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Statement of Special Representative Pramila Patten at the Official Commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

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Statement of Special Representative Pramila Patten at the Official Commemoration of the

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

25 November 2019, 10 – 12 a.m.

ECOSOC Chamber, UNHQ

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am pleased to be part of this important event to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. This year’s theme, “Generation Equality Stands against Rape” is particularly relevant for my mandate, which was established by the Security Council in 2009 to provide coherent and strategic leadership to global efforts to combat conflict-related sexual violence as a threat to collective peace and security.

Since taking office in 2017, I have articulated three strategic priorities: firstly, converting cultures of impunity into cultures of deterrence through justice and accountability; secondly, fostering national ownership and leadership for a sustainable, survivor-centered response; and thirdly, addressing the root causes of sexual violence, including structural gender-based inequality and discrimination, which are consistently exacerbated by armed conflict and militarization.

Conflict-related sexual violence traverses all of history and geography, affecting all ages and generations. It has often been described as “history’s greatest silence” – the least reported, least condemned crime of war. And it is precisely this silence that shields the perpetrators and isolates the victims. The trauma of conflict-related sexual violence causes lasting damage to individuals, families and communities. We cannot erase the scars, but we can help victims and survivors to cope and heal by listening to them and providing tailored support. I have seen both the needs and the resilience of survivors firsthand during my field visits to Mali, the DRC, Iraq, the Central African Republic, and many other places.


Last month, I commemorated the 10-year anniversary of my mandate by holding a Survivors’ Hearing and launching a new Global Fund to deliver assistance to victims whose right to reparations remains unmet. One of the survivors who testified at this event, an indigenous woman from Guatemala, said: “We don’t want history to repeat itself. We are working for progress, so that our children and grand-children never have to experience what we suffered”.

Ten years is a short time in the history of warzone rape – a crime as old as war itself. Yet, the past 10 years have seen more concerted action to combat this scourge than the rest of human history combined. Indeed, the past decade saw a dramatic paradigm shift that heralded a new consciousness and a new consensus about the gravity of conflict-related sexual violence as an international crime. What had long been dismissed as inevitable is now understood as preventable. What had once been deemed collateral or cultural is today condemned as criminal. Acknowledging that sexual violence is often commanded, committed or condoned as a means of pursuing the military and ideological aims of armed groups has prompted political, as well as humanitarian, solutions.

The progress we have made to date has been transformative in three aspects, namely in terms of the normative framework, our institutional capacity, and operational impact.

Regarding the normative framework, 2008 saw the adoption of a breakthrough resolution, resolution 1820. For the first time, the issue of conflict-related sexual violence was elevated onto the agenda of the world’s paramount peace and security body, the United Nations Security Council. For the first time, the issue of conflict-related sexual violence was recognized as a threat to collective security and an impediment to peace. Resolution 1820 gave new responsibilities to security actors and new avenues for accountability and action to survivors and their advocates. It called for sexual violence to be addressed in transitional justice processes and excluded from the scope of amnesty provisions. Finally, the international community had accepted that a ceasefire could not be comprehensive if the gunfire stops, but the patterns of rape persist.

In terms of institutional arrangements, 2009 saw the adoption of resolution 1888, which equipped the United Nations with new infrastructure to respond. Resolution 1888 established my mandate, including as Chair of the inter-agency coordination network, UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict. This resolution also established a Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict to strengthen institutional safeguards against impunity at the national-level, and called for Women Protection Advisers to be deployed to the field to enhance our monitoring, reporting and response.

Subsequent resolutions have authorized specific arrangements at country-level to deepen the evidence-base for action, and to increase the pressure on parties to comply with international norms by listing, or “naming and shaming”, those credibly suspected of abuse. They have emphasized the need for early warning and prevention, and to combat sexual violence employed as a tactic of terrorism, including in the context of human trafficking. Most recently, resolution 2467, adopted in April of this year, calls for a holistic, survivor-centered approach to inform all prevention and response measures.

In terms of our operational impact, the United Nations system is today supporting thousands of survivors who had once been invisible and inaccessible. In several conflict-affected settings, the operational arms of my mandate, the Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and the UN Action network, are delivering concrete projects to support survivors. Peacekeepers are now systematically trained to detect, deter and respond to sexual violence as part of their operational readiness standards. Sexual violence offences have become an integral part of international criminal investigations, thanks to a growing cadre of legal specialists in this field. Mobile courts and military tribunals have convicted combatants of sexual violence crimes, in settings such as the DRC and South Sudan. Recently, the International Criminal Court handed down a historic 30-year sentence to Bosco Ntaganda on 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including rape and sexual slavery. Last week, three former militiamen operating in eastern DRC, including the infamous warlord Kokodikoko, were convicted of rape as a crime against humanity.

In addition, specific designation criteria on sexual violence have been included in the sanctions’ regimes for the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Somalia and South Sudan.

As part of our operational methodology, which focuses on anchoring commitments at the national-level, my Office has signed Joint Communiqués to prevent and address conflict-related sexual violence with a range of affected countries. At the same time, we have begun to engage with non-State armed groups implicated in patterns of sexual violence, in contexts such as the Central African Republic, Mali and South Sudan.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Against this backdrop, and despite the progress we have made thus far, we face an increasingly complex global security environment. Sexual violence continues to be used to spread fear and assert control. It remains a cruel tactic of torture, terror and political repression; a brutally effective tool of displacement and dehumanization. The response continues to be slow. Impunity remains the rule and justice the rare exception. Services are scarce. And stigma is so intense that some survivors choose to remain with their captors rather than having to face their families and feel the shame of their reproach. Security policy is still a male-dominated domain, despite clear and compelling evidence linking gender equality with peace. The international community has not yet adequately invested in tackling the structural root causes that perpetuate this violence, such as gender inequality. From Nigeria to Sudan, from Colombia to Bosnia and Herzegovina, women and girls are a critical constituency for conflict prevention and peace-building. Yet, when formal negotiations and transitional justice processes begin, they are too often marginalized and pushed out of the picture.


Addressing the root causes of conflict-related sexual violence requires offering people, and in particular young people, a hopeful future, including access to the dividends of peace and development, economic opportunities, and social services.

There is need for inter-generational dialogue to reaffirm our shared values, including the need to leave no one behind, to promote respect for diversity, tolerance and societies free from violence. I am encouraged to see young people mobilizing in pursuit of these objectives.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Countless survivors have told me that justice is essential to helping them cope and transform their lives. Survivors also demand material assistance to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. Reparations are what survivors want most yet receive least. At the dawn of a new decade for my mandate, it is time to deliver on these demands and put survivors first. A survivor-centered, rights-based response requires contextual solutions that give voice and choice to survivors, building their resilience, and enshrining their experiences on the historical record.

For several reasons, 2020 will be a pivotal year. In addition to marking the 20th anniversary of the foundational Security Council resolution on Women, Peace and Security, resolution 1325, and the 25th anniversary of the visionary Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, it will also mark 75 years since the advent of the United Nations itself. This means that a lifetime has passed since the founding promise of equality between men and women was enshrined in the UN Charter of 1945.

Rape is the only weapon of war that is both powered by, and perpetuates, gender-based inequality. Strategies to protect women and girls from this scourge are also strategies to protect their full and equal participation in the political, economic and social sphere. Ending sexual and gender-based violence, which casts a long shadow of terror and trauma over countless lives, is a critical step towards empowering women to shape their destiny, and that of their communities and nations.

So, let us set the stage for a new decade of decisive action, to move from resolutions to results, and from horror to hope – to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, including the devastating scourge of wartime rape.

Thank you.

Monday, 25 November 2019