PEACE MEDIATIONS SHOULD INCLUDE WOMEN &
ADDRESS SEXUAL VIOLENCE: HIGH-LEVEL MEETING & UN REPORT
July 10, 2009
Tina Johnson and Helena Gronberg
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To coincide
with the first anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1820,
a high-level colloquium was held on the issue of addressing
conflict-related sexual violence in peace processes.
The UN
Secretary-General has also stressed the importance of mediators in peace
negotiations having expertise on the issue of sexual violence.
In addition, UN
members States have repeated the call for women to be involved at all
levels of conflict resolution, including as mediators, to secure lasting
peace and security.
HIGH-LEVEL COLLOQUIUM DISCUSSES HOW SEXUAL
VIOLENCE
SHOULD BE ADDRESSED
IN PEACE PROCESSES
From 22-24 June 2009, a high-level colloquium was held in New York on
addressing sexual violence in peace negotiations. It was co-organized by
UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Department of
Political Affairs (DPA), the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO)
and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), on
behalf of UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, in partnership
with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. Participants included senior
mediators, subject experts and women's rights advocates.
Senior mediators admitted at the opening plenary that sexual violence was
not something that they had felt themselves specifically mandated to
address. Moreover, a number of obstacles to the inclusion of provisions on
sexual violence in peace agreements were identified, including: resource
constraints; a lack of systematic data on the intensity, frequency and
circumstances of conflict-related sexual violence; the often weak domestic
advocacy on this issue; compressed timeframes for concluding agreements;
resistance among negotiating parties to full accountability; and failure to
ensure adequate numbers of women mediators, negotiators, peacekeepers and
ceasefire monitors.
However, the final plenary session ended with a collective acknowledgement
among mediators that the colloquium had given them the perspective to see
sexual violence as a routine part of their mandate. Participants generated
a number of key principles for enabling mediators and negotiating parties
to ensure that sexual violence is addressed in peace agreements and that
these are consistent with both UNSCR 1820 and 1325, including:
- Pre-ceasefire
negotiations - including humanitarian-access and human rights
agreements - to address sexual violence;
- Ceasefires
to prohibit and monitor for sexual violence;
- Disarmament,
demobilization and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform
(SSR) to prevent sexual violence and ensure women's security;
- Justice
processes to ensure that issues of sexual violence are addressed with
equal priority to other international crimes; and
- Peace
agreements to specify sexual violence victims as reparations
beneficiaries, and to address their socio-economic needs in recovery
and development frameworks.
Over the coming months, these
principles will be further refined, based on comments received during the
colloquium as well as additional expert input, and turned into an
Operational Guidance Note along the lines of those developed for other
aspects of peace processes on the UN Peacemaker website.
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