Sexual Violence in Conflict (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the members of this extremely productive committee, and I express particular gratitude to the clerks and advisers, who provided a great deal of very welcome assistance with every aspect of our work.

Our committee’s report is comprehensive and, I think, constructive. The positive response from specialist NGOs and other campaigners testifies to those qualities. However, I am sure I am not alone in believing that we still have a lot more to do. The huge extent and enduring atrocity of sexual violence against women in conflict is a humanitarian crisis of our times. It means that our committee report must be regarded as a spur to giving much greater emphasis to increased efforts to ensure that women can be guaranteed protection and justice.

Obviously, armed conflict of any kind is a terrible offence against women. The terror of bombardment and marauding troops, the desperate fear for their children, the destruction of homes, and the agonies of fleeing and plunging into the unknown—of becoming refugees—are combined cruelties. Those crimes against humanity are intensified by the monstrous injustice that typically women are non-combatants who pose no threat. They are innocents who neither cause nor continue warfare.

For instance, we know that in South Sudan, Syria and the Central African Republic, women are routinely experiencing specific and devastating sexual violence and transmitted infections. They are stigmatised and ostracised, and when rape results in pregnancy the social rejection, as I have frequently seen, is appalling and often lifelong. That is why the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law say that when rape is used as a weapon of war, women have an absolute right to safe, non-discriminatory care—crucially, that includes access to safe termination of pregnancy caused by rape.

Nothing could be clearer. But that right urgently needs strict and universal enforcement, particularly when authorities in so many countries have been pitifully unwilling to fulfil those obligations. Despite co-ordinated efforts since 2002 to combat sexual violence during armed conflict, rape and other forms of sexual violence persist and are used as a part of a military strategy. Recognising that, all providers of humanitarian services, including the United Kingdom, must register strong concern that abortion continues to be refused as an option for girls and women who have been raped in armed conflict because, we are told, termination is illegal in the country involved.

Surely, if it is to be credible, international humanitarian law must supersede domestic law. Will the Minister therefore give the House a clear policy statement on the abortion rights of victims of rape in war, including reference to the impact of US abortion restrictions on DfID-funded aid? In theory, as she will know, UK action and spending are not directly affected by the US’s “no abortion” foreign aid restriction. In practice, however, because funds are not segregated, the ban is applied across the board. This means that women and girls suffer additional trauma because they have to carry to term pregnancies resulting from rape. Does the Minister agree that the specific and absolute legal and medical rights of women raped in war should be incorporated into DfID policies and observed as fully as the rights to medical treatment of other war victims?

As our committee evidence shows, women have a profound personal interest in building peace and reconciliation, and that is not properly used. As I have seen many times in several conflict-torn developing countries, women frequently have the wisdom and judgment to contribute convincingly to peacemaking, but they are still customarily ignored, marginalised and excluded from the international peace and security discourse. That is why we must work for women to be included in all peace processes and, following on from our Select Committee deliberations, we must continue to press for an end to the neglect of women’s needs, concerns and opinions. The struggle for their rights has to include urgent investment in health systems, agriculture and, of course, girls’ education. It also means that the groundwork for post-conflict equality and reconstruction has to include the full participation of women as a high priority.

Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,

“Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution … or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity”

are recognised as both crimes against humanity and war crimes. In concluding, therefore, I put three questions to the Minister. First, since all forms of violence against women and girls clearly increase in conflict, how are efforts to prevent sexual violence in conflict being integrated into DfID’s ongoing work to combat such violence? Secondly, our committee identified the absence of any mechanism for reporting on and collating prevention of sexual violence initiatives. Will Her Majesty’s Government therefore fully integrate those initiatives into the forthcoming national action plan? Thirdly, the funding attached to preventing sexual violence in conflict is currently short-term but, obviously, combating that crime is a long-term task that we must undertake. Will the Government therefore commit themselves to long-term funding and support for the organisations that have impressive records of work in this area? Constructive responses to these questions will give positive proof that the Government are implementing good intentions by taking substantive actions. That, I am certain, is what the whole House is seeking.