Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

While United Nations peacekeeping missions have provided critical support for gender-related issues in countries emerging from armed conflict, we agree with the report's assertion that it is equally important to pay adequate attention to security-sector reform and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes, so as to avoid the risk of relapse.

We support the United Nations efforts to deploy greater numbers of women's protection advisers and gender advisers to its missions. The mandate provided by the Security Council on women and peace and security also necessarily requires more resources for effective, sustained results.

The promotion and protection of the human rights of women and girls in armed conflict continue to pose a pressing challenge. There should be zero tolerance for gender-based violence and sexual violence. All cases of gender-based violence must be promptly investigated and its perpetrators prosecuted.

However, we would urge caution in drawing generalized linkages between sexual violence and issues such as the exploitation of mineral resources and internal displacement, for example, based, as they are, on specific country experiences, as the recent report of the Secretary General (S/2013/149) suggests.

With regard to prevention, it seems not unfitting to recall how one of the first forms of prevention used in connection with crimes of sexual violence was our own intense and timely intervention in crises using various peaceful means for which the international community is well equipped, such as mediation, international measures and a commitment to tackling the underlying social and economic causes of conflicts.

The third issue — assisting victims — seems to receive less emphasis in the report. Indeed, in order to ensure that reprisals or retribution undertaken in the pursuit of justice do not become an end in themselves, it is necessary to keep the focus on reparation for victims.

Obviously, sexual violence leads to devastating physical and psychological consequences, sometimes even fatal ones. Of concern to my delegation in that regard is the euphemistic reference in the report to “access to services that would allow [girls or women] to safely terminate a pregnancy” (S/2013/149, para. 12).

In that context, the continued episodes of sexual violence, as the report describes, including, inter alia, rape, forced sterilization, abduction for sexual purposes and sexual slavery, to name just a few of the egregious acts of violence against women, are even more frustrating and saddening. As is recognized, women and girls are those predominantly affected by sexual violence, although men and boys are also victims of such heinous acts.

We recognize the importance of mediators and envoys in mediation, ceasefire, peace and preventive diplomacy processes engaging with the parties to a conflict in dialogue on sexual violence, and for such violence to be addressed in peace agreements.