Countering Conflict Related Sexual and Gender-Based Violence through Reparations

Sheri Labenski

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3535642

Abstract

Across the world, women and girls continue to experience a variety of gendered harms rooted in sex and gender-based discrimination. For the vast majority of women and girls who have experienced conflict related sexual violence (CRSV), justice remains elusive. The need for States to adopt a victim-centred approach in responding to CRSV was recognised by the UN Security Council with the adoption of Resolution 2467 (2019) under its Women, Peace and Security agenda. This means that States must ensure that survivors can access gender sensitive reparations. Transformative reparations are key to breaking the cycle of violence by preventing CRSV in the first place.

Highlights

Across the world, women and girls continue to experience a variety of gendered harms rooted in sex and gender-based discrimination
Discriminatory practices are typically fuelled by and exacerbated in armed conflict leading to the amplification of gendered harms including, most notably, sexual and gender-based violence or conflict related sexual violence (CRSV)
CRSV includes such acts as rape, trafficking, sexual enslavement, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, forced marriage, forced prostitution, forced sterilisation and forced nudity. This issue is important for all survivors of CRSV, who are targeted for their sexuality or gender, but this policy brief is addressed to women survivors

Summary

Where are the survivors?

Women and girls continue to experience a variety of gendered harms rooted in sex and gender-based discrimination. CRSV includes such acts as rape, trafficking, sexual enslavement, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, forced marriage, forced prostitution, forced sterilisation and forced nudity This issue is important for all survivors of CRSV, who are targeted for their sexuality or gender, but this policy brief is addressed to women survivors. For the vast majority of women and girls who have experienced CRSV, these advances have not delivered justice whether in the form of accountability or gender sensitive reparations; nor have they led to change Against this backdrop, and in response to civil society calls for the need to adopt a survivor-centric approach, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2467 (2019) urging States to adopt a survivor-centered approach in preventing and responding to CRSV. In October 2019, a multi-stakeholder Global Survivors Fund (GSF) for survivors of CRSV was launched at the UN by Nobel Peace Prize winners Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad, who had been campaigning for the creation of an international reparations fund

What is the Global Survivors Fund?

What does international human rights law say about reparations?

Why are we still here?

SHERI A LABENSKI