Sexual Violence in Conflict

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of preventing sexual violence in conflict.

My favourite ever quote is not particularly erudite, which is not very good for an Oxford MP. It is from “The West Wing”, when Leo tells one of his members of staff:

“Never let the urgent crowd out the important.”

In a nutshell, that is why, with all the domestic pressures crowding in on us at the moment, I still prioritise my work with the all-party associate group on women, peace and security, and why I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s commitment to preventing sexual violence in conflict.

Major General Cammaert, the former peacekeeping commander in Democratic Republic of the Congo, said in 2008:

“It is now more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in modern conflict.”

In that year, 14,591 new cases of sexual violence were reported in DRC. Since 1998, it is believed that more than 200,000 Congolese women have been raped. Today, we still hear of widespread sexual violence in DRC, Syria, Sudan and South Sudan. Just last week, there was a report of a Somali woman who spoke up about being gang raped by state security forces only to be sentenced to a year in prison, along with the journalist who reported her story, for daring to speak up. This reflects the exponential growth of conflicts that target civilians, especially women and girls, as a means of intimidation and ethnic cleansing. Films such as “Hotel Rwanda” and “Shooting Dogs” mean that most people now know that the abuses that these women suffer are among the most horrific that any of us can imagine. Nevertheless, as if the failure to prevent this violence in the first place was not bad enough, these women are still routinely denied access to any form of justice, or any engagement with the peace processes that follow.

Male victims, crimes against whom are even more chronically under-reported, face extreme stigma and almost non-existent access to services. It is almost impossible to estimate the scale of an abuse that remains largely unreported and unrecorded. I hope that the House will forgive me, however, given that I am chair of the all-party associate group on women, peace and security, if I focus my remarks on the issues affecting women in conflict. It is meant not to imply that the abuses suffered by male victims are less grave, but only to acknowledge that the protection challenges are different and that it is not my area of expertise. Whether the victims are male or female, however, the unpalatable fact is that the perpetrators prosper with impunity and that there remains little if any deterrent against sexual violence in most fragile and conflict-affected states.

The primary responsibility for prosecuting these crimes must lie with the states themselves, of course, but where the rule of law has collapsed or is failing to enforce domestic and international laws to protect victims, the international community has a constructive and effective role to play in capacity building and challenging those states over the need for justice and accountability. Security Council resolution 1325 is the cornerstone of policy on gender and conflict. It was the first resolution to acknowledge that women experience different impacts from conflict and that this matters for global peace and security.

In 2008-09, further resolutions concluded not only that violence against women was a criminal matter that could be addressed by justice systems once countries had stabilised, but that sexual and gender-based violence was often a deliberately deployed weapon of war, that a failure to stop violence against women was a failure to stop an abuse that catalysed and perpetuated conflict, and that until we started seeing violence against women as a security threat, we would never be able fully to achieve our defence, foreign policy and international development goals of conflict prevention and stabilisation.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

My hon. Friend deserves great credit for having tabled this important motion, not least because, as she pointed out, girls and women are at the forefront of violence in the areas she identified. That is why so many of the Department for International Development’s programmes around the world specifically combat violence against women. Does she agree that it is hugely to the Government’s and particularly the Foreign Secretary’s credit that they have put this item squarely on the agenda for the G8 meeting in Britain later this year and that that helps to build on the international agreements that are aimed at tackling this subject and those which she has just mentioned?

[Nicola Blackwood]

I do indeed, and I thank the former International Development Secretary for his intervention. I know that he was a great champion of women’s rights when he was in that role. I hope that when the Foreign Secretary speaks, he will update us on progress at the G8 on this issue.

All the statistics and stories tell us that women are most vulnerable to the worst human rights abuses imaginable, but they are more than that. Among the women I have met are those such as Jineth Bedoya, a Colombian journalist who will not stop challenging arms dealing in her country, despite being abducted, tortured and raped by paramilitaries and then being told that there would be no prosecutions, but that she could have either bodyguards or a ticket out of the country.

Then there is Ikhlas Mohammed, a Darfuri survivor who speaks out continually about the abuses that women and girls have undergone in her community. The story she told still haunts me and demonstrates that practical solutions such as the preventing sexual violence initiative are not just western follies that tinker at the edges, but exactly what those who survive sexual violence are calling for. She told me this story: “I was in Tawila town when a girl’s primary school was attacked. The little girls in the school were raped, some in front of their families. Many were less than 10 years old. How do you stand being made to watch while someone rapes your daughter, or your mother or your sister? It is better to die than that. They use rape as a weapon. Now the women who were raped are pregnant they are unacceptable in their families. Most of the girls did not tell anyone they had been raped because of the stigma. If there is no justice, if there is no law, then everything has collapsed. We cannot stop women’s violence. We cannot stop rape. We cannot stop any kind of sexual violence towards women. We need justice. I am a representative of Darfurian women and we are looking for justice.”

Those women who speak up after they have survived sexual violence and who challenge it regardless of the risk are not just victims. They are not even primarily victims. Many whom I have met have become exceptional human rights defenders and leaders in their own countries, calling for their right to live free from the fear of all kinds of violence, for their right to access services and, just as importantly, for sustainable stabilisation. They are calling for women to be considered and included in peace processes so that they can hold their own leaders to account. Those women are indomitable agents for change whose determination and strength of purpose is a resource for peace and security that we can ill afford to ignore. They are, in short, a good investment.

I am delighted to welcome the Foreign Secretary’s preventing sexual violence initiative. I know from discussions with him and with the PSVI team that tackling sexual violence in conflict is a genuine personal passion of his, and I thank him for his leadership in driving the matter up the international agenda in a way that we have not seen since resolution 1325 was signed in 2000.

[Fiona O’Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that we in the developed world also need to address this issue? Is she aware that 20% of US female veterans report that they have experienced sexual assault during their careers?

[Nicola Blackwood]

There is no question but that sexual violence is a problem in every country, and every country needs to take responsibility for tackling it. It is also a fact that in certain countries the rule of law has entirely collapsed, and in those countries there is much more scope for capacity building and support. The G8 countries and the international community can offer support in a way that will make an extraordinary difference to women’s lives.

The all-party parliamentary group and our co-ordinating group—Gender Action for Peace and Security—have already taken every opportunity to engage with the PSVI team as the initiative develops. We have been making the case for participation, as well as protection and impunity, to be part of the PSVI package. We have emphasised that, in this sensitive area of policy, we need to take a “first, do no harm” approach, particularly by ensuring that support and protection are in place for the survivors of sexual violence and for those women human rights defenders who are brave enough to stand up but who face extreme intimidation and abuse.

We must also ensure a sustainable impact by integrating the PSVI with the national action plans developed around resolution 1325, with the building stability overseas strategy and with other DFID and peace-building programmes so that there is no risk of duplication. I hope that the Foreign Secretary will give us an update today on his progress on the PSVI with the G8 member states, and on his plan for taking the initiative forward following the April Foreign Ministers’ meeting and beyond.

The practical measures that the PSVI offers are the missing link in our international response to the risks that women face in conflict. A frequent problem is the failure to understand the risks in the first place. Much of the rhetoric around women in conflict-affected states fails to address the full range of roles that women might have played in the conflict. Some take part as combatants, others as field operations supporters and some as sex slaves. Their inclusion in peace processes, in disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration, repatriation and resettlement programmes and in intelligence networks is every bit as important as the inclusion of their male counterparts, whom we would not dream of excluding.

Women represent 80% of refugees, along with their children. The number of war widows and female-headed families increases exponentially immediately after conflict, and those groups continue to face survival crises in post-conflict situations, making them even more vulnerable to sexual violence. They need access to employment programmes and to health, education, social and justice services if they are to protect themselves and, if they are already victims, to recover. However, post-conflict reconstruction and development analyses rarely prioritise and target women in conflict-related scenarios.

This is a matter of seeing the protection and inclusion of women as an integral part of the security challenge of stabilisation. For example, roads and ports are needed for commerce, but they might not help women to access local economies if they do not connect to the smaller, rural markets that the women frequent. Employment programmes almost always target young men, to absorb them, away from conflict-related activity, but that can leave women without assistance of any kind. One capacity solution is to focus on recruiting women to front-line services such as criminal justice, health or education. That would serve the dual purpose of ensuring that women found the employment that they needed to prevent poverty and vulnerability, as well as ensuring that they had access to those services. Both those outcomes would offer stability and security benefits in peace-building efforts.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I have looked at the support our country provides for policing internationally, and our Departments now work together much better in that regard. Does my hon. Friend agree, however, that there is further work for the Department for International Development, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office to do in ensuring international policing support operates in the best possible way and also that such policing projects are adequately funded, given our domestic financial constraints?

[Nicola Blackwood]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about cross-departmental working. This is clearly an area in which MOD, FCO and DFID need to work well together, and there has been an enormous improvement in the approach to conflict situations over the past two years, and the conflict pool—BSOS—has played a big role in that. There will always be more work to do in ensuring Government Departments work together better, however.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the National Security Council, set up by this Government, has made a huge difference to that cross-departmental co-ordination? In Afghanistan, training the police is enormously important, and that greater co-ordination has had a major impact on the ground.

[Nicola Blackwood]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend knows much more about this matter than I do, as he speaks from considerable experience. I will say, however, that we should be working to recruit more women to the Afghan police, and ensuring that they can play a role in enabling women to have more secure lives in that country, where they face extreme violence daily.

Whatever role women play, we need to get women involved in making peace, because without them peace-making and post-conflict stabilisation is more difficult and less likely to take into account the central issue of stopping the abuse of women or to be sustainable. There is a direct correlation between more inclusive models of negotiation and a greater chance of keeping the peace. The impact on the ground is clear. Melanne Verveer, who until last Friday was the first ever US ambassador for global women’s issues, noted at the end of 2010 that 31 of the world’s 39 active conflicts were recurrences of conflicts after peace settlements had been concluded, and that in all 31 cases women had been excluded from those peace processes. It is impossible not to conclude that, despite vocal support for the women, peace and security agenda, there has been negligible improvement in women’s participation in peace-building since resolution 1325 was signed in 2000.

I hope the G8 agreements and the preventing sexual violence initiative will lead to a recognition that the protection of women from sexual violence and the participation of women in peace processes are two sides of the same coin. In the quests to end conflict-related sexual violence and to stabilise fragile and conflict-affected states, we do not get one without the other. In order to achieve our goal, we must get a commitment to put into practice the EU guidelines on human rights defenders.

Over the past few years there has been an increase in geopolitical upheaval in the Arab world, which none of us could have anticipated. There has been famine in areas of east Africa and the Sahel, too, which is increasing the pressure on already fragile states, and international economic instability is widespread. As a result, the PSVI and related strategies to tackle violence against women and girls and the BSOS have never been more relevant. As the rate of political change accelerates in so many countries in the Arab world, and as conflict emerges and re-emerges unexpectedly in Mali, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria, and as the status of women becomes increasingly uncertain in those countries and many others experiencing instability, I hope we, too, can accelerate our rate of political change and embed the 1325 agenda as a fundamental part of our foreign policy response to fragile and conflict states.

Ms Joy Ogwu, former president of UN Women, has said:

“No one can run fast on one foot.”

A security agenda that fails to prevent sexual violence in conflict, that fails to support women human rights defenders and leaders and that fails to ensure women’s participation has been a limping beast, but I believe that the PSVI and the Foreign Secretary’s personal commitment to championing this issue at the G8 can mark a turning point in the international rhetoric on women in conflict situations, so that we can finally begin to put into practice changes on the ground that will protect these women, who so desperately need it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who knows exactly what the situations are like, and can tell us so graphically the experiences he has seen with his own eyes. It was important that this debate was secured, and it is appropriate to pay tribute to the Foreign Secretary, the shadow Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development. I mention the first two in particular, because they have given up their time to be here for the whole of this important debate. That is significant, and it sends a message that we see this as a very important issue. Some people may watch this debate, possibly at some unearthly hour of the morning on the Parliament channel, and think that there were not many people present, that it looks a bit thin, and that we cannot really think of the subject as important. However, the fact that senior figures have given up their time shows that it is very important.

As several hon. Members have said, this subject challenges those of us who would prefer no conflict at all, who would like to say that the answer is for there to be no war and that we should not get involved. It is a challenge to decide when to intervene, how to intervene and what ways there are to intervene. The examples we have heard from the former Yugoslavia vindicate intervention. The violence was occurring anyway; it did not happen because we intervened. Hopefully, some women, who might otherwise have been affected, were saved The challenge remains, because in all situations we have to ask ourselves whether it is right to intervene, or whether we would provoke an existing conflict. Some conflicts arise from some of the gross inequality in the world and its resources, so there are many things that we can do to prevent such situations.

[Nicola Blackwood]

Given that sexual violence is recognised as a key factor destabilising and catalysing conflict in the first place, does the hon. Lady not agree that tackling sexual violence and preventing it in the first place is one way to prevent conflict and achieve exactly the aim she calls for?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I agree absolutely. With a subject this big, it is sometimes tempting to think, “Well, it’s always been there throughout history.” We know that. The history of conflict going back hundreds of years contains examples of such behaviour, but 40 years ago, when the big campaigns on violence against women started in this country with the setting up of domestic violence refuges and so on, people said the same thing: “You’ll never change it. It’s always been there. It’s endemic.” Although we heard earlier how far we have left to go, even in our own country, progress has been made. Sometimes, when dealing with difficulties in the justice system and so on, it feels like three steps forward and two steps back, but nevertheless we have made some progress and changed attitudes. I do not wish to sound complacent, but those of us who started campaigns in the early days have seen a difference. If we make an effort, we can begin to change how people think and behave and how they are treated, so although, with a subject this big, people might think, “What can we do? What can anybody do?”, we must make an effort and start to change things.

Members of peacekeeping forces have a particular responsibility when it comes to their behaviour and attitudes. It is crucial that our own armed forces—and I am sure that they do—lead by example in how they treat women, including female members of the armed services in the field. One way to change things is by involving far more women in the process of change in their own countries and peace processes. As many people have said, far too few women feature in the big meetings and peace conferences. Where are the women? It is important that their voices be heard and that they be encouraged and given the tools to start to change things, not just for their own generation but for future generations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicola Blackwood]

I would like to thank everybody who has contributed to the debate. As the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander), said, it is timely and important. Also, the subject could not be more sensitive, and everybody who has contributed today has risen to the challenge.

I thank the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) for sharing my passion for “The West Wing”. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) for sharing her experiences in Kosovo, and the hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O’Donnell) for her cross-party support in sponsoring the debate. She is a great champion of these issues, and her support today is greatly appreciated. My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) got straight to the point with her comments.

I thank all the other hon. Members who have spoken today, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who spoke of his arresting personal experiences. Although she did not make a speech, I would also like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), who has been a long-term supporter on these issues and who supported us in securing the debate. I also thank the shadow Secretary of State for recognising that this issue transcends party boundaries and that it is a moral and strategic imperative for the UK.

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s progress and his announcement on the G8 issues that we are facing. I am particularly pleased that there will be an emphasis on capacity building, on justice and accountability and on an end to impunity. I am also pleased that the preventing sexual violence initiative will build on existing peace-building efforts, and that he is committed to ensuring that United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 will be central to our vision. I am pleased that a key priority of the PSVI will be to integrate support services for survivors with protection for women human rights defenders.

For too long, the international community has uttered warm words and passed many resolutions on the violence and exclusion facing women and girls in conflict. It has recognised the problem and proposed solutions, but it has not implemented them effectively on the ground. It is now time to reject, once and for all, the myth that violence against women and girls is a cultural and inevitable consequence of conflict; it is not.

The proposals for the PSVI, in conjunction with the national action plans for resolution 1325, the building stability overseas strategy, the plans for violence against women and girls and the Foreign Secretary’s personal commitment to drive this agenda through the G8 and the United Nations, mean that there is now a real chance finally to get action on the ground to deter conflict-related sexual violence and genuinely to put an end to the flagrant impunity that exists today. In order to do that, we must make the most of all the resources at our disposal.

The message I most want to convey is that the women I have met and heard about have proved that, despite all the odds stacked against them, they are not just victims: they are a resource for peace and security, and without them peace will be harder to find and to keep. Many lives will be lost and ruined through the sexual and gender-based violence we have heard about today while we try to find that peace without them.

Question put and agreed to,

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of preventing sexual violence in conflict.