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	Far too many perpetrators of wartime sexual violence still walk free by Pramila Patten Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict   Apr. 2024   Pramila Patten, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict remarks at the Security Council open debate on “Preventing Conflict-Related Sexual Violence through demilitarization and gender-responsive arms control”. (Extract):   "We meet today to consider the 15th annual Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence at a time when gender equality gains are being rolled back, even as militarization is being bankrolled at unprecedented levels; at a time when the world’s resources are being used to feed the flames of conflict, while women and children starve; at a time when military spending has soared to over 2.2 trillion USD, while humanitarian aid budgets have been slashed; and at a time when weapons continue to flow into the hands of perpetrators, while the vast majority of victims remain empty-handed in terms of reparations and redress.   We meet at a time when the pursuit of peace and gender equality has once again become a radical act. The essential, existential task we face is to silence the guns and amplify the voices of women as a critical constituency for peace.   Yet, right now, in the Sudan and Haiti, women and girls are being brutalized and terrorized by sexual violence committed at gunpoint. In Afghanistan, the systematic assault on, and erasure of, women and their rights is destroying lives and livelihoods. Two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, thousands of displaced and refugee women and girls face a heightened risk of being preyed upon by traffickers.   In the Middle East, women and girls are disproportionately affected by the ongoing bloodshed, displacement, trauma and terror: they are among the many victims of the 7th of October attacks on Israel by Hamas, and they comprise more than half of the victims of the relentless bombing of Gaza, which has shattered the healthcare system, leaving pregnant women, and others in desperate need with nowhere to turn.   The report before us today provides a global snapshot of incidents, patterns and trends of conflict-related sexual violence across 21 situations of concern. It records 3,688 UN-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence committed in the course of 2023, reflecting a dramatic increase of 50 per cent as compared with the previous year. This spike in recorded cases is particularly alarming in a global context where humanitarian access remains severely restricted and constrained.   In 2023, women and girls accounted for 95 per cent of the verified cases. In 32 per cent of these cases, the victims were children, with the vast majority being girls (98 per cent). Twenty-one cases were found to target LGBTQI persons on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.   While the report conveys the severity and brutality of UN-sourced and verified incidents, it does not purport to reflect the global scale or prevalence of this chronically underreported, historically hidden crime.   We know that for every survivor who comes forward, many others are silenced by social pressures, stigma, insecurity, the paucity of services, and the limited prospects for justice.   In terms of global trends, the report documents how sexual violence has curtailed women’s access to livelihoods and girls’ access to education, amid record levels of internal and cross-border displacement. Women and girls face heightened levels of sexual violence in displacement settings, as returnees, refugees and migrants.   For instance, in eastern DRC, the climate of interlinked physical and food insecurity has driven many displaced women and girls into prostitution out of sheer economic desperation.   In Ethiopia, reports surfaced of sexual exploitation in exchange for food, as well as continued sexual enslavement in Tigray, in proximity to the compounds and barracks of arms bearers.   Moreover, in many contexts, women with children born of wartime rape are often accused of affiliation with the enemy, excluded from community networks, and plunged into poverty.   By contrast, sexual violence perpetrated with impunity remains profitable in the political economy of war. Conflict-driven trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation continues to generate profits for armed and violent extremist groups.   In Haiti, armed groups and criminal gangs continue to generate revenue through kidnapping, using the threat of sexual violence to extort ever-higher ransoms.   Sexual violence remains part of the repertoire of political repression, used to intimidate and punish opponents, and as a tactic to silence women actively participating in public and political life, notably in Libya and Yemen.   The report further records a discernible trend of digital threats in Myanmar, where online harassment and hate speech specifically targeted women associated with the resistance movement, and included the release of sexually explicit images and incitement to violence.   This year’s report highlights an unprecedented level of lethal violence used to silence survivors in the wake of sexual assault. In 2023, reports of rape victims being subsequently killed by their assailants surfaced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar, demonstrating the need to strengthen forensic capabilities, investigations, and accountability processes that ensure the protection of victims and witnesses.   Frontline service providers and women human rights defenders were not spared. Armed actors threatened healthcare workers in Sudan, and reprisals against human rights defenders were reported in South Sudan, the DRC and elsewhere.   Across time and space, we see that the availability of weapons directly facilitates these attacks. Between 70 and 90 per cent of conflict-related sexual violence incidents involve the use of a weapon, in particular firearms, according to United Nations research.   In eastern DRC, the threat of rape at gunpoint remains a horrific daily reality that overshadows the lives of women and girls, impeding their essential livelihood and sustenance activities. During one incursion into a village, fighters from an armed militia gang-raped 11 women, looted their belongings, and set fire to their homes. Four of the women were mutilated and killed. The seven survivors were taken to a health center, but left without medical treatment, as the clinic had been burnt and raided;   In the Central African Republic, women and girls tending farms and fields face the persistent risk of rape by roving armed actors in the area;   In Haiti, women and girls travelling to work or school face the risk of collective rape by gang members armed with weapons largely trafficked from abroad.   The accelerated withdrawals of peace operations from Mali and the Sudan have brought issues of transition and exit to the fore. Weapons management strategies are a critical part of preventing the occurrence and recurrence of conflict-related sexual violence in such settings.   In 2023, I visited the border area between Sudan and South Sudan, where women and girls have been targeted for rape, gang rape and abduction on the basis of their ethnicity, with the perpetrators emboldened by entrenched impunity.   Since the resurgence of conflict in the Sudan, I have engaged with both parties listed in the Annex to the annual report, namely the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). These parties are required to take specific measures to prevent and address sexual violence. Moreover, all States must abide by the sanctions imposed by this Council, notably the arms embargo on Darfur, as part of efforts to achieve a comprehensive and sustainable peace.   The report before us today lists 58 parties that are credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of sexual violence in situations on this Council’s agenda, the vast majority of them being non-State actors.   Over 70 per cent of listed parties are “persistent perpetrators”, meaning they have appeared on the list for five or more years without taking the requisite remedial or corrective action. It is critical to ensure coherence between the list of implicated parties and the measures imposed by UN sanctions regimes.   We must use these tools to stop the flow of weapons into the hands of perpetrators of sexual violence. There could be no more direct and effective way to disarm the weapon of rape and, ultimately, to prevent and eradicate these crimes.   In terms of access to justice, far too many perpetrators of wartime sexual violence still walk free, while women and girls walk in fear. Left unchecked, these crimes set back both the cause of gender equality and the cause of peace.   Today we know more than ever before about the factors that either enable or restrain the scourge of conflict-related sexual violence. We know that illicit weapons cast a long shadow over the lives of innocent civilians, while emboldening those who seek to spread fear and pursue criminal aims.   Today’s debate brings into focus the need to better align the CRSV and arms control agendas, as part of prevention and risk mitigation. We cannot condemn the perpetrators of sexual violence in our speeches, while continuing to fund and arm them through our supply chains.   For decades, we have heard survivors of conflict-related sexual violence say: “that man had the gun, and he had the power”. Recently, we documented the case of a 19-year-old Haitian woman in Cité Soleil, accosted by masked men who put a gun to her neck, dragged her into a field, and raped and beat her, while pressuring her to confess an association with men she did not even know.   In 2023, the UN documented the case of a 60-year-old woman in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, who was gang-raped at gunpoint by three soldiers while hiding in a field near her home. A frontline service-provider in Unity State, South Sudan, reported to my Office: “the youth are now accustomed to carrying weapons wherever they go…those who have weapons are the ones threatening people and perpetrating sexual violence, making disarmament a key step in prevention”.   Indeed, we cannot address sexual violence without shifting power dynamics. Starting today, we need women in the room, weapons under regulation and embargo, money for human rights defenders on the table, and change on the ground.   This includes supporting the courageous civil society activists who speak truth to power wielded at gunpoint, never allowing threats to silence them.   Women in the war-torn corners of our world need to see hope on the political horizon. Our words, deeds and decisions in this Chamber and beyond must give them cause for hope and must contribute to peace with justice, peace with gender equality, peace with dignity and development, peace that endures".   http://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/statement/remarks-of-srsg-pramila-patten-at-the-security-council-open-debate-on-preventing-conflict-related-sexual-violence-through-demilitarization-and-gender-responsive-arms-control-new-yor/ http://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/statement/srsg-pattens-opening-remarks-at-the-international-conference-of-prosecutors-on-accountability-for-conflict-related-sexual-violence-the-hague-26-march-2024/ http://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/in-their-own-words-voices-of-survivors-of-conflict-related-sexual-violence-and-service-providers/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2023/11/international-community-must-walk-talk-safety-and-security-women-and-girls-times http://www.globalsurvivorsfund.org/latest/articles http://www.mukwegefoundation.org/news/ http://www.trustfundforvictims.org/en/about/our-impact/supporting-victims-sexual-gender-violence http://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule93   Apr. 2024   Dr. Denis Mukwege has treated more than 80,000 survivors of sexual violence by armed groups. (Guardian News)   Walking around a camp for displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo this year, the Nobel peace laureate Dr Denis Mukwege was filled with shame. Around him were women, many of them survivors of rape, living in destitution with no access to clean water or to any protection.   The women had left their homes after fighting between the Congolese army and the M23 rebel group resumed in North Kivu province three years ago. Since then, aid agencies have reported an increase in sexual violence in the region. In April last year, the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said it was treating 48 new survivors a day among the displaced people living in camps around the city of Goma.   “The situation of women and young girls in Goma is a stain on our humanity,” the renowned gynaecologist says. “I think we should all feel ashamed to see these women abandoned.   “The more time goes by, the more atrocities we see. It’s hard to understand why people behave the way they do when it comes to sexual violence of this kind.”   Known as the “man who repairs women”, Mukwege, 69, has treated more than 80,000 survivors of sexual violence by armed groups at Panzi hospital, which he founded in Bukavu, South Kivu, in 1999.   In 2018, along with the Yazidi activist Nadia Murad, he was awarded the Nobel peace prize for his work, which he dedicated to sexual violence survivors across the world.   In his Nobel lecture, he talked about the first patients admitted to the hospital. One had been raped and shot in her genitals; another was an 18-month-old baby horrifically injured by rape.   “The macabre violence knew no limit,” he said at the time. That violence has never stopped. Every day, between five and seven new survivors of rape come through the doors of the hospital.   “Raping a woman, raping the children and hurting them, and showing it to the community, is a way of traumatising everyone,” says Mukwege, who, with Murad, set up the Global Survivors Fund to provide reparations for victims.   “I think sexual violence is a formidable weapon of war, but we’re not yet doing enough to stop it,” he says. “Sexual violence is a red line that should not be crossed in conflict. And if it is crossed, the world should react together and be able to say ‘no, this is not acceptable.’’”   DRC has experienced three decades of conflict, with militias and groups of bandits emerging from two civil wars fought between 1996 and 2003. The east of the country has borne the brunt of the fighting. More than 100 armed groups now operate there.   Among them is a resurgent M23, which the UN says is backed by neighbouring Rwanda, a claim Kigali denies. Since 2021, about 1.7 million people have fled fighting linked to the group in North Kivu, and hundreds of thousands of people are living in overcrowded camps in Goma and the surrounding area.   Mukwege has been critical of the Congolese government’s response to the fighting, denouncing its impunity over war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the “plundering of the country’s natural resources”. His comments have brought him enemies and he narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 2012. For a time he was under UN protection, but that ended in 2020.   In December, he ran in the presidential election. “I wanted to take my responsibility before history,” he says. “And we tried to offer an alternative vision to say that there is the possibility of changing things.”   Mukwege took about 1% of the vote and the incumbent, Felix Tshisekedi, won a second term in office in a vote that nine opposition candidates condemned as a “sham”.   Mukwege, who has been nominated for the Aurora humanitarian prize announced next month, has campaigned around the world for survivors of gender-based violence, and last month he joined the Elders, an independent group of global leaders working for peace and human rights, founded by Nelson Mandela.   The DRC, he feels, has been abandoned by the international community. The UN peacekeeping mission, Monusco, which has operated in DRC for more than two decades, is due to leave by the end of this year. In 2022, more than 30 people died during protests in eastern provinces calling for the force’s immediate withdrawal for its failure to protect civilians.   “Imagine, to withdraw after 20 years in the field, leaving an aggression where war crimes and crimes against humanity are committed on a daily basis. What should our feeling towards the international community be? It’s a feeling of abandonment,” he says.   “I’d like the Congolese to feel solidarity from the international community, because they’re human beings and they need that solidarity.”   Mukwege says many nations are reluctant to involve themselves in the country’s affairs for fear of harming their economic interests. DRC has vast mineral riches and is the world’s leading supplier of cobalt – a crucial component in smartphones and electric vehicles.   “It’s amazing that economic interests can take precedence over humanity. I find it sad to say but it’s as if, in the DRC, the illegal exploitation of minerals for green energy in fact spills blood,” he says.   He wants the international community to prioritise the crisis in the DRC. “We’re experiencing almost the same tragedy as those taking place in the Middle East and Ukraine, but nobody is talking about the DRC, or very little,” he says.   Despite this, Mukwege retains his optimism and will continue to fight for those who suffer.   “I have hope,” he says, “because I am convinced that the victims who are suffering today will be able to take their destiny into their own hands and put an end to all the injustices we are experiencing here.”   http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/apr/29/denis-mukwege-nobel-democratic-republic-congo-drc-man-who-repairs-women-rape-war-sexual-violence-msf http://interagencystandingcommittee.org/inter-agency-standing-committee/statement-principals-inter-agency-standing-committee-democratic-republic-congo-crushing-levels http://www.wfp.org/news/drcs-hunger-crisis-deepens-families-once-again-flee-fighting http://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing-notes/unhcr-urges-immediate-action-amid-heightened-risks-displaced-eastern-dr-congo http://www.wfp.org/news/unicef-and-wfp-demand-action-protect-children-and-unfettered-humanitarian-access-eastern-drc http://www.nrc.no/perspectives/2024/hundreds-of-thousands-face-desperate-conditions-as-fighting-surges-in-eastern-dr-congo/   http://www.unhcr.org/africa/news/press-releases/unhcr-urges-protection-civilians-and-aid-access-amid-surging-violence-eastern http://www.icrc.org/en/document/dr-congo-civilians-firing-line-use-heavy-weapons-signals-alarming-new-phase-armed-conflict http://www.icrc.org/en/document/democratic-republic-congo-forgotten-people-north-kivu http://www.wfp.org/stories/eastern-drc-women-and-girls-pay-high-price-ongoing-conflict http://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/conflict-drc-over-hundred-thousand-people-without-clean-water-live-disastrous Visit the related web page
	Cybercrime Treaty lacks sufficient human rights safeguards by Human Rights Watch, agencies   Dec. 2024   New UN Cybercrime Treaty Primed for Abuse: States should reject ratifying Convention on Human Rights grounds, writes Deborah Brown Deputy Director, Technology, Rights & Investigations at Human Rights Watch   The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention against Cybercrime on December 24, despite widespread concerns that the treaty will facilitate human rights violations.   The convention, the first global treaty of its kind, extends far beyond addressing cybercrime – malicious attacks on computer networks, systems, and data. It obligates states to establish broad electronic surveillance powers to investigate and cooperate on a wide range of crimes, including those that don’t involve information and communication systems. And it does so without adequate human rights safeguards.   The General Assembly launched treaty negotiations, sponsored by Russia, in 2019 after a very divided vote. Years of heated negotiations resulted in consensus, with countries that originally opposed the treaty (notably the United States and European governments) ultimately supporting a deeply problematic outcome.   The convention will obligate governments to collect electronic evidence and share it with foreign authorities for any "serious crime,” defined as an offense punishable by at least four years of imprisonment under domestic law.   Many governments treat activities protected by international human rights law as serious offenses, such as criticism of the government, peaceful protest, same-sex relationships, investigative journalism, and whistleblowing.   Additionally, the convention could be misused to criminalize the conduct of children in certain consensual relationships as well as the ordinary activities of security researchers and journalists.   The convention adds powerful new capabilities to a growing toolkit of abusive governments that’s already fueling abuse on a global scale. Transnational repression, when authorities reach beyond their borders to target their critics, is on the rise.   Recent studies document that technology like spyware, and digital evidence, are used to target political dissidents, human rights defenders, whistleblowers, journalists, and LGBT people across borders.   While the scope of offenses contained in the treaty remains relatively narrow, states agreed to begin negotiating a protocol on additional crimes within two years of the convention’s adoption.   Some states have pointed to the inclusion of human rights safeguards as justification for supporting this treaty. However, the safeguards are limited, many are optional, and others lack any means of enforcement, which provides no confidence that international human rights standards will prevail over abusive state practices.   The convention will enter into force 90 days after 40 states have ratified it. States should not ratify this treaty and those that do should take significant measures through domestic law and negotiations over the protocol to ensure it will be implemented in a way that respects human rights in practice, not just on paper.   http://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/30/new-un-cybercrime-treaty-primed-abuse http://cyberpeaceinstitute.org/news/civil-society-joint-letter-un-cybercrime-convention/   Aug. 2024   Cybercrime Treaty lacks sufficient human rights safeguards, underlines Tirana Hassan, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch   Cybercrime—the malicious hacking of computer networks, systems, and data—threatens people’s rights and livelihoods, and governments need to work together to do more to address it.   But the cybercrime treaty sitting before the United Nations for adoption, presumably by August 9, could instead facilitate government repression.   By expanding government surveillance to investigate crimes, the treaty could create an unprecedented tool for cross-border cooperation in connection with a wide range of offenses, without adequate safeguards to protect people from abuses of power.   It’s no secret that Russia is the driver of this treaty. In its moves to control dissent, the Russian government has in recent years significantly expanded laws and regulations that tighten control over Internet infrastructure, online content, and the privacy of communications. But Russia doesn’t have a monopoly on the abuse of cybercrime laws.   Human Rights Watch has documented that many governments have introduced cybercrime laws that extend well beyond addressing malicious attacks on computer systems to target people who disagree with them and undermine the rights to freedom of expression and privacy.   For example, in June 2020, a Philippine court convicted Maria Ressa, the Nobel prize-winning journalist and founder and executive editor of the news website Rappler, of “cyber libel” under its Cybercrime Prevention Act. The government has used the law against journalists, columnists, critics of the government, and ordinary social media users, including Walden Bello, a prominent progressive social activist, academic, and former congressman.   In Tunisia, authorities have invoked a cybercrime law to detain, charge, or place under investigation journalists, lawyers, students, and other critics for their public statements online or in the media.   In Jordan, the authorities have arrested and harassed scores of people who participated in pro-Palestine protests or engaged in online advocacy since October 2023, bringing charges against some of them under a new, widely criticized cybercrimes law. Countries in the Middle East-North Africa region have weaponized laws criminalizing same-sex conduct and used cybercrime laws to prosecute online speech.   The treaty has three main problems: its broad scope, its lack of human-rights safeguards, and the risks it poses to children’s rights.   Instead of limiting the treaty to address crimes committed against computer systems, networks, and data—think hacking or ransomware—the treaty’s title defines cybercrime to include any crime committed by using Information and Communications Technology systems.   The negotiators are also poised to agree to the immediate drafting of a protocol to the treaty to address “additional criminal offenses as appropriate.”   As a result, when governments pass domestic laws that criminalize any activity that uses the Internet in any way to plan, commit, or carry out a crime, they can point to this treaty’s title and potentially its protocol to justify the enforcement of repressive laws.   In addition to the treaty’s broad definition of cybercrime, it essentially requires governments to surveil people and turn over their data to foreign law enforcement upon request if the requesting government claims they’ve committed any “serious crime” under national law, defined as a crime with a sentence of four years or more.   This would include behavior that is protected under international human rights law but that some countries abusively criminalize, like same-sex conduct, criticizing one’s government, investigative reporting, participating in a protest, or being a whistleblower.   In the last year, a Saudi court sentenced a man to death and a second man to 20 years in prison, both for their peaceful expression online, in an escalation of the country’s ever-worsening crackdown on freedom of expression and other basic rights.   This treaty would compel other governments to assist in and become complicit in the prosecution of such “crimes.”   Moreover, the lack of human rights safeguards is disturbing and should worry us all.   With greater surveillance powers should come more robust rules to protect people against abuse. Instead, the current draft treaty defers to domestic law to provide for human-rights safeguards.   That means that people are subject to the laws of individual countries, instead of benefitting from key human rights standards under international law—like the principles of necessity and legality, and the need to notify people when they’ve been subject to surveillance so that they can challenge it.   Even the standards that could provide some protections are left optional, like requiring an independent court to review and authorize any request for surveillance.   Governments may argue that the treaty leaves room to refuse requests for mutual legal assistance where there are substantial grounds to believe that the request has been made to prosecute or punish a person based on their sex, race, language, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, or political opinions. But the grounds for refusal are entirely discretionary and so become the exception rather than the rule.   Finally, this treaty as it stands could be weaponized against the very people it’s meant to protect. It attempts to address child sexual abuse material, but it could require signatories to criminalize the consensual conduct of children of similar ages in consensual relationships, contrary to guidance by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.   It would also put at risk the work of human rights organizations that document abuses of children’s rights and that may have access to such material as part of their investigations.   Instead of protecting people from abuses of power, the draft UN Cybercrimes treaty would facilitate transnational repression. All governments that contributed to this treaty have a responsibility to reject any version of this treaty that will undermine human rights and facilitate abuses.   http://www.hrw.org/news/2024/08/07/upcoming-cybercrime-treaty-will-be-nothing-trouble http://www.ipsnews.net/2024/08/will-new-cybercrime-treaty-used-tool-government-repression/ http://www.accessnow.org/guide/faq-un-cybercrime-convention-ahc/ http://www.accessnow.org/internet-shutdowns-2024 http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/tools-and-resources/human-rights-and-draft-cybercrime-convention http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-remains-too-flawed-adopt Visit the related web page
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