Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

I would like to recall here the principles of the United Nations initiative to combat sexual violence against women in conflict situations. Rape is not an inevitable consequence of war. Gender violence, including sexual violence, is a violation of women's dignity and fundamental human rights. Attempts to halt and respond to sexual violence must address gender inequalities and contribute to women's empowerment.

However, just as human rights cannot be degraded to be used as a Trojan horse for foreign interventionism in the domestic affairs of a country, neither can sovereignty be invoked to cast a veil over serious human rights violations or to protect from impunity in a particular location.

Based on that significant progress, violence against women is now recognized as a human rights violation in that it flouts a series of rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to life; the right not to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; the right to equality before the law; the right to equality in the family; and the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, inter alia.

As we move along the road to equality, a key milestone has been the entry into force of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. There, for the first time, it was recognized in the framework of international humanitarian law that rape and other forms of sexual and gender violence are crimes as serious as genocide, torture, cruel treatment, mutilation and slavery.

The Security Council was established 67 years ago and has witnessed 67 years of wars and conflict, but the world has yet to take up war-zone rape as a serious priority. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of women, children and men have been raped in conflicts in our lifetimes.

That five-year-old girl was raped because her attacker knew that he would get away with it. Because the world has not treated sexual violence as a priority, there have only been a handful of prosecutions for the many hundreds of thousands of survivors. They suffer most at the hands of their rapists, but they are also victims of a culture of impunity. That is the sad, upsetting and, indeed, shameful reality.

Rape is a tool of war. It is an act of aggression and a crime against humanity. It is inflicted intentionally to destroy the woman, the family and the community. It ruins lives and fuels conflict. The Charter of the United Nations is clear; the Security Council has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.

Let us be clear what we are speaking about: young girls raped and impregnated before their bodies are able to carry a child, causing fistula; boys held at gunpoint and forced to sexually assault their mothers and sisters; women raped with bottles, wood branches and knives to cause as much damage as possible; toddlers, even babies, dragged from their homes and violated.

I will never forget the survivors whom I have met or what they told me — the mother in Goma whose five-year-old daughter had been raped outside a police station in plain view, or the Syrian woman I met in Jordan last week who asked that I hide her name and face because she knew that if she spoke out against the crimes against her, she would be attacked and possibly killed.

I understand that there are many things that are difficult for the Security Council to agree on, but sexual violence in conflict should not be one of them. That it is a crime to rape young children is not something that I imagine anyone in the Chamber would not be able to agree on. The rights and wrongs of the issue are straightforward, and the actions that need to be taken have been identified.