, and operational recommendations for States and partners to take forward.
By helping to disseminate and socialize good practices and lessons learnt, and to track the delivery of commitments, this Alliance can help to maintain momentum to eradicate, and spare succeeding generations from, this scourge.
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Moving forward, my mandate will count on this Alliance to strengthen the existing architecture, including through sustained funding to the CRSV Multi-Partner Trust Fund, which supports the operational arms of my mandate to implement a range of survivor-centred interventions. This includes my Team of Experts on the Rule of Law, which has assisted national authorities in over a dozen countries, and the UN Action network, which has supported more than 50 projects across 17 conflict-affected settings. We cannot continue to short-change survivors and those delivering on their behalf. Every year that I have served as Special Representative, the number of States requesting our assistance has increased, and the geographical scope of the mandate has expanded, yet funding has not kept pace.
As we look toward the 15-year anniversary of my mandate in 2024, I will continue, in my advocacy role, to galvanize the international community to give this cause the attention and investment it deserves. Let us seize this opportunity for decisive, united action that is – at last – equal to the scale of the challenge.
Thank you.