YouSaid · the spoken record

Pramila Patten

lines on the record: 36
first: 2020-07-17
most recent: 2021-04-14
sittings or episodes: 2
sources: un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It is not the time to return to the status quo, but rather to dig deeper and tackle the root causes of this problem as never before. From Tigray to Tripoli, from the Kivus to the camps of Darfur, women across the world look to the Council to realize the vision set out in its 10 transformative women and peace and security resolutions. A gender-responsive global pandemic recovery is everyone’s business. It is unfinished business, but it cannot be business as usual. It is time to write a new social contract in which no military or political leader is above the law and no woman or girl is beneath the scope of its protection. It is time for decisive action to mitigate the risks of sexual violence before it has begun. As history has taught us, prevention is the best and only cure.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“This is not just a point in time; it is a turning point in history. The pandemic demands a paradigm shift: to silence the guns and amplify the voices of women; and to invest in public welfare rather than the instruments of warfare. We need to shift the leadership paradigm to ensure that women and survivors are represented. We need to shift the public spending paradigm to reduce military expenditures and strengthen institutions. And we need to shift the security paradigm to foster human security and resilience amid social and economic shocks. The pandemic has laid bare the intersecting inequalities that plague our societies and are compounded by conflict, displacement and institutional fragility. The only cure for these overlapping ills is an injection of political resolve and resources equal to the scale of the challenge.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“All tools must work in tandem to protect civilians at risk, support survivors, reform security sectors and compel compliance by parties. That comprehensive approach is reflected in the 11 joint communiqués and frameworks of cooperation that my Office has signed with conflict-affected countries to anchor national ownership. The most recent is the framework of cooperation that I signed with the Government of the Sudan in March, which includes efforts to address sexual violence as an integral part of the broader political and democratic transition. In all contexts, it is critical to emphasize that policies of zero tolerance cannot carry zero consequences. Building back better in the wake of this pandemic requires an inclusive, intersectional and gender-informed approach. Let us not miss, or misunderstand, this moment.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“If applied in a timely and consistent manner, sanctions can change the calculus of parties that operate on the assumption that rape is cost-free, or even profitable, in the political economy of war in which women are trafficked, traded and sold. Sexual violence does not occur in a vacuum but is tied to broader security dynamics, such as the resurgence of hostilities, the rise of violent extremism, arms proliferation, population displacement and collapsed rule of law. These factors trigger renewed patterns of sexual violence, which the report finds to be concentrated in contexts of abduction, captivity, displacement, detention, in the vicinity of military bases, in private homes during raids, at checkpoints and in rural areas where women undertake livelihood activities.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“While reparations have been awarded in many cases, they generally remain unpaid, leaving victims empty-handed, even as illicit arms and revenue flow into the hands of the perpetrators. This year’s report lists 52 parties credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of sexual violence in situations on the agenda of the Council. Over 70 per cent are persistent perpetrators, having appeared on the list for five or more years without taking remedial or corrective action. It is critical to ensure greater coherence between the practice of listing and the practice of levying targeted and graduated measures by sanctions committees.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“In terms of transitional justice, momentum was observed in South Sudan, where the authorities announced the establishment of the African Union Hybrid Court for South Sudan. Last month, the Council of Representatives of Iraq adopted the Yazidi Female Survivors Law, which provides support for victims of ISIL atrocities. My Office has also developed model legislative guidance on conflict-related sexual violence to assist States to harmonize domestic laws with international standards. The report notes that in some cases the adoption of protective legal frameworks stalled not only due to COVID-19 constraints, but following opposition from traditional and religious leaders, as seen in Somalia. That highlights the need to mobilize a broad constituency in both the formal and informal spheres to promote social change.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“While important developments took place at both the national and international levels in 2020, such as the trial and conviction of notorious warlords Sheka and Lionso for war crimes, including rape in North Kivu, and the first conviction by the International Criminal Court for the crime of forced pregnancy against a member of the Lord’s Resistance Army, in other cases investigations were stalled and prosecutions paralysed owing to COVID-19 restrictions. Although committed on a widespread and systematic scale by terrorist groups, sexual violence has not been prosecuted in the context of counter-terrorism trials. This means that no legal precedent has been set recognizing victims of sexual violence as legitimate victims of terrorism on a basis of equality before the law.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“Meeting the basic needs of survivors and communities at risk doubles as a form of protection against exploitation and abuse. Greater attention must be paid to the risk of desperate families resorting to harmful coping mechanisms, such as early or forced marriage, in response to physical and financial insecurity. As a critical pillar of prevention and deterrence, the report calls for enhanced efforts to close the accountability and reparations gap.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“The report calls for sexual and reproductive health care to be designated as an essential service in order to avoid its defunding and de-prioritization in the light of the painful lesson from past epidemics that more women die from a lack of access to reproductive health care than from the disease itself. In rural and remote regions, the distance to health structures is vast and transportation is limited, preventing many survivors from accessing care within the 72-hour post-rape window needed to prevent HIV, sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancy. Service delivery and material assistance cannot be dismissed as a secondary issue for security stakeholders but are in fact the ultimate expression of political will.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“While some patterns of conflict-related sexual violence transcend national borders, others persist at the subnational level. The intensification of entrenched, localized conflicts is a concerning trend that perpetuates cycles of sexual violence, including in the context of tensions over transhumance corridors, in the Central African Republic and the Sudan. Community-based militias have used rape, forced marriage and sexual slavery as part of identity and resource-based conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and South Sudan, although that is rarely acknowledged by global security bodies. The lack of service coverage in isolated areas due to weak State presence and infrastructure has become all the more acute during the pandemic.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“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. It demonstrates how intersecting forms of inequality, based on ethnic or political affiliation, age, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity, income and migratory status, increase the risks faced by diverse individuals in a context of historical power asymmetries, which are structural and systemic. The report illustrates the nexus between sexual violence, conflict-driven trafficking in persons and violent extremism, which requires cross-border cooperation and regional response capabilities, notably in the Lake Chad basin, where the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency exacts a heavy toll on women and girls.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“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.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“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.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“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.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“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.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“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, 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.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“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.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“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.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“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.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“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.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“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.”
2021-04-14 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2021/375 (2021) · source
“Sexual violence persists not because the existing frameworks and obligations are inadequate, but because they are inadequately applied. Resolution 1820 (2008), in paragraph 2, demands nothing less than the “immediate and complete cessation by all parties to armed conflict of all acts of sexual violence against civilians”. This resolution defined a new norm and drew a red line. Now we must clearly demonstrate the consequences of crossing it. We must keep these crimes and their perpetrators in the spotlight of international scrutiny. As the well-known legal maxim reminds us, justice must be done, and be seen to be done. Survivors must be seen by their societies as the holders of rights that will ultimately be respected and enforced.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“Today’s debate sets the stage for a new decade of decisive action along three main lines: first, empowering survivors and those at risk through enhanced resourcing and quality service provision to foster an enabling environment in which they can safely report violations and seek redress; secondly, acting on the reports and information received to bring parties into compliance with international norms; and, thirdly, enhancing accountability as a critical pillar of prevention and deterrence, ensuring that parties are duly held to account when they fail to comply with their commitments. Prevention is the best response. Yet we have struggled to measure, or even define, progress on the prevention pillar of this agenda. Compliance is a concrete example.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“Of course, the coronavirus disease pandemic has dramatically affected the work of the United Nations, and my mandate has not been spared. But what the virus has not changed are the needs of survivors. What has not changed is the right to physical integrity and bodily autonomy. Also unchanged is the fact that war and rape rage on in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, South Sudan and elsewhere. In this climate of intersecting crises, one thing is clear — it is time to silence the guns and to amplify and unmute the voices of women. The Secretary-General’s call for a global ceasefire means that all parties must cease the use of sexual and other violence.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“The report draws attention to the global political climate of pushback on women’s rights, evident in reprisals against women’s human rights defenders, physical and financial risks to women’s civil society organizations and shrinking civic space. Anniversaries and annual reports are not just about looking back but also about looking forward. They serve not only to measure progress but to inspire and accelerate it. It has been said that the one thing stronger than all the armies in the world is an idea whose time has come. The women and peace and security agenda, reflected in 10 robust resolutions, is that idea. It is not an issue that can wait until urgent matters are resolved; it is a strategy for resolving them more equitably and fully. It is a way of adapting to the changing face of conflict in the twenty-first century.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“These factors trigger renewed patterns of sexual violence, which the report finds to be concentrated in contexts of abduction, captivity, displacement and detention and in remote, rural areas where women undertake essential livelihood activities. In addition, there is a constant oscillation between progress and regression, forward momentum and backlash, on women’s rights. We began 2020 anticipating a jubilee year for the women and peace and security agenda with the twentieth anniversary of resolution 1325 (2000), the twentieth-fifth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action of 1995 and the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Charter of the United Nations of 1945, with its founding promise of gender equality. Yet we find ourselves fighting to prevent the rollback and reversal of hard-won gains.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“Since 2009, my mandate has engaged constructively with numerous parties, resulting in the signing of 10 joint communiqués or frameworks of cooperation with States, and has encouraged the adoption of unilateral communiqués and codes of conduct by several non-State armed groups. This experience has shown that strategic dialogue is most effective under the shadow of a credible threat of accountability and enforcement. As the report notes, we have rarely seen linear progress from commitments to compliance owing to an increasingly complex global security environment. Sexual violence does not occur in a vacuum but is tied to broader risks, such as the resurgence of hostilities, rising violent extremism, militarization, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, population displacement and collapsed rule of law.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“Accordingly, there is an urgent need for greater coherence between the practice of listing and the practice of imposing targeted and graduated measures to leverage behavioural change. We know that sexual violence is characterized by staggering rates of impunity and recidivism. It is time to usher in a new era of enhanced monitoring and enforcement, bringing all tools to bear. It is time to change the calculus of belligerents who operate on the assumption that rape remains cost- free. Eight sanctions regimes now include sexual violence within their designation criteria. Designating parties for these crimes sends a powerful political signal.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“Women protection advisers, who convene the monitoring, analysis and reporting arrangements, have improved the quality and quantity of information. Eighty-six per cent of cases documented in the report come from settings where women protection advisers are deployed. The report also lists 54 parties credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of sexual violence in situations on the agenda of the Council. More than 70 per cent are persistent perpetrators, having appeared on the list for five or more years. For the first time, this year’s report features an assessment of compliance gaps, which notes the prevailing disregard for international norms and obligations by parties to armed conflict. It finds that the majority of persistent perpetrators have not made meaningful commitments to curbing violations.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“In post- conflict contexts, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, survivors of sexual violence are still fighting to realize their rights and status as legitimate victims of war in order to access reparations and redress. Moreover, although sexual violence has been widely used as a tactic of terrorism in contexts such as Iraq, Nigeria, Mali, Somalia and Syria, it has not been prosecuted as such. Every report about wartime rape also testifies to its underreporting. This is linked with fear of stigmatization and reprisals, lack of access to services and the justice system, and harmful social norms around honour, shame and victim-blame. The monitoring, analysis and reporting arrangements have deepened the evidence base for action. Yet such arrangements are only as effective as the resources and capacity behind them.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“In other settings, key legislative reforms are recommended, such as the adoption of the long-pending sexual offences bill in Somalia and the draft law on the prevention of violence against women in Myanmar. In South Sudan, the United Nations has been engaging with armed groups following the abduction of hundreds of women and girls in Western Equatoria. Many are still languishing in military bases, and the report calls for their immediate release. Likewise, in Syria and Iraq, many Yazidi women and girls have not yet been released from captivity by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and remain missing and in desperate need of services and family reunification.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“If these decisions are not gender-based in their design, they will be gender-biased and exclusionary in their effect. The report spans 19 countries of concern. Each country section includes a targeted recommendation, which can be cited at relevant moments, such as peacekeeping mandate authorizations, country-specific deliberations, sanctions decisions or the design of peace negotiations, ceasefire agreements and transitional justice processes. To highlight a few key examples, following my visit to the Central African Republic in May of last year, I advocated for the Government to nominate a special adviser to the President to work with my Office on advancing the implementation of the joint communiqué on conflict-related sexual violence.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“Accordingly, the report emphasizes the imperative of a survivor-centred approach, as articulated by the Council for the first time in resolution 2467 (2019). A survivor-centred, rights-based approach requires tailored solutions that build resilience, restore voice and choice to survivors and address the diverse experiences of all affected individuals. In this way, it tackles the intersecting inequalities and root causes to ensure that no one is left behind or excluded from the dividends of peace and development. As I have seen first-hand in the field, war does not speak with just one voice. There are countless stories that are shrouded in silence and left out of the historical record. Diverse life experiences must inform policy, operational and funding decisions.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“These are interlocking issues. More gender equality means greater social stability, and the inverse is also true. The report before us documents almost 3,000 United Nations-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence committed over the course of a single year. The vast majority of incidents — 96 per cent — targeted women and girls, although more than 100 confirmed cases also affected men, boys or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or intersex individuals. Eight hundred and forty-eight cases were attacks on children. Behind every figure presented in the report is a human story. Too often it is the story of a survivor who walks in shame, while the perpetrator walks free. It is the story of a military or political leader who feels above the law and a civilian who has fallen beneath the scope of its protection.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“I warmly welcome the civil society briefers from Myanmar and the Central African Republic, as well as Special Envoy Angelina Jolie, who will lend their unique voices to our collective search for solutions. The annual report of the Secretary-General (S/2020/487) before us today paints a sombre and harrowing picture of sexual violence used as a tactic of war, torture and terror and a tool of political repression to dehumanize, destabilize and forcibly displace populations. This is a crime that shreds the very fabric that binds communities together, leaving social cohesion and safety nets threadbare. It is a biological weapon, a psychological weapon and an expression of male dominance over women and of one group over another. Conflict-related sexual violence is a crime that sets back the cause of gender equality and the cause of peace.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source
“We meet today to find effective ways to turn commitments into compliance and resolutions into results. We meet in the spirit of pursuing a survivor-centred approach, which ensures that survivors of wartime sexual violence will not be forgotten, even in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic that has captured the attention of the world. In that respect, I would like to sincerely appreciate the leadership of Germany in convening this debate during exceptionally challenging times, and to particularly thank His Excellency Mr. Heiko Maas, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is presiding over this meeting for the second consecutive year (see S/PV.8514). I also extend my appreciation to the Dominican Republic for its support and collaboration at all stages of the planning process.”
2020-07-17 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/727 (2020) · source