The impact of violence and conflicts from a gender perspective

This section addresses the gender dimension in the conflict cycle, especially in reference to violence against women. The gender perspective is a useful tool for the analysis of armed conflicts and socio–political crises and makes it possible to give visibility to aspects generally ignored in this analysis both in terms of causes and consequences.

3.2.1. Sexual violence in armed conflicts and crises

As in previous years, during 2020 sexual violence was present in a large number of active armed conflicts.²⁰ Its use, which in some cases was part of the deliberate war strategies of the armed actors, was documented in different reports, as well as by local and international media.

In July, the open debate on sexual violence that takes place annually in the UN Security Council was held, having been postponed this time from April to July as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.²¹ The debate was promoted by Germany and the Dominican Republic, countries that co-chair the Informal Experts Group on women, peace and security, and the central themes of the debate were the promotion of accountability in matters of sexual violence and the implementation of a survivor-focused approach, in line with UNSC Resolution 2467, promoted by Germany in 2019.

During the debate, the UN Secretary-General’s special representative for sexual violence in conflict, Pramila

20 of the 34 armed conflicts that took

place in 2020 were in countries

with medium, high or very high

levels of gender discrimination

Patten, said that weapons help to aggravate sexual violence in conflicts and that this violence takes place in militarised contexts. The debate was attended on behalf of civil society by Khin Ohmar, a Myanmar human rights activist, who denounced the use of sexual violence by the Burmese Armed Forces, and Nadia Carine Therese Fornel-Poutou, a lawyer from the CAR, which urged the Security Council to guarantee the protection of the civilian population by MINUSCA. The UN Secretary-General’s report analysed the situation of 19 countries, 15 of them in conflict situations:²² the CAR, the DRC, Burundi, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan (Darfur), Nigeria,²³ Colombia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Twelve of the 19 armed conflicts²⁴ that were analysed in the UN Secretary-General’s report experienced high levels of intensity in 2020 –Libya, Mali, DRC (East), DRC (East-ADF), the Lake Chad region (Boko Haram), Western Sahel region, Somalia, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen (Houthis)–, topping 1,000 fatalities during the year and producing serious impacts on people and the territory, including conflict-related sexual violence.

Seven of these also saw an escalation of violence during 2020 compared to the previous year –Mali, South Sudan, Sudan Darfur, DRC (East- ADF), Colombia, Myanmar and Yemen (Houthis). Most of the armed actors identified by the Secretary-General as responsible for sexual violence in armed conflict were non-state actors, some of whom had been included on UN terrorist lists.

Moreover, on the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted that the COVID-19 pandemic was exacerbating the impact of this violence. As a result of the confinement implemented to combat the coronavirus, it is difficult for victims to access justice systems, increasing the serious structural barriers to reporting sexual violence in conflict situations. The Secretary-General also warned of the risk that care services for victims of sexual violence such as access to shelters, psychosocial and health services could cease to be prioritised and that impunity could increase. The pandemic not only had an impact on sexual violence in

Box 3.1. Armed actors and sexual violence in conflicts²⁵

armed conflicts, but also increased the risk for many women of suffering violence in the family and home.

With regard to sexual violence against minors, four experts on children’s rights from the United Nations—

Luis Pedernera, chairman of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child; Mama Fatima Singateh, UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale and Sexual Exploitation of Children; Najat Maalla M’jidd, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children; and Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict—called on all member states to strengthen the protection of children against sexual exploitation and recruitment and to universally ratify the international tools that protect children from these serious human rights violations.

These are the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, currently in force in 176 countries, and the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, in force in 170 countries. Both were proclaimed 20 years ago.

These optional protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child have prompted more than 100 countries to

25. This table uses the names of the armed actors as they appear in the Secretary-General’s report, so they do not necessarily coincide with the ones used in chapters 1 and 2 of this report.

26. UN Security Council, Sexual violence related to conflicts. Report of the Secretary–General, S/2020/48703, June 2020.

The UN Secretary-General’s report on sexual violence in conflicts, published in March 2020, included a list of armed actors who are suspected of having committed systematic acts of rape and other forms of sexual violence or of being responsible for them in situations of armed conflict, which are subject to examination by the Security Council.²⁶

STATE ACTORS NON-STATE ACTORS

CAR

Lord’s Resistance Army; Ex-Séléka factions: Union pour la paix en Centrafrique, Mouvement patriotique pour la Centrafrique, Front populaire pour la renaissance dela Centrafrique – Gula faction, Front populaire pour la renaissance de la Centrafrique – Abdoulaye Hussein faction, Rassemblement patriotique pour le renouveau de la Centrafrique; Front démocratique du peuple centrafricain – Abdoulaye Miskine; Révolution et justice; Retour, réclamation et réhabilitation – Abbas Sidiki; Anti-balaka associated militia.

DRC Forces armées de la République démocratique du Congo; Police nationale congolaise.

Alliance des patriotes pour un Congo libre et souverain-Janvier; Alliance des patriotes pour un Congo libre et souverain-Rénové; Allied Democratic Forces;

Forces pour la défense du Congo; Bana Mura militias; Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda; Force de résistance patriotique de l’Ituri; Kamuina Nsapu;

Lord’s Resistance Army; Nduma défence du Congo; Mai Kifuafua; All Mai-Mai Simba factions; Nyatura; Nduma défence du Congo-Rénové; Mai-Mai-Mai-Mai Raia Mutomboki; All Twa militia, Mai-Mai Apa Na Pale; Mai-Mai Malaika; Mai-Mai Fimbo Na Fimbo; Mai-Mai Yakutumba; Lendu militias.

Iraq ISIS

Mali MNLA, Ansar Eddine, MUYAO, AQMI, Groupe d’autodéfense des Touaregs Imghad

et leurs alliés.

Myanmar Myanmar Armed Forces (Tatmadaw Kyi) Somalia Somali National Army; Somali Police Force (and

allied militia); Puntland forces. Al-Shabaab South Sudan South Sudan People’s Defence Forces; South

Sudan National Police Service

Lord’s Resistance Army; Justice and Equality Movement; pro-Riek Machar Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition; Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition forces aligned with First Vice-President Taban Deng.

Sudan Sudanese Armed Forces; Rapid Support Forces. Justice and Equality Movement; Sudan Liberation Army-Abdul Wahid faction.

Syria Syrian Arab Armed Forces, Intelligence services; National Defence Forces and pro-government militias

ISIS; Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham led by Nusrah Front; Army of Islam; Ahrar al-Sham.

Other cases Boko Haram

establish 18 as the minimum age for recruitment and participation in hostilities, for example, with more than 80 countries having criminally banned the recruitment of children by parties to a conflict.

In Mozambique, UNHCR expressed concern about the rising number of displaced people in Cabo Delgado province. The United Nations agency noted that some women and girls had been kidnapped and had become victims of forced marriage, rape and other forms of sexual violence. More than 530,000 people were displaced in different provinces of the country as a result of the armed clashes in the north.

In Cameroon, the United Nations expressed concern in February about the situation of the civilian population, whose human rights were being seriously violated in the armed conflict, including rape and other forms of sexual violence. Local and international civil society organisations also warned that sexual violence was frequently used as a weapon of war in conflicts affecting the country (the armed conflict in the Ambazonia/North West and South West regions, as well as the conflict

region involving Boko Haram and countries in the Lake Chad region).²⁷

In relation to the armed conflict in the Tigray region, in Ethiopia, the UN warned in December of serious human rights violations, including sexual violence against women and girls. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said that information about this had been corroborated. Bachelet also warned of obstacles to communication and access to the most affected areas. The conflict situation was described as extremely worrying and volatile, in an increasing breakout with devastating impacts on the civilian population, which included civilian fatalities, kidnappings and sexual violence against women. In the opening weeks of 2021, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, expressed grave concern over reports of sexual violence in Tigray, including a high number of rapes in the capital, as well as stories of people forced to rape their relatives and growing reports of sexual violence against women and girls in refugee camps.

Patten urged all parties to the conflict to prohibit the use of sexual violence and cease hostilities in the region. She also warned of the reduction in assistance to survivors of violence caused by the difficulties of humanitarian access and limited resources.

In 2020, UNHCR disclosed cases of kidnapping, sexual assault and rape against women and girls in the Mopti region, in Mali. According to the UN agency, around 1,000 cases were reported in that region in 2000.

This was part of a broader alert in December about the increase in child trafficking, forced labour and forced recruitment of children by armed groups across Mali.

UNHCR warned that boys and girls were being forced to fight and were being trafficked, raped and forced into sexual and domestic servitude and marriage.

In the Western Sahel Region as a whole, the actors of the Gender-Based Violence Area of Responsibility (GBV AoR) of the Protection Cluster (a network of NGOs, international organisations and UN agencies involved in protection work in humanitarian crises, including those related to armed conflicts) warned of rising levels of gender-based violence due to the COVID-19 pandemic and an increase in violence and insecurity. They called attention to high levels of early and forced marriage in Burkina Faso and Mali, an increase in child marriage in the Sahel in 2020 amidst increased physical and food insecurity and women and girls’ concerns about the problem of human trafficking and violence by armed actors. They also reported an approximately 12% increase in levels of domestic violence due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the region and the risk of a growing increase in trafficking, sexual exploitation and

abuse and female genital mutilation. They said that the central Sahel faces the highest levels of gender-based violence in the world in a context affected by humanitarian crises exacerbated by the pandemic and violence. Nevertheless, they continued, the humanitarian response in the area still fails to prioritise prevention and respond to gender violence.²⁸

In Nigeria, with regard to the violence in the Niger Delta in the states of the Middle Belt and in the conflict between Boko Haram (BH) and the Nigerian security forces, in December 2020 the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, presented the conclusions of the opening of the preliminary investigation of human rights violations in the country and possible crimes against humanity and war crimes in the aforementioned scenarios.

Bensouda said that there is a reasonable basis to believe that both members of the BH insurgency and its splinter groups, as well as members of the security forces, committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including rape, the military recruitment and enlistment of children under the age of 15 and their use to actively participate in hostilities, persecution on political and gender grounds and other inhumane acts. The BH insurgency was also charged with sexual slavery, including pregnancy, forced marriage and hostage taking, while the security forces were accused of forced disappearance and forced population transfer.

3.2.2. Response to sexual violence in armed conflicts

Througho ut the year there were different initiatives to respond to sexual violence in the context of armed conflicts, as well as to fight against impunity in different judicial bodies. Some of these are described below.

In response to sexual exploitation and abuse by personnel performing service under UN command, UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s strategy since 2017 continued to be implemented, which seeks to prioritise putting an end to impunity for abuse and exploitation and upholding the dignity of the victims.

According to the Secretary-General, progress was made in terms of alignment and consistency in approaches to prevention and response, awareness-raising and change of attitudes, although substantial challenges remained. The progress mentioned included the establishment of requirements for a stronger accountability framework, which means that United Nations agencies must present mandatory action plans on prevention and response measures. In 2019, the year under study of the 2020 report, 50 heads of UN

27. Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (CSPPS), Cordaid, Association Rayons de Soleil, Policy Paper-Cameroon. Gender-Based (Sexual) Violence: An Unfolding Crisis. 15 July 2020.

28. Gender-Based Violence AoR, Global Protection Cluster, GBV in the Central Shale. Briefing Document for the Central Sahel Ministerial Meeting, 20 October 2020.

departments, offices, regional commissions, agencies, funds and programmes presented their action plans, compared to 37 and 35 plans in 2018 and 2017, respectively. Guterres also said that headway had been made in institutionalising the victim-centred approach and that the United Nations protocol on providing assistance to victims of sexual exploitation and abuse, approved in late 2019 by the UN High-Level Steering Group on Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, was deployed to the field in 2020. However, many challenges remained, as Guterres warned, such as the lack of specific services for victims, as set out in the report’s conclusions. Furthermore, in most countries where United Nations agencies were active, there was no coordinator figure specifically designated to ensure implementation of the victim-centred approach (with only four Victims’ Rights Defenders on the ground).

Another lingering challenge was the scarcity of resources.

The UN continued to face allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by military and civilian personnel deployed to peacekeeping missions and special political missions. According to the data from the Secretary-General’s 2020 report, there was an increase in complaints in 2019, reaching 80, compared to 56 filed in 2018 and 63 in 2017. Twenty-four of the 80 complaints were related to sexual abuse (the lowest figure since 2010, according to the Secretary-General’s report) and 56 were linked to sexual exploitation. Seventy per cent of the complaints referred to the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) and the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), which received 41 and 15 complaints, respectively. This was in line with 2018, in which 74% of the complaints also referred to both missions.

Another 23% affected the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS), the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), the United Nations-African Union Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the former United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and the former United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). The remaining 7% involved three special political missions (the Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria, the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia, and the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau).

In Colombia, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) received reports of victims of sexual violence committed during the course of the armed conflict with the FARC-EP.²⁹ Thus, victims of sexual violence

in Montes de María participated in the first virtual hearing with the JEP to present their cases. Most of the women were victims of sexual violence committed by FARC-EP guerrilla fighters, though some perpetrators were members of the Colombian Army and the National Police. Corporación Humanas and the Helenita González Lawyers Collective documented these cases of sexual violence to present evidence to the JEP.

The violence took place between 1983 and 2014, though most of the sexual violence committed by the FARC happened between 1998 and 2002 and sexual violence perpetrated by national security forces mostly occurred between 2002 and 2009. Human rights organisations identified some patterns to this violence, such as the punishment of women who were accused of having a relationship with an armed actor, the control of women’s sexuality, determining with whom they could have sexual relations, rape as a reward and trophy for troops, sexual violence as a forced displacement strategy and sexual violence to establish hierarchies within armed groups. Subsequently, the testimonies of 21 victims of sexual violence in 10 municipalities of the Norte de Santander Department were also presented, regarding events that took place between 1991 and 2016, committed by the FARC-EP, the Colombian Army and the National Police. One third of the women who testified had been minors when they suffered the abuse. Moreover, victims and human rights organisations asked the JEP to open a macro-process on sexual violence, since many of the cases investigated include sexual violence. In addition, the Truth Commission continued to gather investigations of victims of sexual violence, including reproductive violence committed by the different armed actors in the conflict through practices such as forced contraception, forced sterilisation, forced maternity, forced pregnancy, forced abortion and institutional reproductive violence like forced miscarriages with glyphosate sprays.

In Syria, seven survivors of sexual violence filed the first criminal complaint for this type of abuse against Bashar Assad’s regime with the German prosecutor’s office, which has already opened several investigations against nine high-ranking officials of the Syrian government for crimes committed during the armed conflict. The group of survivors (four women and three men) suffered the abuse while in prison in Damascus, Aleppo and Hama between April 2011 and August 2013. During that period they were victims or witnesses of torture and sexual violence, including rape, electric shocks to the genitals and forced abortion. The filing was supported by 42 Syrian organisations and international feminist organisations, which hope that the German justice system will apply the principle of universal justice to expand its investigations and prosecute these abuses as crimes against humanity.

29. The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) is the justice component of the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition, established in the peace agreement signed in 2016 by the government of Colombia and the FARC-EP, for the purpose of administering transitional justice and investigating crimes committed in the context of the armed conflict before 1 December 2016.

3.2.3. Other gender-based violence in socio-political crises or armed conflict

In addition to sexual violence, armed conflicts and crises

In addition to sexual violence, armed conflicts and crises