Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

We know that violence against women is woven into the social fabric and pervades not only judicial systems but also the way in which we see the world and relationships between human beings in time of peace and in time of armed conflict.

We also recently signed the Arms Trade Treaty, after having worked together with many present here, fighting hard to ensure that for the first time the link between the international arms trade and gender violence could be recognized. The President of my country has signed a decree regarding the implementation of our national plan of action on resolution 1325 (2000) and complementary measures.

We all know that one of the elements used to legitimize such acts has been the concept of the sexual honour of women as being the basis of male honour. Hence sexual violence against women, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy become acts that are justifiable in time of armed conflict, on the basis of the argument that they meet the needs of men.

Those important advances are without a doubt the result of the jurisprudence of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the statements condemning sexual violence against women made at Beijing and Vienna, and the active participation of the women's movement.

That was also a turning point in the context of impunity — against impunity in law, which has its origins in norms such as amnesties, and impunity in act, which runs the gamut from complicity on the part of public power, to the passivity of investigators, to selectivity or corruption on the part of the judiciary.

Such vulnerability is particularly acute in the field of criminal procedural law, where a perverse cycle of victimization of women occurs. In cases of sexual violence, victims are routinely interrogated about their participation in the crime; they are exposed to unacceptable standards of proof; their lives are investigated and assessed; their testimony is minimized or rejected; and their claims are silenced.

Part of the process of recognizing that violence against women is a violation of human rights involves stepping back from views that hold that violence against women represents a kind of cultural expression or is the unquestionable prerogative of specific groups or individuals in the context of the exercise of power.

In the negotiations leading to the adoption today of resolution 2106 (2013), we held intensive discussions on the tensions that may occur between the protection of human rights and the principle of State sovereignty, both fundamental pillars of the system of international relations arising from the Charter of our Organization.

In the context of armed conflict, violence against women has particular significance. The worst crimes are committed in times of war, which exacerbates the inequality of women. Thus rape is a message of castration and mutilation of the enemy, a battle fought among men but carried out on the bodies of women.

In armed conflict, then, appalling violence against women, mass rape, abduction and sexual slavery must not be regarded as exceptions but, rather, as a savage extension of the daily violence against women. Indeed, violence against women is not a horrifying exception; it is, rather, a continuum of violence.