WUNRN
UN News Centre
25 March 2010 – Sexual
violence during conflicts is all too often downplayed and treated as part of
local cultural traditions instead of being viewed as a war crime, a senior
United Nations official has warned as she called for much greater international
action to defeat the scourge.
Margot Wallström, the recently appointed Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, voiced concern about the “lingering assumption that sexual violence is a tradition, rather than a tactic of choice” by groups engaged in war.
“Prevailing
opinion would have us believe that what happens in a ‘private hut’ has nothing
to do with security,” she wrote in the
“While
bullets, bombs and blades make the headlines, women’s bodies remain invisible
battlefields. Yet it is utterly indefensible to downgrade the threat level of
sexual violence because it primarily targets women and girls. What makes forced
displacement part of the war, and mass rape an intractable cultural trait?”
Ms.
Wallström and Mr. Støre wrote that there are only cultures of impunity, and not
cultures of rape, as some commentators have argued in certain countries or
conflicts.
“Cultural
relativism legitimizes the violence and discredits the victims, because when
you accept rape as cultural, you make rape inevitable. This shields the
perpetrators and allows world leaders to shrug off sexual violence as an
immutable – if regrettable – truth. It is time to state, once and for all, that
mass rape is no more inevitable, cultural or acceptable than mass murder.”
The
Special Representative – who is visiting
“We
are convinced that where there’s a political will, there’s a way. Every rape –
even in the midst of war – is a crime that can be commanded, condoned or
condemned. That is a choice made by those in power, and it is a matter that
concerns the guardians of global peace and security.”
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