Sexual violence in conflict: Trump administration’s stance on UN Resolution attracts widespread criticism

Jennifer Sadler-Venis

It ‘requests the Secretary-General to ensure the timely deployment of Woman Protection Advisers to relevant UN peace operations’ and reiterates the Security Council’s intentions to focus on gender equality and female empowerment when renewing the mandates of UN missions.

For Federica D’Alessandra, Executive Director of the Oxford Programme on International Peace and Security and Co-Chair of the IBA War Crimes Committee, the Resolution’s strength is its acknowledgment of ‘structural gender inequality and discrimination that are the root causes of sexual violence, affirming the necessity of the participation and empowerment of women as the only viable route to sustainable peace and security’.

The Resolution says victims of sexual violence should be able to access national relief and reparations programmes, as well as short and long-term provisions, such as medical care, safe shelter and legal aid. These should include ‘provisions for women with children born as a result of sexual violence in conflict, as well as men and boys who may have been victims of sexual violence in conflict including in detention settings’.

For Berkowitz, the Resolution goes beyond merely calling attention to sexual violence as an instrument of war by establishing monitoring, analysis and reporting arrangements among various peacekeeping and other UN missions and entities.

As part of its ‘survivor-centred’ approach, the Resolution calls for states documenting or investigating such crimes to ‘take into account the specific needs of survivors, be well-coordinated, and respect safety, confidentiality and informed consent of survivors’. It also emphasis that such strategies should be ‘connected to specialized multi-sectoral pathways to services for survivors’.

However, language on reproductive health services and specific LGBTIQ+ protections included in Germany’s original draft was removed after a United States veto threat – a move that was widely criticised and described by the French Ambassador to the UN, Francois Delattre, as ‘intolerable and incomprehensible’. Germany’s original draft included text on access to emergency contraception, the safe termination of pregnancy and HIV prevention and treatment.

The US veto threat led Germany to fall back on approved text from Resolution 2106 (2013), which includes the provision of ‘non-discriminatory and comprehensive health services, including sexual and reproductive health, psychosocial, legal, and livelihood support and other multi-sectoral services for survivors of sexual violence, taking into account the specific needs of persons with disabilities’.

The US rejected this and a third compromise. As a result, the final Resolution does not include any language referring to sexual and reproductive health services. The only remaining text on sexual health acknowledges ‘the link between sexual violence in armed conflict and post-conflict situations and HIV infection’.

D’Alessandra says the administration’s actions are ‘part of a broader, global attack by this US administration against gender equality and women’s rights.’

She points to an incident in late May, when the Trump administration also took aim at a joint G-7 declaration on gender equality, opposing simple praise for the G-7 Gender Equality Advisory Council.

In the US itself, a significant number of states have passed or put forward abortion bans in 2019. In April 2019, Alabama passed the strictest ban so far. The ban offers no exceptions for rape or incest and condemns any doctor who performs the procedure to 99 years imprisonment. An Ohio bill, which bans abortions after six weeks, is due to come into effect in July.

Berkowitz says ‘[i]t seems extraordinary that the [UN] should be guided by US political opposition, in some quarters, to abortion, in considering issues as serious as sexual violence against women in armed conflicts’. He believes this ‘gives nations around the world a reason not to move forward in providing services of this nature. It also diminishes the obviously critical importance of the issue and may well result in the denial to victims of these essential services’.

The Resolution further urges Member Parties who have not yet ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child to do so. The US is the only Member Party that has not ratified either.

Both China and Russia abstained from the vote on the Resolution. They had previously circulated an alternative draft without the phrase ‘post-conflict situations’ or references to the International Criminal Court. They also opposed the creation of a working group on sexual violence in conflict. Many of their issues were resolved during debate, but the proposed working group is missing from the final Resolution.

South Africa stressed its concerns about the finalised Resolution in its explanation of its vote, highlighting that while on the one hand the text calls for a survivor-centred approach, on the other hand ‘it is denying survivors essential sexual and reproductive services when they need them most. The Council is therefore telling survivors of sexual violence in conflict that consensus is more important than their needs’.