Reuters: Blog: "End Impunity for U.N. Peacekeepers who Rape and Abuse"

"NEW DELHI (AlertNet) - Those who use rape as a weapon of war in volatile regions across the world must be punished, says the United Nations, but activists say the global body must also end impunity of its own peacekeepers who are guilty of such crimes.

According to the U.N., sexual violence by government forces and armed rebels increasingly is being used as a cheap, effective tactic to terrorise communities trapped between armed groups or even after a peace deal has been brokered. From the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the Darfur region of Sudan to the heavily militarised eastern regions of Myanmar, rape and sexual abuse of women and girls are becoming commonplace, say humanitarians.

"The changing nature of war and conflict has put women and children on the front line -- not as soldiers, but as victims," Margot Wallstrom, the U.N.'s first Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, said last week in New Delhi."Women very often cannot choose to hide or stay at home -- they have to go and fetch water, they have to get firewood, they have to make sure they can support their families. So even if they know an armed group is in the vicinity, they have to go out and that means often they are attacked." Wallstrom, who was appointed last year, cited the example in eastern DRC where hundreds of women were brutally raped by rebels in the town of Luvungi last August, adding that one of the best ways to stem sexual violence was to end impunity for those guilty of such atrocities.

 But while women's rights activists have welcomed such statements, many say the U.N.-- and its 192 member states -- should also look at holding accountable its own 110,000 currently deployed peacekeepers.

SEXUAL ABUSE BY "PROTECTORS”
Over the last decade, the U.N. has had its share of sex scandals where its trusted peacekeepers -- deployed in hot spots across the world -- have been implicated in sexual violence against innocent civilians. From the remote forested villages of Eastern Congo, to the streets of the Ivory Coast's capital, Abidjan -- unimaginable reports have surfaced of the blue helmets-- trusted to protect populations-- raping local women and abusing children. In 2001, Jordanian peacekeepers in East Timor reportedly were involved in sexually exploiting young Timorese boys and raping women. In 2005, reports emerged of Nepalese peacekeepers, deployed in DRC, accused of using food and money to pay girls as young as 12 to have sex with them. In 2008, a study by the British branch of the international charity Save the Children said that in southern Sudan, Haiti and Ivory Coast it had found widespread sexual abuse of children, some as young as six, by peacekeepers, as well as aid workers. Senior U.N. officials say such instances are rare, adding that they are in no way comparable to the systematic atrocities committed in places like the DRC by armed groups and national armies during a conflict. But they admit that such misconduct can impact the credibility of the organisation. 

NO PEACEKEEPERS ON TRIAL
Officials say training peacekeepers on sexual violence is conducted prior to deployment, but, with a turnover of 300,000 troops annually, resources at the U.N. are challenged. Wallstrom, who was in Delhi to speak at international conference on peacekeeping, said the U.N. advocated a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual misconduct, but admitted there were limitations on what it could do to punish the guilty. "This is a voluntary contribution by the member states, so what we can do as the U.N., we can take them out of service and we can send them back home," said Wallstrom. "And then it is up to every member state to make sure there is follow-up. On that, we don't have leverage or we don't have any powers to influence to that."

However, activists say there is little investigation, let alone prosecution by national governments when the accused soldier returns, and most remain working in the military or police service. The U.N. has no power to impose any follow-up, activists say, adding that the world's 114 peacekeeping-contributing nations are an tremendous resource that the global organisation can ill-afford to upset."

By Nita Bhalla

Women for Women International's Men's Leadership Training Program

CNN: "When Rape is a Tool of War"

"The raw courage demonstrated by Eman al-Obeidy in persisting in telling her story of alleged repeated gang rape and torture in Libya is helping to change the dialogue in Libya and the Middle East about the use of sexual violence as a weapon of repression.
Since Obeidy burst into a hotel filled with journalists last week and told them of being raped by loyalist militia, Gadhafi supporters have deployed a range of vile tactics in a bid to undermine her that are painfully familiar. They called her a drunk, a prostitute, a pornographer, a liar, mentally unstable -- impugning her honor and that of her family. When those tactics failed, they implied it was all somehow her fault, claiming she was scheduled to meet one of the men she says attacked her. Others threatened to sue her. They are no doubt frustrated and surprised that the ways commonly used to silence women have not silenced Obeidy, who has been tenacious in her desire to tell her story. She is fortunate that her family is supporting her, reportedly rejecting offers of money, property or security if they would only denounce her.
In other cases, survivors of such treatment in this region of the world have found themselves shunned by their families and communities because of the resulting social stigma.

Rape has historically been used as a tool of war. Beyond Libya and the Middle East, rape and sexual violence have been used in conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, Burma, Guatemala and Bangladesh to sow terror and destruction. It's hard to speculate on the scope of this sort of sexual abuse in Libya, or whether it is being deployed in a systematic way while the armed conflict is under way -- there have only been a small number of reports so far. But al-Obeidy did put her attack into a familiar context: She told CNN's Anderson Cooper that her captors "would say, 'Let the men from Eastern Libya come and see what we are doing to their women and how we treat them, how we rape them.' "

The intentional, calculated use of rape as a strategy of oppression is for some a favored way to stigmatize and demoralize not merely the victim, but entire families and communities.
The international community has recognized this. Since the early 1990s, in the aftermath of the brutal conflict in the Balkans, in which an estimated 20,000 women were raped, newly established international war crimes tribunals have repeatedly recognized various forms of sexual violence as war crimes and in some cases instruments of genocide. When committed on a widespread or systematic basis, which is almost always the case in conflict situations, they may amount to crimes against humanity. This, at least, delivers some measure of justice to the victims. Nowhere has this need been more hideously manifest than in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been wracked by conflict since the 1990s. Last year, the U.N. recorded some 11,000 rapes, but the true figure is believed to be much higher. It was enough to prompt the U.N.'s special representative on sexual violence in conflict to call the country "the rape capital of the world."

Justice is being delivered now in eastern Congo, where the Open Society Justice Initiative has supported the development of mobile gender justice courts that can hold court sessions in remote towns and villages in the east of the country where many of the atrocities have occurred.
In February, I watched as hundreds of villagers in Baraka clapped and cheered as a mobile court handed out sentences on four army officers found guilty of rape as a crime against humanity for their part in a mass rape attack in the smaller settlement of Fizi on New Year's Day. The court sentenced the leaders to 20 years imprisonment. The Congolese judges, prosecutor, defense counsel and lawyers worked tirelessly for nearly two weeks to adjudicate this joint trial in a remote village without access to running water or regular electricity. Millions more await justice, but this trial has given a glimmer of hope for the future .The raped women in Congo still live in mud huts, still struggle daily to survive, and many will still be rejected by their husbands. But now they have received something fleeting but incredibly precious: justice.

Last month, the U.N. Security Council referred the situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court, which is now investigating reports of attacks on civilians and other violations of international law. If Gadhafi and his supporters are found to be responsible for not only failing to protect women like Obeidy, but also for policies that explicitly or tacitly encouraged, or simply ignored, the use of rape warfare, she could find herself receiving some measure of justice for the heinous crimes allegedly committed against her."

"Editor's note: Kelly Askin is senior legal officer for international justice at the human rights organization Open Society Justice Initiative. She is an expert on war crimes against women, served as a legal advisor to the judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from 2000-2002 and has also worked on post conflict justice in Congo, East Timor and Sierra Leone."

Turkey to Libya: Free Iman!

Sign Avaaz petition for the release of Iman al-Obeidi, the brave Libyan woman who spoke out after being raped by Qaddafi's men. Qaddafi will ignore most international outrage, but he listened to the Turkish government when they asked him to release foreign journalists. Let's urgently raise a massive global call to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to help save Iman -- sign the petition and forward this to everyone you know - it will be hand-delivered to the Turkish consulate in Benghazi, and through ads in Turkey, as soon as Avaaz reaches 500,000 signatures.

To sign the petition click on the link bellow:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/free_iman_al_obeidi/?cl=1006102576&v=8779