Sexual Violence in Conflict

Lord Hague of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) on securing and launching this debate, and welcome the words of the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle). I also welcome the opportunity this debate gives me to update the House on our initiative on preventing sexual violence in conflict and to take into account, in developing that initiative, the issues that have been and will be raised by hon. Members.

We have set ourselves a very important and very practical goal: to use the United Kingdom’s diplomatic influence and resources to increase the number of perpetrators of sexual violence who are brought to justice and to help to build up the legal and practical capability of other countries to tackle these crimes. We are determined to confront the culture of impunity, to overturn the age-old assumption that rape is somehow an inevitable by-product of conflict, and to rally the world to do more to help survivors. I have made it my personal priority, as has been said, during the UK’s presidency of the G8 this year to ask all the G8 nations to make practical commitments to help us towards that goal. We have had representatives of the G8 here in London this week, and I have met them in advance of the meeting of G8 Foreign Ministers in April. The agreements we reach at the G8 we will then take to the United Nations.

We are pursuing this initiative for many reasons, many of which have been mentioned already, so I shall not dwell on them. In our lifetimes, millions of women, men and children have endured the horror of rape and sexual violence in conflict, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bosnia, South Sudan, Colombia and Afghanistan, and in Syria today. The sad truth is that the perpetrators of these appalling, life-shattering crimes still go unpunished far more often than not. In many situations, survivors endure the fear and torment of their abusers living freely in their communities. This shocking culture of impunity is a moral issue. Survivors face emotional and psychological pain, physical injuries, disease and social ostracism. They have a right to justice and support, and to live dignified lives.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon pointed out, tackling the use of rape as a weapon of war is also central to a just foreign policy, because the psychological and physical trauma suffered by survivors affects whole communities, exacerbating ethnic, sectarian and other divisions long into the future, and preventing reconciliation. I have seen the consequences with my own eyes in some of the countries I have visited as Foreign Secretary and that has left a deep impression on me.

Ours is a country that can actually do something about this issue. Many countries might feel powerless in the face of it, but we have one of the largest diplomatic networks in the world and one of the largest development programmes of any nation, and we have a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and play a leading role in UN agencies. Given that we have those assets and resources, and that concern for human rights and development in other countries is part of our national DNA, we should use those resources. I am absolutely convinced that shattering the culture of impunity for sexual violence in conflict is one of the great global challenges for our generation.

Some 200 years ago, this Parliament confronted the Atlantic slave trade. Now we are seeking, across parties, an international arms trade treaty. Our objective on this issue must be global action to end the use of rape as a weapon of war. Indeed, we have an even greater responsibility in the case of tackling sexual violence, because it affects women disproportionately. Ours is a world in which women in many countries still suffer discrimination, oppression and exclusion, and any effort that advances women’s rights must be pursued with the greatest resolve and commitment. I pay tribute to hon. Members from all parts of this House and in the other place who have drawn my attention to this issue, and who have championed women’s rights for many years.

Our aspiration is, of course, an end to violence against women—in any context, not just conflict, although that is what this initiative is particularly focused on. The Foreign Office works very closely with the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence on the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1325 as a whole as well. I am proud that our Government have a ministerial champion on tackling violence against women and girls overseas, the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone).

The initiative, which I announced nine months ago, has three main practical components. First, we have set up the first ever unit in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office entirely dedicated to working on the issue. The unit comprises officials from the FCO as well as from the Department for International Development and it is working full time to lobby other Governments and international organisations. It is focused extensively on our presidency of the G8, but the work will continue beyond this year.

Secondly, we have created a new specialist team of experts that can be deployed to conflict areas to address sexual violence. We have now recruited more than 70 experts. I met many of them a couple of weeks ago and they include police, lawyers, psychologists, doctors, forensic experts, gender-based violence experts and experts in the care and protection of survivors and witnesses. The objectives for each deployment of the team of experts will, of course, depend on needs in the country concerned but they will usually support a UN mission, assist a non-governmental organisation working on the ground or be deployed at the request of the national authorities of that country.

We have already deployed the team to Syria’s borders, alongside the NGO Physicians for Human Rights, to train local health professionals in how to respond to reports of sexual violence. We will expand that work this year and will deploy a team again to help Syrian refugees. The prevention of sexual violence was included in our project with the Syrian opposition on raising awareness of the rules of armed conflict.

I announced a few weeks ago that we will deploy the team of experts to at least four other countries this year: to Libya, to support survivors of sexual violence committed during the revolution; to South Sudan, to work alongside the UN and Government to strengthen local justice; to the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, to help doctors and lawyers to investigate crimes against the hundreds of women and girls who are raped each month; and to Bosnia and Herzegovina, to help courts and prosecutors to address the backlog of war crimes cases and to protect survivors and witnesses for the thousands of women who are still waiting for justice 20 years after the war.

An effective response to sexual violence needs to be built into every aspect of conflict prevention and peace-building overseas. We have offered members of our team of experts as part of the EU military training mission to Mali to provide human rights training to the Malian armed forces on preventing and responding to sexual violence in the conflict taking place there now.

[Fiona O’Donnell]

I welcome all the action that the Foreign Secretary is driving forward and the leadership he is giving. Does he agree that it is vital that the Prime Minister, in his leadership role in agreeing the post-2015 framework, should ensure that women’s rights are always on the agenda?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, absolutely. The Prime Minister is supportive of the initiative and determined that it should be part of that agenda, too. Our initiative is focused particularly on sexual violence in conflict and we should maintain that focus. Of course, we can add more to it but it is important to make great progress—and to show the world that we can make progress—on this aspect of sexual violence with the particular characteristics of rape when systematically used as a weapon of war.

At the same time as taking the other actions I have mentioned, we have significantly increased our support for the UN Secretary-General’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict. We have provided £1 million in funding to her office and this week I announced that we will contribute an additional £500,000 to the International Criminal Court’s trust fund for victims, bringing our total support to £1.5 million in the past two years.

Thirdly, we have pledged, as I mentioned briefly, to use our presidency of the G8 this year to seek new commitments from some of the world’s most powerful nations. We have consulted UN agencies, the International Criminal Court and NGOs on how to make the most of that opportunity, and we have listened to the views of 75 experts from more than 26 countries who attended a conference we ran at Wilton Park in November, which I also attended. On the basis of those consultations, when I chair the meeting of G8 Foreign Ministers in London in April I will ask them to declare that rape and serious sexual violence amount to “grave breaches” of the Geneva conventions, signalling that we are prepared to pursue domestic prosecution of such crimes on the basis of universal jurisdiction.

We have also proposed a set of practical commitments to promote greater accountability and to overcome the most significant barriers to progress in this area. Those barriers are the poor quality of investigation and documentation of incidents of sexual violence in conflict; the inadequate support and assistance to survivors; the failure of wider peace and security efforts to address such issues; and the lack of international co-ordination.

In developing the commitments we have been careful to identify suggestions that we believe will have a real practical impact and will make concrete progress on the ground. Our proposed new international protocol, for example, on the investigation and documentation of sexual violence in conflict, should improve the evidence base from which investigations and prosecutions can be drawn.

We will suggest that the G8 provide greater protection and support to women human rights defenders, one of the target users of this new protocol, which will result in better documented cases, further building the evidence base. Doing so will also strengthen the support they provide to the survivors of sexual violence, as would broader G8 support for health, psychosocial and rehabilitation services, which will result in survivors feeling readier to pursue prosecutions.

We will also press the G8 to ensure that an improved response to sexual violence is reflected in their own security and justice sector reform programmes, as well as in any support that they provide to national legislative reform. Such actions would help to provide the domestic legal and institutional framework within which survivors can act which, if supported by more coherent international support to strengthen UN efforts, would further build this national capacity.

These commitments are ambitious. I am firmly of the view that taken together they will begin a comprehensive global response to tackling impunity for sexual violence through a combination of legal and practical interventions which complement existing international activity, but target gaps in the current global response. We have had encouraging and supportive responses from G8 partners and from others, including Australia, New Zealand and countries most directly affected by the issue, such as the new Government in Somalia. There is also enthusiasm to do more in the OSCE, the African Union and NATO. This is a time to take the issue forward. I believe we can develop a critical mass of support which will lead to serious concrete progress over the next couple of years.

What we started nine months ago and what we are going to do at the G8 is just the beginning of a long effort. We will do our utmost to galvanise greater collective action. We will take this cause to the United Nations, including to the UN Security Council in June when we hold the presidency of the council, and at the UN General Assembly in September, when we will hope to increase support for the concept of a new international protocol on the issue. I hope that the Government will have the support, advice and encouragement of Members across the House in taking forward this vital issue at a moment in world affairs when we genuinely have the opportunity to pursue it and to make a difference, for the sake of hundreds of thousands and millions of people affected by these appalling crimes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart]

Women need to be represented at peace conferences, but they can be only if they are leaders in their own communities. That is how we can assure their representation; we have to try to do that.

[Mr Hague]

indicated assent.

[Bob Stewart]

I see the Foreign Secretary nodding.