Violence Against Women

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

My Lords, I endorse and support what my noble friend Lady Gould said about the right of women raped and impregnated in conflict to abortion under the Geneva convention, and indeed international humanitarian law.

Last year, as rebels captured the main towns in Mali, we heard that girls as young as 12 had been forcibly taken to military camps, gang-raped for days and then abandoned. Earlier this year Ban Ki-moon visited Congo, where he met women who had a condition called traumatic fistula. I have also met women who, to put it in plain language, had had their insides torn out, were unable to control their bladder or bowels and were in constant pain. In Darfur I met a 16 year-old girl who, after being raped, was rejected by her family and fiancé, and endured additional abuse at the hands of police. Her child was then two years old and she was left isolated and alone. It is usual for these women and girls to be ostracised and rejected by their families.

Just imagine an orphanage where 300 children conceived when their mothers were raped had been abandoned. Imagine a town where in the past year 11 infants between the age of six months and one year had been raped. Of the thousands of reported rapes in Congo, up to 50% of all survivors were under the age of 17, and 10% were under 10.

Sexual violence in conflict is a security, development and human rights challenge. It is indeed an extremely effective weapon of war that creates enduring ethnic, religious, family and community divides. Violence against women is increasingly used as a way to humiliate, attack and undermine enemy male combatants. Women are raped and impregnated or infected with HIV as a part of efforts to destabilise their communities. It is also important to recognise that, as the excellent NGO, Womankind, points out, attention to the impact of war on women has failed to address domestic violence in fragile and conflict-affected countries, and that in such conditions it is often the case that women suffer violence from partners and family members.

How, in policies, programmes and funding, do the Government seek to address domestic violence in fragile and conflict-affected states? Is it not clear that, whether in the form of beatings, bullying, forced marriage or female infanticide, violence is used as a tool to subordinate women? The tragedy is that too often violence against women is tolerated, justified and overlooked, and there is an unwillingness to acknowledge that social norms and the widespread prevalence of patriarchal attitudes and beliefs determine the status of women.

The UN Security Council has said that it,

“remains seized of the matter”,

so why are gender perspectives not mainstreamed through all the UN work on conflict-affected and fragile states? The NGO, Saferworld, which has real expertise on peace and security matters, has pointed out that while we have a large number of international agreements on addressing sexual and gender-based violence, little progress has been made on implementing them, so I do not expect to hear from the Minister that everything is fine and going well.

We have the Beijing Platform for Action and United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325, 1820, 1888, 1960, 2106 and 2122. Surely we have enough information to act on. It is good to have these progressive policies, of course, but if they are not translated into action, we will not see real change for hundreds of thousands of women, men, girls and boys whose life chances are so threatened by sexual and gender-based violence. Furthermore, even with that solid framework of UN resolutions already in place, we see that Mary Robinson is the first and only lead mediator in the peace process, when over half the world’s population are women. Plainly, we need to see many more women who are civil society leaders, with decades of experience on peace and security issues, holding key positions in peacekeeping operations.

It occurs to me that as the number of resolutions increases, and while the focus on protecting women from sexual violence is welcome, it seems that little is being done to plan for more women’s participation in decision-making. Resolution 2122, agreed in October, represents some progress but there is still a long way to go. Surely it is time to recognise that there is an urgent need to support women’s efforts to address their own security needs, and that they should have a central role in efforts to respond to conflict—and indeed to help with the prevention of conflict.

On the preventing sexual violence initiative, the priority has to be preventing violence in the first place. Focusing simply on prosecution fails to acknowledge the daunting barriers to justice that women face. Indeed, a World Bank report found that apart from lack of education and a limited awareness of their rights, the main reason that women do not seek help is the perception that violence is normal and somehow justified, and that it remains the case that women are too embarrassed and stigmatised to seek redress. We identify the fact that there are grave problems with impunity in conflict-affected states. This reinforces and reflects the widespread social convention that serves to marginalise women. Is it not time to shift the balance of shame from the survivors to the perpetrators? Will the Minister confirm that the planned PSVI conference will include a focus on primary prevention and survival services as well as on increasing prosecutions?

Violence against women is increasingly recognised as a threat to democracy, a barrier to lasting peace, a burden on national economies and a truly appalling violation of human rights. Protection and prevention are within the grasp of our generation. We should ensure that both are applied with rigour.