Women Targeted or Affected by Armed Conflict: What Role for Military Peacekeepers?
Kathleen Cravero,
Assistant Administrator and Director,
Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, UNDP
27 May 2008, Wilton Park, Sussex
Ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, Generals, dear friends,
On behalf of Stop Rape Now: UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, I want to thank Wilton Park for hosting this important event and for giving me the opportunity to address this conference.
The horrors of sexual violence in conflict – and the urgency of an effective adequate response, have been detailed by speakers before me. I must say I am humbled to share the panel with such eloquent and committed individuals. Each presentation was a call to action that should guide our deliberations during the next three days.
My remarks this afternoon will focus on the United Nations’ responsibility to act, i.e. to put the full strength of its moral and operational power behind both ending the violence and assisting those who survive.
The panellists before me have emphasized four key issues:
Firstly, sexual violence is a security problem: the widespread and systematic sexual violence in a number of conflicts today is not collateral damage of war. It is a method of war, a tactic to humiliate communities and prevent their recovery, a tool for pursuing genocidal strategies. Let’s be clear: sexual violence is a security issue, requiring a security response. It requires the full commitment of international, regional and national security institutions.
Secondly, the challenging mandate of peacekeepers: We have heard that sexual violence in conflict poses unprecedented challenges for peacekeeping operations, particularly where the protection of civilians is difficult. Major General Patrick Cammeart, whom I had the privilege to see in action in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo a few years ago – described the worst security environment for women that he had ever seen and outlined the resource and tactical challenges he faced as the force commander. He stressed impunity as a key factor. Perhaps most eloquently, General Cammeart suggested that “it is more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in modern conflicts.”
Thirdly, the strength of women must be reinforced to lead the prevention effort: Peace activist Leymah Gbowee has emphasized the urgency in addressing this phenomenon. Leymah has described how the assumption that sexual violence is culturally accepted is simply wrong. African women describe rape as a “strange disease”; it is the most sophisticated tactic of war. She outlined, from her own experience in Liberia, women’s willingness to take extraordinary personal risks to address sexual violence, where women have taken it upon themselves to disarm rebels in Liberia. Leymah also said that peacekeepers set the trend for the behaviour of communities towards women.
Fourthly, the United Nations has a responsibility to act: We have heard from Stephen Lewis that the UN is not doing enough. Leymah also touched upon the ineffectiveness of the UN and said that peacekeepers must take sexual violence more seriously. I agree – the UN is doing too little too late.
The truth is, none of us have done enough to prevent this atrocity against women. I, like you, have seen the faces of women and girls, brutally raped and tortured. I am haunted by our failure to protect them – yet motivated by the possibilities to do better: to prevent the violence, end impunity and respond to the needs of survivors.
Two days from now, May 29th, is the International Day of Peacekeeping. Conflicts have changed massively in character since the first UN peacekeeping operation. Today, in a number of contexts, there is little peace to keep. Peace processes are imperfect, incomplete, and lack social buy-in. Mandates for peacekeeping missions are far more ambitious than the resources provided for them, a result of the ad hoc often politicized processes of the Security Council.
More importantly, conflicts have changed radically. They tend to be more frequent, last longer and rage within rather than between states. This has made protecting civilians more difficult and the impact of sexual violence more severe. Yet we have learned important lessons about what works. Recognizing that these new challenges were fast surpassing our ability to respond, Stop Rape Now: UN Action to End Sexual Violence in Conflict was established in 2007. It now consists of 11 UN entities that are joining efforts to:
- raise the visibility of sexual violence as a security issue;
- increase the UN system’s action to prevent sexual violence, particularly at country level (through targeted support to UN country teams);
- plug capacity gaps by proactively supporting UN country teams to identify coordinators and technical experts;
- develop normative guidance on data and reporting; and
- provide standardized guidance to peacekeepers on practical steps they can take to prevent sexual violence.
We are at the beginning stage of this effort – but we are learning fast and growing steady momentum.
Allow me to take a few moments to highlight four responsibilities the UN must embrace in the area of sexual violence in conflicts.
Responsibility #1: Face the issue head on
Positive action is being taken on the ground by peacekeepers, mainly through the commitment and concern of individual commanders. As we have seen from the practical inventory of tactics on the ground, military peacekeepers are preventing perpetrators from attacking women by studying the methods and locations of attack and are putting themselves in between perpetrators and the communities in which women live. They are also protecting women by reducing their vulnerability, for example, when collecting wood and water.
But when rape becomes a systematic method of war, the UN must adapt its response. It must:
- Apply systematically lessons learned on what works, including special units in police forces, more women peace keepers, firewood patrol, etc. Both General Cammeart and Leymah outlined a number of concrete actions that can be taken to prevent sexual violence. We don’t need more research on these interventions, we just need to put them in place.
- Reward those who make the effort. This bespeaks a different kind of heroism than we normally celebrate. Like all of us, peacekeepers respond to incentives. It is our responsibility to provide these incentives.
- Enforce zero tolerance for sexual violence and abuse by peace-keepers. As the report released today by Save the Children indicates, in some places, UN peacekeepers and humanitarian staff remain part of the problem rather than the solution. This is both serious and shameful – and a stain on the United Nations and the international community that must be wiped clean immediately and permanently.
Responsibility #2: Bring women to the peace table.
Leadership must involve both men and women. This must start with the peace processes, from which women have been markedly absent for decades, notwithstanding the provisions of Security Council Resolution 1325. Unless women are at peace tables, the issue of sexual violence is often ignored. Rape is rarely acknowledged for what it is: a war crime. This is evident in the illegal award of amnesty to war rapists in a number of peace processes.
The UN must improve its capacity to engage women in conflict prevention, mediation, and peace negotiations. Too often we bring women at the eleventh hour of peace talks, for example, which is precisely what has happened in the Uganda peace agreement for stabilization of the north.
Allowing women to represent their own interests around sexual violence and all aspects of peace-building has practical implications. These include:
- placing high level gender expertise in key departments of the UN, including the Department of Political Affairs, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and in UN missions as well as amongst all national mediation and peace talk facilitation efforts;
- ensuring practical methods are taken to enable women’s leadership in peace talks, and to build their competence – and confidence – to participate fully;
- Supporting indictments, trials, and incarceration of war criminals who have committed atrocities against women. Doing so will require support to transitional justice systems, to police and to corrections.
Responsibility #3: Establish sexual violence as a security issue.
The UN is the standard bearer of norms and guidance on the respect for human rights. Despite the continuing weaknesses in accountability and enforcement, these standards have provided women’s and human rights organizations world-wide with a critical moral resource.
The UN therefore must be absolutely clear and unambiguous in its position on widespread sexual violence. This is a security issue requiring the full force of the UN’s security response. It must make ending this violence a major preoccupation of its approach to security sector reform, to planning and equipping peacekeeping missions, and to the deployment of peacekeeping personnel.
The Security Council is the starting point for the acknowledgement of sexual violence as a security issue. A resolution is required to clarify the circumstances under which sexual violence is a national and international security threat. This must be followed with practical measures to enable the Council to monitor levels and trends in sexual violence, and to take practical steps to address and prevent it on a widespread and systematic scale.
The Security Council must reflect its understanding of sexual violence as a security issue in mandate renewals for current peacekeeping missions, wherever appropriate. Pushing the Security Council in these directions is a major objective of UN Action.
Regional security institutions must also understand – and act upon -- the implications of sexual violence for their approaches to peacekeeping and protection of civilians. Indeed, regional security institutions have a comparative advantage of enormous importance in this regard. As the inventory of good practices shows, it is regional security institutions that have innovated the most effectively in addressing sexual violence. They are consulting with local populations and in the process, gaining both trust and vital intelligence about the nature and source of attacks on women. They are adapting their patrols and responses in consequence. On a small scale, regional security institutions have demonstrated that sexual violence is possible; what we need is a massive scaling up of action and commitment.
Responsibility #4: Act now
Sexual violence is as destructive of communities and livelihoods and of long-term recovery capabilities as are landmines and cluster bombs.
The “scorched earth policy” of ancient armies, for example, would exclude the tainting of wells. It was understood that territory would be useless to conquerors and civilians alike, without the life-sustaining resource of water. In today’s wars, women are drained and tainted by rape. The systematic use of rape as war crime is not a “women’s issue”; it is the core security issue of our time. Perpetrators know that without women – as without wells – a community lacks it life-source. Rape has ripple-effects for families and for nations that makes peace less possible.
We have read a lot, heard a lot and said a lot about ending sexual violence in conflict – as a fundamental (and brutal) violation of human rights, as a security issue, as a pre-condition for sustainable peace. What we need now is action – by national governments, international actors and peacekeepers, among others. That’s what this conference is about: concrete action that can be taken by peacekeepers – starting tomorrow – to end these unspeakable brutalities against women.
As Eleanor Roosevelt once said:
“Action is its own courage. Courage is as contagious as fear.” We must find the courage to act and to demand that others do the same. And we must do it now.
Thank you.
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