Speech
The Changing Nature of Conflict: Women’s Bodies and Rights as New Battlegrounds
By Joanne Sandler, Deputy Executive Director of Programmes, UNIFEM
Date: 1 May 2009
Occasion: Women’s Foreign Policy Group, 2009 Annual UN Briefings
[Check against delivery.]
Many thanks to the Women’s Foreign Policy Group for inviting UNIFEM to add our views to the important discussions you have been having today.
In late March, a law was signed in Afghanistan that could severely restrict women’s rights within marriage. Several weeks later, Sitara Achakzai, a women’s rights activist was gunned down in the streets of Kandahar. Before Mrs. Achakzai was gunned down…we had already seen the assassination of the country’s most senior female police officer…and of Safia Amajan, the head of Kandahar’s women’s affairs department.
These attacks occur in many other conflict situations, from Zimbabwe to Myanmar. Too often, we see that the international community — and I mean the donor countries and the mainstream of the UN — fail to stand up alongside these women. As one official said when we brought a group of Afghan women to meet with him last March — “Why should we delay security in Afghanistan for women’s equality?”
This is a false dichotomy. If the rights and safety of more than 10,000 women who came out onto the streets in towns throughout Afghanistan on March 8th , wearing blue scarves and calling for peace, are not seen as an essential part of achieving security, what meaning do Security Council Resolutions 1325 on women, peace and security and Resolution 1820 on sexual violence really have?
My main point, today, is that there can be no security without women’s security. There is no peace if negotiations trade impunity for crimes against women for an end to conflict. In agreeing to Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820, the Council is affirming that promoting and protecting women’s human rights is actually a matter of national and international security. But these resolutions are not even as good as the paper that they are written on if they are not implemented. And they are very far from being implemented.
Over the next 10 minutes, I want to share with you what we see, from UNIFEM’s vantage point, as four key challenges for breathing life into hard-won Security Council commitments — particularly through the lens of what is happening in Afghanistan, Sudan, DRC and other conflict countries in relation to sexual violence. And I want to highlight how the UN is responding, and how your advocacy could create new options and opportunities for many millions of women in conflict and post-conflict countries.
Challenge 1: Ending Impunity for Rape in Peace Processes and Negotiations
Attacks on women’s bodies and rights have become one means of pursuing military and political objectives. In eastern Congo and in Darfur, rape has taken place on a massive scale. Since early this year, there have been 350 reported rapes a month in North Kivu. These are likely to be just a fraction of actual attacks, given that there is no incentive to report as the chance of judicial process is close to nil, and health and rehabilitation services are scarce. In Sudan, rape has been used on all war fronts as a means of intimidating populations and forcing displacement. In Liberia 90 percent of all females above the age of three in parts of have experienced sexual violence as did up to 50 percent of women and girls in Sierra Leone during the conflict. Rape has emerged as one of the defining characteristics of conflict, a cheap yet highly effective method of terror.
"It is more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in war today." This statement, made in May 2008 by an ex-force commander for the UN in eastern DRC, signals how the nature of conflict is changing. The conduct of conflict today makes everyone a participant — not just solders or militants.
Some say that there is nothing new about this. But we are seeing changes in the intent behind and the extent of rape — it is organized, it is targeted. We saw in the rape camps in Bosnia a highly systematic approach to sexual violence.
Rape is used to terrorize communities, to shred the social fabric. It happens under the radar of a ceasefire. The guns fall silent but the war continues by proxy via rape. It forces communities to flee areas that commanders want to isolate for trade or extractive industrial production.
Only five peace agreements have mentioned the need to address and provide redress for sexual violence. Women are not at the talks in numbers, and those affected stay silent for fear of stigmatization. Indeed, to quote Don Steinberg of the International Crisis Group, the treatment of this issue in peace talks usually involves men forgiving men for the violence that men have done to women. The result is a climate of impunity that leads to socially generalized rape as we see in DRC and Liberia.
That is why UNIFEM is collaborating with DPKO, DPA, UNDP, OCHA and with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, to work with conflict mediators on the challenges of addressing sexual violence in peace processes. We recognize that the UN and other mediators have no specific training on how to address this issue, or what would be the right way to bring it into ceasefire monitoring arrangements, or the security, justice, or social protection chapters of peace accords. But in June we will be taking a first step by bringing mediators from different peace negotiations together to identify the impediments negotiators will face and capacities and support that they will need to start a new generation of negotiations that comply with 1325 and 1820 and put an end to impunity.
Challenge 2: Standard Operating Procedures to Prevent Sexual Violence through Implementation and Monitoring of Security Council Resolution 1820
Security Council Resolution 1820, unanimously agreed last June, represents an advanced understanding of this problem, and of the responsibility of the UN to do something about it.
As the Secretary General himself notes:
"In no other area is our collective failure to ensure effective protection for civilians more apparent…than in terms of the masses of women and girls, but also boys and men, whose lives are destroyed each year by sexual violence perpetrated in conflict."
Resolution 1820 acknowledges that:
- Sexual violence is linked with world peace and security: it can exacerbate conflict and impede the restoration of peace.
- Sexual violence is used as a tactic of war to dominate, humiliate, terrorize and displace.
- There can be no amnesty or impunity for sexual violence.
- Women are entitled to full and equal participation in all peace-building processes.
- Military and police peacekeepers need instructions, tactics and training to enable them to detect and prevent widespread and systematic sexual violence.
- All parties to armed conflict must protect civilians.
Because the international community’s response has been desperately inadequate — twelve UN entities have formed UN Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict to strengthen coordinated UN action in support of SCR 1820. UN Action — of which UNIFEM is a founding member — marks a concerted effort by the UN system to improve accountability, amplify advocacy, and strengthen national efforts to prevent sexual violence and support survivors. UN Action has supported coordinated responses to sexual violence in UN Country Teams and Peacekeeping Operations in Sudan (Darfur), DRC, Liberia and Kenya. In DRC, UN Action has brought UN entities together to develop the first-ever Comprehensive Strategy to Combat Sexual Violence, endorsed by the Government of DRC on 1st April.
Resolution 1820 has particularly important implications for how the UN approaches peacekeeping. UNIFEM worked last year with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and UN Action to review military tactics to detect and prevent widespread and systematic sexual violence. Working with Major General Patrick Cammaert, we assembled an inventory of existing promising practices to engage women in generating intelligence about impending attacks, and to patrol in areas likely to be threatened by organized rape for instance, instead of patrolling on arterial roads in the middle of the day, soldiers might have to patrol in pre-dawn hours between the village and water points, which is where women are attacked. This list of good practices has been field-tested in Liberia and DRC and is currently being transformed into materials for training troops and police prior to deployments.
Challenge 3: Monitor, Monitor, Monitor
Nine years after agreement by the UN Security Council to resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, mechanisms to implement and monitor the resolution remain woefully inadequate. If you turn to page 98 of Progress of the World’s Women, you will find a chart that compares the monitoring mechanisms that the Security Council agreed to for resolution 1612 compared to the monitoring mechanism for 1325. For the former there is robust monitoring, regular reporting on violations and a strong agency — UNICEF — to speak out for children on the ground; for 1325, there is voluntary reporting, virtually no monitoring, and the notion that women’s rights is everyone’s business, so that, ultimately, it’s no one’s business. Just two days ago, the Security Council agreed to consider, over the next three months, adding ‘rape and other grave sexual violence’ to its triggers for council attention to the situation of children in armed conflict. In the absence of a monitoring mechanism for 1325 or 1820, this is a useful development, but it also exposes just how sorely the women, peace and security agenda needs to be monitored — and until we have a formal mechanism, we must do it ourselves.
Take peace talks. UNIFEM’s recent research demonstrates that the UN has to date never appointed a woman chief mediator, though the African Union has done so in the context of the Kenyan political crisis. Fewer than 2 percent of signatories of peace deals since 2000 have been women, and only 7 percent of negotiators. These numbers have not changed since 2000, even though Resolution 1325, explicitly asks for an increase in numbers of women in peace talks. If women are not able at peace talks to get their priorities on the table, it is all too likely that their rights can become a convenient bargaining chip to hand over as a way of palliating the demands of certain groups. This has happened far too often.
Take, also, funding for post-conflict reconstruction. UNIFEM’s analysis is revealing a pattern of serious under-funding of women’s recovery and livelihood needs. Our analysis of emergency and post-conflict spending patterns shows that just 2 percent of post-conflict budgets target women’s empowerment or gender equality or addresses sexual violence. And just 8 percent of the proposed budgets in eight post-conflict needs assessments have an indicator on women’s issues or gender equality concerns.
Finally, take post-conflict reconstruction donor conferences: Women’s rights and priorities are largely invisible in post-conflict reconstruction budgets; partly, because they are excluded from the donor conferences that convene to discuss these budgets. UNIFEM organized with the Government of Norway and Inclusive Security to bring women leaders from Sudan to the 2005 and 2008 donor conference. While women were ultimately successful at addressing the donor conferences in both instances, it was not without significant push back from the organizers. We have to regularize the participation of women leaders at these donor conferences if we are ever to ensure some element of equity in the allocation of resources.
Challenge 4: Support Women to Lead in Spearheading Change
Over the past 10 years, UNIFEM has worked with the UN system in more than 30 conflict and post-conflict countries. We are seeing or developing a range of strategies that are promising and that come from close links and partnerships with women’s groups. Some of the most promising strategies include:
Firstly, investing in transitional justice measures. In Peru, Colombia, Sierra Leone, Morocco and Liberia UNIFEM supported Truth Commissions that enable women to speak out about the atrocities they suffered without fear or reprisal.
In Sudan, under a cooperation agreement announced this week, police serving with the joint African Union-UN hybrid operation in Darfur (UNAMID) will team up with UNIFEM to support innovative measures to boost the standing of women in the region. UNAMID Police will work with UNIFEM to enable women to participate in the peace process through political representation, economic empowerment and protection from sexual and gender-based violence.
Secondly, providing safe spaces that advance women’s human rights and economic security: The two things that women almost always want and need during and after conflict are safe spaces and livelihoods. We need to systematize how we provide this. In Afghanistan UNIFEM is supporting referral centres for women who are subject to violence, where they can seek legal aid and pursue justice without fear of rough treatment they might receive in police stations. Ironically, these centres serve as a viable option to imprisonment as, in Afghanistan and other countries, a woman who has been raped is often charged with adultery, branded as a prostitute, and sentenced to jail. The Ministry of Interior has agreed that, in the provinces, no woman who has been raped will be sent to prison and all rape victims will receive legal and counselling services.
Thirdly, bringing coalitions of women together across lines of conflict to build sustainable constituencies for peace: UNIFEM is supporting Palestinian and Israeli women; Serbian and Kosovar women; and Afghan and Pakistani women to build working partnerships and to articulate a common agenda for conflict resolution and sustainable peace. The International Women’s Commission for a Just and Sustainable Palestinian-Israeli peace is based on a three-way partnership — Israelis, Palestinians and international women leaders — to generate common principles and solutions.
Fourthly, ensuring that resources flow to women’s rights and empowerment:
UNIFEM has established a multi-donor fund to end violence against women in Afghanistan and is also launching an Urgent Action Fund to provide immediate assistance to women’s human rights defenders who are targeted with death threats, where $500 can mean the difference between life and death. Given the dearth of funding for women in post-conflict reconstruction budgets, these special funds are a necessity.
And finally, high level leadership is key. The Say No to Violence campaign that UNIFEM launched last year with Nicole Kidman as the main spokesperson is an example of reaching out for high level political support for addressing this pandemic. Over 5 million individuals from around the world signed on; as important, representatives from 70 governments, including 30 heads of state and some 600 parliamentarians signed on to the campaign. This campaign feeds into the ongoing UNiTE to End Violence campaign of the UN Secretary General, whereby he is inviting male leaders to join with him in expressing their outrage and refusal to accept violence against women as inevitable and to take meaningful action to end it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if war is changing, then the UN’s response must change. We have to change our early warning systems, how we resolve and mediate conflicts, how we approach to peace talks. We have to change funding priorities and make sure that we invest in the social groups that can build peace and sustainable recovery. We cannot keep fighting a rearguard action, cleaning up the mess.
Let me end by quoting from a letter from 71 women’s organizations in the DRC, which was sent immediately prior to the adoption of Resolution 1820. They called for an end to impunity, services for survivors of violence and their families, and — finally reminded us: “we applaud your recent condemnation of the sexual violence we suffer...we remind you that we have suffered for decades without any notable action on your part. You must ensure that this situation never repeats itself in Congo or elsewhere. The Security Council cannot keep quiet while thousands of women suffer indescribable sexual violence.”
The silence from those in power has been deafening. But we know that groups like the Women’s Foreign Policy Group can make a huge difference in calling on leaders to no longer and never again be silent. We hope that you will not hesitate to call on UNIFEM for support and partnership.
