Women and armed conflict: the UN pathway
On July 13th, 2015, the United Nations’ General Assembly identified June 19th as the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflicts: resolution 69/293, in fact, recognizes the evidence that women and girls are the primary victims of instances of sexual violence, used systematically as a proper weapon of war. Specifically, the resolution makes clear how subjecting these categories to systematic violence is a tactic consciously designed to humiliate, dominate, terrorize, disperse or forcibly relocate civilian members of a given community. Well, starting from the reflections made by Large Movements last year on the occasion of June 19th, we want to give due attention to this anniversary again this year. Indeed, it is still a very relevant day, especially in light of the escalation of the armed conflict in Ukraine starting in February 2022. It is indeed imperative to devote space to the situation in the country and in particular to Ukrainian women, to date frequent victims of sexual violence used as a weapon of war.
Having said that, it is necessary to premise that the issue of sexual violence used in conflict situations is certainly not a novel node in the U.N. sphere: the issue was already being discussed in 2000, when the United Nations’ Security Council, along the lines of commitments and forecasts dating back to the adoption of the Beijing Declaration in 1995, approved with a unanimous vote the text of a resolution on the subject of “Women, Peace and Security.” This is Resolution 1325 of 2000, the first to explicitly and comprehensively address the impact of war on women as well as their specific contribution to armed conflict resolution processes. In fact, with its 18 paragraphs, the resolution sets four macro-objectives to be pursued: recognizing the fundamental role of women in conflict prevention and resolution; achieving greater participation in peacekeeping and national security processes; adopting a gender perspective; and introducing training courses for military and civilian police personnel on women’s rights. The three key words that inspire the design of 1325/2000 are thus prevention, protection and participation.
Far from merely portraying women as helpless victims of conflict, the resolution provides the conceptual basis for spurring states to equip themselves with programs (technically called National Action Plans or NAPS) aimed at moving on a double track: on the one hand, the necessary protection of women and girls involved in conflict situations; on the other, actions aimed at the empowerment of these groups. Women, then, should be recognized for the role they have always played: that of agents of change.
Although an act of soft law, the resolution has moreover enjoyed great resonance in subsequent years. In this sense, one only has to think of the large number of subsequent resolutions adopted on “Women, Peace and Security”: resolution 1820 in 2008; resolutions 1888 and 1889 in 2009; 1960 in 2010; resolutions 2122 and 2106 adopted in 2013; resolutions 2247 and 2493 adopted in 2019; and the very recent 2538, adopted by the Security Council on August 28th, 2020 and dedicated to strengthening the role of women in peacekeeping operations. The first resolution mentioned above, adopted in 2008, formally recognized the systematic and widespread use of sexual violence as a tactic of war, a point taken up again the following year through the adoption of Resolution 1888/2009 in which the belligerent parties were explicitly requested to take action for the total cessation of all acts of sexual violence with immediate effect. In addition to this, resolution 1960 in 2010 introduced a “naming and shaming” (and thus public reporting) mechanism whereby parties involved in an armed conflict reasonably suspected of being responsible for crimes of rape and other forms of sexual violence are to be identified and named in an annual report on the matter.
The Ukrainian situation
Having gone over these premises, it is important to ask how what has been recalled applies to the current Ukrainian context. Indeed, since the aggression suffered by Moscow on February 24, Ukraine has been pouring into an extremely harsh conflict that has ended up severely involving its citizens, who are collateral victims of continuous clashes.
First, it is necessary to mention that Ukraine is currently in the midst of its second NAP, adopted for the period 2020-2025. The previous NAP, covering the period 2016-2020, included six operational pillars: implementation of peacekeeping activities, encouragement of women’s participation in peacebuilding activities, provision of assistance and rehabilitation for conflict-affected people, and monitoring and evaluation actions. These are classic themes that slavishly echo what was outlined in the UN Women, Peace and Security Agenda. The second plan, on the other hand, seems to have taken on a more incisive character especially with reference to the issue of sexual violence employed in the context of armed conflict: indeed, the NAP includes measures designed to prevent and respond to similar instances, aiming to strengthen protection and accountability mechanisms. Embedded in a collaborative framework between the Ukrainian government and the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten, the plan naturally relates to military operations conducted in Ukraine by Russian forces.
Moreover, the framework in question was initialed very recently, on May 3rd in Kiev. However, this circumstance leads us to two interconnected considerations: the first certainly concerns the obvious emergency nature of the Ukrainian situation; the second, on the other hand, concerns the continuing implementation problems that have always been structurally linked to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. The need to agree on an ad hoc collaborative framework, in fact, also and especially arises at a time when the framework constructed by the UN Security Council since the adoption of 1325 in 2000 has proven fundamentally fallacious. Part of the explanation for this problem lies in the soft-law character of the recalled instrument, which in truth does not seem sufficient to justify its poor implementation. The greatest challenge probably lies in the few resources allocated for the concrete implementation of national plans: Ukraine, in this respect, is no exception.
In this regard, it is desirable (and indeed imperative) that the collaboration between the Ukrainian government and the United Nations act as a catalyst for the systematic implementation not only of the second NAP but, in a broader sense, of the wide range of instruments made available by the multiple resolutions pertaining to the 1325-led Agenda, among which the aforementioned naming and shaming mechanism certainly stands out.
What has been said takes on even greater relevance when one considers that, despite ongoing reports by entities such as Human Rights Watch, a notable problem coincides with the difficulty of obtaining reliable data or estimates to quantify the pervasiveness of the phenomenon: victims of sexual violence used as a weapon of war are often reluctant to report it, and, as if that were not enough, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General has spoken of several forensic reports that would testify to how several Ukrainian women were raped before being killed. Still, while in the first weeks of April the Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman received some 400 reports of rapes committed by Russian soldiers, several testimonies from the country’s third sector concern the great difficulties encountered in identifying the perpetrators of these crimes, due to the habit of perpetrators involved in the conflict of wearing masks or helmets.
To complete the picture, an additional aspect to consider when analyzing the case of Ukraine is that concerning the huge internal migration flow that is affecting the country. Indeed, for entirely intuitable reasons, the number of internally displaced persons has been subject to stable increases since the reopening of hostilities with Russia last February. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently estimated at least 7 million internally displaced persons: it is not surprising, then, that one of the most relevant provisions of Ukraine’s second NAP is the one dedicated to protecting internally displaced persons (with particular reference to women, minors and representatives of particularly vulnerable groups) from instances of sexual violence.
The landscape described is thus certainly complex, and the problems highlighted prove to be more topical and pervasive than ever. What is certain is that the day of June 19th takes on added value this year; in fact, it is an unmissable opportunity to reflect on the current state of affairs and take note of the need for a collective and gender-sensitive effort by all the actors involved in order to ensure not only the protection, but also and above all the empowerment of Ukrainian women through the tools made available by international law.
Sources and insights:
Rapporto di Human Rights Watch
Ultimo rapporto del Segretario Generale ONU sulla violenza sessuale in situazioni di conflitto
Risoluzione dell’Assemblea Generale 69/293
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