Source: Bikya
“I know what it means to lose your house, to be looted. To look a child in the eye and say, ‘If they come for me, you need to run’,” said the newly appointed United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. “I know what it means to give testimony and to investigate the documents.”

These words came from Zainab Hawa Bangura, former health minister of Sierra Leone and a survivor of that country’s civil war, who has just completed six months in office and is determined to get governments to take the lead in combatting rape and sexual violence in their territories.

It is estimated that up to seven in ten women globally will be beaten, raped, abused, or mutilated in their lifetimes. Violence against women is universal, and is prevalent in all countries and all settings. A gross human rights violation, it fractures families and communities and hampers development.

Against this backdrop, the Commission on the Status of Women is focusing its current session (4-15 March) at UN Headquarters in New York on the theme “Elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls.” The session is being billed as the largest international meeting on ending violence against women.

Among those on the front lines of battling this scourge are the men and women who serve with UN peacekeeping operations in conflict and post-conflict settings. The strong link between women and peace and security was recognized in 2000 when the Security Council adopted resolution 1325 – the first resolution to address the disproportionate and unique impact of armed conflict on women. Through 1325 and subsequent resolutions, peacekeeping missions have been increasingly mandated to address violence against women, particularly sexual violence.

While host governments are ultimately responsible for the protection of their civilian population, UN peacekeepers are playing an increasing role in helping to tackle violence against women, thanks to specific mandates to address the problem, tailored training and a growing cadre of female peacekeepers who bring their unique skills.

“Preventing violence against women is important because this violence undermines key elements of successful post-conflict peacebuilding, such as social stability, economic recovery, effective State authority, and overall development,” the Executive Director of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), Michelle Bachelet, told the Commission as it began its session.

The Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) works closely with a number of partners within the UN family to carry out this mandate, having learned lessons from experiences over the years in places such as Bosnia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Department is an active member of UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, an inter-agency coordination network – chaired by Ms. Bangura – that streamlines and amplifies UN efforts to combat conflict-related sexual violence.

Among other measures, DPKO and its partners conduct scenario-based trainings for military peacekeepers before they are deployed. The trainings are based on the Analytical Inventory of Peacekeeping Practice on Addressing Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, which was published in 2010 and prepared with input from a former UN commander, Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert.

“This basically was a publication that highlighted some of the ways that peacekeeping troops, in particular military, had incorporated their mandate and come up with innovative solutions to dealing with sexual violence in conflict,” Sarah Douglas of UN Women’s Peace and Security Section said of the Inventory.

One of these innovative solutions was re-routing patrols to assess certain areas where women and girls were being raped, such as was the case in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region. Information suggests that women are often at risk of sexual violence when carrying out tasks such as collecting firewood or water, or when walking in certain areas at night.

“The peacekeeping troops re-organized their patrol so that they would be passing by these areas at certain times to provide additional protection to women and girls,” said Ms. Douglas. “This is just one example but it was a very important piece of work in terms of pulling together all the resources, but also showing peacekeeping missions and peacebuilding missions what they could do within the mandate.”

It was after the publication of the Inventory that UN Women and DPKO developed specific pre-deployment training for military personnel. “There was a recognition that most peacekeeping troops are on the ground for 6 to 12 months. The amount of time they have to absorb any capacity building in-country is quite limited,” Ms. Douglas noted.

“Also, a lot of times when we’ve developed training for military in the past, it’s really spoken from and to a civilian audience, and the military has a very distinct language and distinct culture and way of learning and communicating information,” she added.

“These are scenario-based training materials for the prevention of and response to sexual violence in conflict and they were developed by an ex-general, in partnership with UN Women and DPKO, where we brought the sort of gender expertise to marry with his expertise as somebody who had been a commander in a peacekeeping operation.”

The UN has conducted this training in several major troop-contributing countries, and partnered with peacekeeping training institutes led by Member States to have the training integrated into their curriculum. Through multimedia, interactive sessions, training participants are asked to formulate appropriate responses to scenarios based on conflict-related violence, based on their mission mandate and rules of engagement.

Peacekeepers have said the training has been “a real eye-opener,” according to Nadine Puechguirbal, Senior Gender Adviser for DPKO and the Department of Field Support (DFS), who noted that the fact that the training is based on real scenarios in actual countries where peacekeepers serve has been extremely useful.

Very often, she said, when peacekeepers are faced with a situation on the ground, they do not know what to do, and adopt “a minimum interpretation of the mandate” because they are unsure of what the consequences will be if they get involved or whether the rules of engagement allow them to intervene.

“There is always something you can do, even if it’s only to comfort the victim, to ensure that she will have access to services and then to report the case,” stated Ms. Puechguirbal.

An all-female Formed Police Unit from Bangladesh, serving with the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, arrives in Port-au-Prince to assist with post-earthquake reconstruction. UN Photo/Marco Dormino