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Letter Dated 16 April 2021 from the President of the Security Council

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Letter Dated 16 April 2021 from the President of the Security Council United Nations S/2021/375 Security Council Distr.: General 21 April 2021 Original: English Letter dated 16 April 2021 from the President of the Security Council addressed to the Secretary-General and the Permanent Representatives of the members of the Security Council I have the honour to enclose herewith a copy of the briefings provided by Ms. Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict; Dr. Denis Mukwege, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate; Ms. Caroline Atim, Director of South Sudan Women with Disabilities Network; and Ms. Beatrix Attinger Colijn, Senior Women Protection Adviser at the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic, as well as the statements delivered by the representatives of China, Estonia, France, India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico, the Niger, Norway, the Russian Federation, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America and Viet Nam, in connection with the video-teleconference on “Women and peace and security: sexual violence in conflict”, convened on Wednesday, 14 April 2021. In accordance with the understanding reached among Council members for this video-teleconference, the following delegations and entities submitted written statements, copies of which are also enclosed: Afghanistan, Albania, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, the European Union, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Libya, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, the Netherlands, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, the Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, as well as a statement by Argentina and the Netherlands. In accordance with the procedure set out in the letter dated 7 May 2020 from the President of the Security Council addressed to the Permanent Representatives of the members of the Security Council (S/2020/372), which was agreed in the light of the extraordinary circumstances caused by the coronavirus disease pandemic, these briefings and statements will be issued as a document of the Security Council. (Signed) Dang Dinh Quy President of the Security Council 21-05261 (E) 210421 280521 *2105261* S/2021/375 Annex 1 Briefing by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten Today’s meeting is a critical opportunity to take stock of persistent and entrenched, as well as new and emerging, challenges in our collective efforts to eradicate the scourge of conflict-related sexual violence. Building on our debate last year (see S/2020/727), which focused on turning commitments into compliance and pursuing a survivor-centred, rights-based approach in all prevention and response efforts, we now meet to assess and address the gaps that remain. Many of those gaps and challenges have been exacerbated over the past year by a pandemic that has arrested the attention of the world. Concerted efforts are needed to ensure that survivors of sexual violence are not obscured beneath the long shadow cast by this unprecedented crisis. In that respect, I would like to sincerely appreciate the leadership of Viet Nam for convening this debate, which shines a spotlight on the issue during dark and difficult times. I warmly welcome the civil society briefer from South Sudan, our Senior Women Protection Adviser from the Central African Republic and Nobel Laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege, whose first-hand, front-line perspectives will enrich our search for solutions. We meet at a moment when this crime, which should have been consigned to a closed chapter of history, is once again in the headlines. In the remote, mountainous regions of northern and central Tigray, women and girls are being subjected to sexual violence with a level of cruelty beyond comprehension. Health-care workers are documenting new cases of rape and gang rape daily despite their fear of reprisals and attacks on the limited shelters and clinics still in operation. The report (S/2021/312) before us records allegations of more than 100 rape cases since hostilities erupted in November 2020. It may be many months before we know the full scale and magnitude — the extent and impact — of those atrocities. There is no question that the Council has adopted ground-breaking resolutions to combat sexual violence. But the question could be asked as to what those resolutions mean right now on the ground in Tigray. When history looks back on this painful episode, as part of the long litany of battles fought on the bodies of women and girls, from Bosnia to Rwanda, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, we will rightly be asked what we did to honour our commitments. For its part, my Office has engaged with the authorities at the highest level to offer technical assistance and support, and will continue to closely monitor the situation, calling for restraint, humanitarian access, provision of services and effective investigation. The chasm between resolutions and reality, between aspirations and operations, is also evident on every page of the twelfth annual report of the Secretary-General before us today. The report covers 18 country situations and documents more than 2,500 United Nations-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence committed in the course of 2020. As in previous years, the vast majority, or 96 per cent, of those incidents targeted women and girls. Reports of sexual violence against men and boys were recorded in almost all of the countries examined, with the majority occurring in detention settings. Eight verified cases were found to target lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex individuals. While such figures convey the severity and brutality of verified incidents, they do not reflect the global scale or prevalence of that crime. The chronic underreporting of wartime sexual violence due to stigma, insecurity, fear of reprisals and lack of services, has been compounded by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) containment measures. Lockdowns, curfews, 2/140 21-05261 S/2021/375 quarantines, fears of contracting or transmitting the virus, mobility restrictions and limited access to services, as shelters closed and clinics were repurposed for the pandemic response, added a layer of complexity to existing structural, institutional and sociocultural barriers to reporting. Proactive measures to foster an enabling environment for survivors to safely come forward and seek redress have become more urgent than ever. Many survivors have broken their silence, but many others have been broken by the silence forced upon them. Shame, isolation, rejection and the anguish of having nowhere to turn has shattered lives and livelihoods. Alongside the data, the report also mentions human stories: the mother and daughter in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo who fled a rebel attack on their village only to be raped by Government soldiers arriving to fight the rebels; the displaced families who live in constant fear of being forced to marry their women and girls to armed elements in the Central African Republic; the girl who was gang-raped by four armed men in Tripoli whose family refused to file a complaint due to social norms around honour, shame and victim-blame, coupled with fears of retaliation; the adolescent girl who was gang-raped by three soldiers as she harvested fruit near a displacement camp in Darfur; the survivors of captivity by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who were forced to abandon their children conceived as a result of rape due to a lack of social acceptance; and the Bosnian woman who was raped in 1995 and is still seeking redress for the physical and psychological trauma that she endured. Each of those cases cries out for justice. The survivor-centred approach articulated in resolution 2467 (2019) demands that their voices be heard and heeded in policy and programmatic decisions, that they be treated with dignity and provided with quality, multisectoral assistance and that they be seen by their societies as the holders of rights that will ultimately be respected and enforced. Protection is tied to participation and power. Yet this is imperilled by a global political climate of pushback on women’s rights and shrinking civic space, evident in a disturbing trend of misogynistic attacks on women’s human rights defenders and reprisals against women who are vocal and visible in public life. At a time when the Secretary-General has called for a global ceasefire to focus on defeating this disease, COVID-19 has given rise to new gender-based protection concerns. The report records cases of sexual violence against women detained for alleged violations of curfews and quarantines, as well as violations by armed groups that have taken advantage of the pandemic to intensify their operations and gain ground. The report makes a case for survivors’ rights, needs and voices to inform national response and recovery plans as part of fostering a more equitable post-COVID era. At the same time, the report recognizes that the United Nations system, service providers and civil society organizations swiftly pivoted to virtual approaches, such as hotlines, remote case management and new referral and coordination networks, thereby avoiding a data black-out. Despite those innovations, many of those hardest hit by the overlapping crises of conflict, displacement and COVID-19 have also been the hardest to reach, notably in crowded displacement settings where access to information and services is scarce and women are forced to navigate the gendered digital divide. Marginalized women tend to be left further and further behind in times of crisis and social stress. To bring the structural root causes of sexual violence into focus, the report views the issue through the lens of intersectionality, ensuring that survivors are not simply treated as a homogenous group.
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