Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

In closing, Japan reiterates its full support for the mandate of Special Representative Bangura and commends her proactive engagements. We would also like to underline the important role played by the Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict in fostering national ownership, leadership and responsibility in addressing sexual violence. Japan strongly supports their efforts and will cooperate closely with them.

Furthermore, the effective investigation and documentation of crimes of sexual violence are instrumental in bringing perpetrators to justice. To that end, developing the capacity of national Governments to investigate crimes and raising awareness of and sensitivity to sexual violence are both essential.

First, in order to prevent sexual violence, we need to raise the cost to perpetrators and end the culture of impunity. In this regard, it is essential that we support national Governments in meeting their own challenges in terms of justice and accountability, and that we strengthen international justice mechanisms.

Under the Ugandan Amnesty Act of 2000, complete amnesty was extended to members of the LRA on the condition that they report to a designated area, surrender their weapons and make a declaration renouncing and abandoning involvement in the war or armed rebellion.

The second observation we would like to make is that leadership on accountability for conflict-related crimes, including sexual violence, must be provided at the national level, with priority given to resourcing, adequate legislation prohibiting acts of sexual violence and capacity-building for police, investigators, lawyers and judges regarding the adjudication of these crimes.

The paucity of domestic prosecutions for crimes of sexual violence, the limited volume of international prosecutions for these crimes and the scale worldwide of crimes of sexualized violence, particularly in situations of armed conflict, continue to leave an impunity gap so distinct that in recent years it has become the focus of several Security Council resolutions.

The first is that it is well documented that the commission of rape and other forms of sexual violence intensify and increase during times of civil war and armed conflicts, and yet too often impunity for these crimes continues to be guaranteed through amnesty laws. Let me provide an example from Uganda.

Some of these issues are resource and capacity- related, which leads me to my third observation, which is that the scale of sexual violence crimes committed during armed conflict is beyond the capacity of any national judicial system to address on its own.

Since then, the Ugandan court has adopted some of the procedures practiced by the ICC, including the use of redacted statements to support witness safety in proceedings and in the practices regarding the disclosure of evidence.

Over the past 27 years, northern Uganda and several of its neighbouring countries, including South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have been subjected to armed conflict, instability, displacement of the population and widespread and brutal forms of sexual and gender- based crimes committed by a range of perpetrators, including armed forces, militia groups and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).