Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

The United Nations, in our opinion, requires a single vehicle for the delivery of judicial and legal advice. My delegation has been saying this for many years now.

The United Nations is required to set an example before our publics as an Organization that will without question pay special attention to the most vulnerable and defenceless protected persons in war, with, first, a guaranteed protection provided by ourselves, from ourselves and then from others. My intention here is not to cast doubt on or belittle the outstanding service and contributions of United Nations peacekeepers.

So what must we do regarding United Nations peacekeeping? We must adopt the convention on criminal accountability as soon as possible; we must make the United Nations a co-examiner of the facts, even when the allegations involve United Nations military personnel. We must be more transparent regarding the severity and nature of the crimes being committed by United Nations peacekeepers. We must do better on matters relating to paternity.

Secondly, we must support all and every effort aimed at the creation of an international repository for evidence — a complicated business, we know, owing to concerns relating to contamination and admissibility. Nevertheless, we must try to set it up.

I begin by asking this: do we, as a collective membership, bound together in this Organization and by its Charter, have the credibility to offer strong opinions on this subject matter? Do we have the credibility when together we have all refused to undertake the complete range of actions necessary to ensure that sexual abuse and exploitation by our own peacekeepers, United Nations peacekeepers, be reduced to zero?

Do we have any credibility when we insist that the United Nations has no business in relation to the conduct of investigations into alleged crimes committed by our own United Nations uniformed peacekeepers, knowing that in the past we, the Member States, were not reliable enough in guaranteeing that justice was done in respect of the victims?

Can we not be accused by others of brazen hypocrisy when we condemn in this Chamber all expressions of conflict-related sexual violence committed against women, girls and boys, and speak of them as unjust and intolerable — and we have done this for 13 years now — and then down the hall, only a few metres from here, in the Sixth Committee, we do next to nothing, year in and year out, on the draft convention on criminal accountabilit

Are we credible when in 2012, the last Office of Internal Oversight Services reporting period, we still had 42 cases of sexual exploitation and abuse involving United Nations peacekeepers being investigated by that Office? By now, some seven years after we identified both the challenge and the plan needed to eliminate this odious phenomenon, there should be practically no cases at all.

Secondly, we also recognize the importance of providing relief to the victims of sexual violence. Japan is committed to ensuring that multi-sectoral assistance and services are provided to victims. In this connection, we would like to mention that, in April of this year, Mr.

Japan welcomes today's adoption of resolution 2106 (2013), which further strengthens the framework established by the previous relevant resolutions and contains critical operational guidance.