Stop using women's bodies as 'battleground' in wartime: UN
UN member states on Tuesday were urged to do more to protect women from pervasive sexual violence during wars and to give them a greater voice in matters of war and peace.
The occasion was a Security Council debate to review implementation of special measures called for in a resolution adopted seven years ago to protect women and girls from rape and other forms of sexual abuse in situations of armed conflict.
"Violence against women has reached hideous and pandemic proportions in some societies attempting to recover from conflict," UN chief Ban Ki-moon told the council, apparently referring to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan's Darfur region or eastern Chad where rape is being used a weapon of war.
Speaking Monday, on the eve of the debate, Rachel Mayanja, Ban's special adviser on gender issues and the advancement of women, lamented the fact that "women's bodies were a battleground in time of war."
"Sexual violence in conflict, particularly rape, should be named for what it is: not a private act or the unfortunate misbehaviour of a renegade soldier, but aggression, torture, war crime and genocide," she told the council Tuesday.
Several human rights groups have recently turned the spotlight on an upsurge in horrific sexual violence in DRC's Nord-Kivu province, including gang rapes where attackers mutilate their victims' genitals until they need surgery.
Mayanja said that "sexual violence (in armed conflict) remains pervasive" despite repeated denunciations of the phenomenon by the Security Council.
"If this situation is not addressed now and with urgency, thousands of women and girls will continue to die, and tens of millions more would be sexually brutalized, traumatized, tormented, stigmatized and ostracized," she added.
Jean-Marie Guehenno, the French head of UN peacekeeping operations, said combating sexual violence "requires a multiplicity of actors carrying out a multiplicity of actions in coordination and in coherence."
He called for full implementation of provisions of council Resolution 1325 adopted in 2000.
Resolution 1325 urged all states to put an end to impunity and to prosecute those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes including those relating to sexual and other violence against women and girls.
It also stressed the importance of giving women equal participation and full involvement in all efforts to maintain and promote peace and security and the need to increase their role in decision-making regarding conflict prevention and resolution.
In his speech, Ban underscored the need to appoint more women in leadership positions in UN peacekeeping operations.
In this connection, many among the 59 speakers in Tuesday's debate hailed the recent ground-breaking appointment of a woman, Denmark's former UN ambassador Ellen Loj, as the new UN special envoy to Liberia.
Ban noted that Loj will head one of the UN's biggest peacekeeping missions -- 14,000 UN troops and almost 1,200 police -- in a country recovering from a bloody 14-year civil war and now headed by a respected woman, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
AFP
