02 October 2009

New U.N. Measure to Encourage Accountability for Sexual Violence

Many traumatized rape victims are reluctant to help authorities with prosecutions for fear of reprisals or because they want to forget.

By Stephen Kaufman
Staff Writer

Washington — U.S. officials hope provisions in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1888, passed to help protect women in conflict zones from violence, will also enable victims to come forward as witnesses in post-conflict situations when their testimony is needed to make criminals accountable for their actions.

In remarks at the State Department October 2, Stephen Rapp, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, and Melanne Verveer, ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, said it is critical that human rights violators, such as those who commit rape as a tactic of war, be held responsible for their crimes if such practices are to stop.

“If you don’t hold people to account for these kind of offenses, they’ll be repeated. This will be a tool, a technique, to intimidate the population, in order to keep people in power, in order to gain power,” Rapp said.

Along with the appointment of a special U.N. representative to lead efforts against sexual violence in armed conflicts, Resolution 1888 also calls for a team of experts to be deployed in countries where sexual violence has occurred or is likely to occur. (See “Clinton Hails U.N. Resolution to Protect Women Against Violence.”)

The team would include medical experts, rule of law specialists, and “people that know about security and detention and witness protection,” Rapp said.

These specialists would identify ways to fix problems in the country’s domestic judicial processes and help to establish accountability for sexual crimes, he said.

Even if a country has a good court system, with competent judges and prosecutors, “if the witnesses won’t come because they’re intimidated or killed on their way, if you convict people and they escape … and they go back and harass and commit the crimes again, you don’t solve the problem,” Rapp said.

Verveer said in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where approximately 1,100 rapes are reported each month, the victims often “just want to forget and heal themselves.” But along with their need to heal, it is also “critically important” that they “understand why they need to cooperate with justice, to bring these kinds of cases to justice,” she added.

In places like the DRC, Sudan and Burma, women and children are being attacked “as part of a deliberate and coordinated strategy … because it works,” she said. Such attacks serve not only to displace, but also to destabilize large populations.

Rapp said that in some conflicts, sexual violence has been “the dominant tactic” used for terrorizing and gaining power over others. It “destroys the very fabric of society [and] breaks down the ties that hold communities together,” and for that reason “it is used as a tool in these conflicts to intimidate, humiliate, destroy captive and enemy populations.”

“It’s a tactic that the world cannot tolerate,” he said.

At the root of the problem, Verveer said, is the low status of women in some countries. Efforts “ranging both from growing their economic possibilities as well as education,” are fundamental to a solution, she said.

Beyond that, religious leaders need to raise the issue with their congregations and men “more broadly” need to be engaged in addressing the program. “And we need political will,” she said. “Leaders have really got to confront that this is a serious violation of human rights. It is criminal behavior. It is not cultural behavior.”

Both officials also stressed that as conflicts end, women need to be part of the negotiating process.

“Often it’s soldiers negotiating with soldiers,” Rapp said, and they “forget and then sweep under the rugs the crimes committed by both sides.”

Rapp cited recent violence in Guinea, which included soldiers from the ruling military junta raping peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders. (See “U.S. Calls Guinea’s Military Crackdown ‘Brazen and Inappropriate.’”)

There are active women’s groups among Guinean civil society, and Rapp said they should be included in the political process so that “their agenda comes to the fore and that that’s not forgotten, because if it is forgotten, you’ll just have another incident like this in the future.”

Verveer said women’s participation in peace processes is a necessity if a community is to move forward, receive justice, and if settlements are to last.

“Peace deals can’t hold, unless the community buys into them. And women represent a great part of the needs that … need to be determined, need to be dealt with, and their participation is absolutely critical,” she said.

A transcript of Rapp’s and Verveer’s comments is available on America.gov.

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