General Women, Peace and Security

Last March, the Human Rights Council in Geneva hosted a panel on sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which again brought to our attention the massive character of violence against women in that context. Armed conflicts and the weakness of State institutions, especially the judiciary and the security forces, are the primary destabilizing factors.

It is also crucial, in the early stages of a peace process, to adopt gender-sensitive policies and measures to protect women and girls from sexual exploitation, early marriage, human trafficking and rape. What other options do we have for action? While there may be no ready-made solutions, I would like to explore three areas that are addressed in the report.

In the majority of the situations that have been observed, sexual violence is perpetrated as much by Government forces as by armed opposition groups. Our response to that must be firm: there shall be no impunity for the perpetrators of those crimes, and we will not rest until justice is done.

In conclusion, we commend Special Representative Zainab Bangura, who has played an outstanding role in drawing up joint strategies with Governments to combat sexual violence. Switzerland congratulates her for the progress made in the implementation of the frameworks and looks forward to hosting the next donor conference of the United Nations Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict.

Finally, we share the Secretary-General's concern about the lack of official data on sexual violence. We need reliable data to effectively combat violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in situations of armed conflict and internal disturbances.

This month, we have begun to implement our 10-year action plan to help promote human rights, in particular women's rights. That has been commended by the independent expert, and we would have liked to see that reflected in the report (S/2014/181), especially our efforts in the area of sexual violence against women.

Despite the progress made, paragraph 50 of the report under consideration refers to the situation in Darfur and mentions an increase in reports of conflict-related sexual violence. In these types of discussions, we are used to the date of issuance and publication of the report being mentioned. We want to know about such reports. When we talk about different reports, we want to know which reports we are talking about.

Apparently, UNAMID is being asked not to go to certain areas. However, when it talks about UNAMID's civilian component, which has a unit for protecting women against sexual violence in armed conflict, it does have permission. Therefore, we did provide access. In that regard, I think we are talking about erroneous information in the report.

In the post-conflict period, from May 2009 to May 2012, 10 security forces personnel were reported to have been involved in six incidents of sexual violence in Northern Province. That is out of a total of 307 persons accused in 256 incidents for the entire Northern Province.

We note that this year report of the Secretary-General on conflict-related sexual violence (S/2014/181) contains references to the Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka (A/HRC/25/L.1/Rev.1), accountability and a comprehensive truth and reconciliation commission. We are disappointed that such issues, which have no relevance to that before us, have been dragged into this report.