Proposition 52K0688

Proposition de résolution visant à lutter contre les violences sexuelles à l'égard des femmes dans les zones de conflit.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Nathalie Muylle
LE Christian Brotcorne
MR Daniel Ducarme, François-Xavier de Donnea
Open Vld Hilde Vautmans
PS | SP Karine Lalieux
Vooruit Maya Detiège

Submission date

Jan. 16, 2008

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

conflict prevention peacekeeping resolution of parliament war women's rights sexual violence

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld N-VA LDD MR FN VB

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

Feb. 14, 2008 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, since there was no unanimity in order for the resolution of Mrs. Vautmans aimed at combating sexual violence against women in conflict zones to be presented to you in the plenary session, the day after the commission of 30 January 2008, this report is presented to you today.

Ms Vautmans wanted to emphasize the added value of this proposal for a resolution compared with that submitted in the previous legislature.

1 of 1. Women are presented as actors of development.

2 of 2. The centralization of the struggle for women’s rights through the establishment of a specialized agency within the United Nations.

Referring to the deployment of EUFOR in Chad and the Central African Republic, colleague Flahaut recalled the specific missions entrusted to UN troops in this area.

Mrs Muylle tended to insist on the urgency of a solution to the critical situations encountered by some women and the need to relay this message in all parliamentary assemblies.

Although she regretted not having had the opportunity to sign the resolution, Ms. Boulet introduced several amendments: one referring to a resolution adopted by the European Parliament on 17 January 2008; a second relating to the cultural context; a third relating to the promotion of the establishment of a judicial system; a fourth relating to the promotion of the empowerment of civil society.

Following observations from Minister Charles Michel and colleagues Vautmans and Brotcorne, the amendments were adopted with the exception of the third. The entire draft resolution will, however, be adopted unanimously.

First and foremost, I would like to thank the rapporteur for his brief but adequate report. I would also like to thank all the fellow applicants for their support for this proposal for a resolution.

Colleagues, we already adopted a resolution on sexual violence in Congo during the previous legislature. We then asked for attention to the frequent sexual assault against women and girls. With this resolution, which we hope to adopt later, we want to go further. We want to pay attention to all women who try to survive in conflict areas. I would say: try to survive. Often this is not easy.

First of all, they must deal with violence against the conflicting parties and, in addition, they are very often victims of sexual violence. In the initial phase of a conflict, sexual violence is very often a disruption of hostilities. If you occupy a village, you rob the houses, steal the goats, grab the beer, and rape the women. In fact, this is very often the case.

It is only in the second phase of a conflict that sexual violence really becomes a war weapon. Sexual violence is used purposefully to hit a community in its most sensitive place and disrupt its whole. Women are systematically and horribly raped and often mutilated. The male family members are forced to watch, sometimes even participate, and then they are shot to death.

I recently visited with the Minister of Development Cooperation a home for orphans in Goma. Often they were not orphans. They were children who were left there because they were born after a rape, from violence, but not from love. These children live there in difficult circumstances and often without hope of a good future.

Colleagues, the systematics behind these rape cases often make me think – I’m going to use a heavy word because I really mean it – of a genocide. It is a systematic, horrible torture that is carried out without reason or compassion. Rounded beastly.

The most disturbing is the third phase of the conflict. When a conflict approaches its end, one sees that rape as a war weapon does not decrease, but continues systematically. Sex becomes something you take when you need it and women become waste products.

It is not just about Africa. An estimated 40,000 women in Bosnia and Herzegovina were systematically raped between 1991 and 1995. International observers agree that sexual violence against women in conflict zones is increasing every year.

That is why, with this resolution, we want to emphasize the importance of the UN resolution no. 1325 of emphasis. This resolution, adopted on 31 October 2000, is a milestone in recognizing the role of women in conflict areas, as victims, but also as actors in the consolidation of peace.

The well-known charter – and especially among the women present here – “Women’s Power is Peace Force” plays an important role here.

This resolution calls for action at the level of the United Nations. There is a need for a global approach that enhances the struggle against impunity, addresses the behavior and mentality of the military and the militias, and aims to strengthen the place of women in society.

In our resolution, we call on the Belgian government to strive for a proportionate representation of women in conflict prevention and we call for guarantees to prevent sexual violence in all actions of the United Nations. We also demand, very importantly, guarantees that the UN troops that are dispatched will implement mechanisms that exclude violence by their own military, and we ask for the establishment of a specific body with the UN to monitor and streamline all this.

Finally, we call on our government to organize a roundtable on sexual violence in our country.

I urge all of you, men and women, to approve this resolution today. I think we must send a very strong signal from our country that we take the fight against sexual violence and against rape as a weapon of war seriously and want to get and keep high on the political agenda.

The day on which this resolution is being discussed is a very good day. It is Valentine’s Day, the day of love and friendship. I know, for example, that Bruno Tobback, who is not present at the moment, went to dinner with the women yesterday. There were hearts on the table and he was warmly welcomed. Peter Vanvelthoven distributed apples this morning. I asked him if the women were enthusiastic. He said “yes” and added that it was great. He was locked in his arms by the women. He said, when he handed over the apples, that it was a pomme d’amour.

Some time ago I was in the Congo, where a politician, Luberwa, said in a hall: “Les femmes, c’est l’amour.” The women’s reactions were different. When a man in Belgium makes such a ruling, the women are content. It depends on who says it, but yet. However, if a man, ⁇ a political leader, in the Congo says something like this, he is almost lynched. This was also the case. There was an incredible turbulence in the room. There were women with cut hands who swung with their arms. I wondered what was going on.

I learned from the incident – I have experienced a number of missions, including 11.11.11 – that women are being abused there. Sex is used to oppress women. For example, we have attended theatre plays, organized by UNICEF, in which young girls and also the teacher themselves are taught that it is not possible for them, if they have bad points, to go to bed with the teacher. These are practices that happen in the Congo.

Everyone knows that in times of war and violence such practices happen too. I am very pleased with the resolution. One point that I am interested in is the point of the United Nations Blue Helmets. Everyone who is involved in international politics knows that the image of the blue helmets is not really good. You need to talk to the women yourself.

For example, I was on a market in Kisangani and asked women directly if such practices really happen. They confirmed that, as well as the fact that the women are being raped there and that they are afraid.

We must therefore do something about it. We are fortunate that Belgium can now play an important role in the UN Security Council. We must therefore do that. In this lies the importance of the hearing requested by Hilde Vautmans, Nathalie Muylle and myself – i.e. by all signatories of the proposal. In this way, we can properly prepare the dossier in Parliament. In this way, we can also ask the UN and other cooperating countries to respond to the behavior of some people, of the rebels, of the UN blue helmets and of the people of the official army. After all, something must happen.

So I am very pleased that we can do the previous work.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, it is good to have a proposal on the agenda; indeed, we are a little sick with proposals, real topics, projects. It is good that this first proposal concerns such a serious subject and that, despite what we can say between us, we were fortunately able to agree on this type of problem. There is still hope!

As Ms Vautmans recalled, political instability and armed conflicts, unfortunately increasingly numerous, lead to all forms of violence and facilitate the perpetration of crimes against humanity, war crimes, massacres and especially rape and sexual violence against women.

When women are attacked, it is the whole community that is attacked. These violence completely dehumanize the woman; a raped woman becomes a thing, it is no longer a person. Moreover, they have consequences not only in the short term, such as enormous physical and psychological consequences, but also in the long term. We think of the hundreds of refugees who flee villages, who are expelled from their villages by men, but also the transmission of sexual diseases, AIDS. We also think of the hundreds of children who are born as a result of these rape, who are completely rejected and who inflate the crowds of street children in the big cities, totally abandoned to their fate. They then themselves enter into street violence, become children soldiers or victims of prostitution. Such a process damages a whole society. This issue is not yet sufficiently taken hand-to-hand by the international community and ⁇ also by Belgium, at the level of Foreign Affairs and Development Cooperation.

Ms. Vautmans took up everything we asked for. I would like to emphasize one priority in particular, that of not accepting impunity. In too many countries today, when negotiating peace, women are not represented and those crimes committed against them are forgotten. Justice is not done. There can be no reconciliation in a country if justice is not done and if the words are not put on things and on these crimes. That is why we demand that there be justice and that there be no more impunity.

This resolution clearly speaks of these sexual violence against women. That is why I think a vast majority of us will vote for it. It is good that we vote for it at the beginning of the legislature.

Dear colleagues, I will not be long.

First of all, I would like to thank Ms Vautmans, who was at the initiative of this proposal for a resolution.

Next, I would like to recall the full importance that we attach to the fight against violence in all its forms, in this case the fight against sexual violence against women in conflict zones.

Violence against women is considered a very serious violation of human rights due to the high number of rights that are simultaneously violated, as the United Nations recalls. Instability and armed conflicts lead to an increase in all forms of violence and facilitate the commission of crimes against humanity, war crimes, massacres, rape and other forms of sexual violence. During conflicts, violence against women is often used as a weapon of war to dehumanize women or to harm the community to which they belong.

This proposal for a resolution is based on UN Security Council Resolution 1325/2000, but it also refers to the report on the Democratic Republic of the Congo submitted in September 2007 to the United Nations Security Council by the UN Sub-Secretary-General, in which it is specified, inter alia, that the brutality of sexual violence constitutes a specific and atrocious feature of the conflict in the DRC and thus calls for an increase in the capacity to combat this type of sexual violence within the United Nations.

The proposal also refers to Amnesty International’s various reports on violence against women in conflict situations, which show that women constitute the majority of civilian victims in conflict, that violence against women is often used as weapons of war, that women are frequently recruited by armed groups that often exploit them sexually, that women and children are generally forced to flee and then, in their new environment, constitute a fragile group exposed to an increased risk of violence, and finally, that after conflict, women are often victims of domestic violence due to the presence of weapons and a widespread atmosphere of violence.

Therefore, we ask, by voting on this proposal, which makes all sense and whose content Ms. Vautmans has just reminded us, that the government puts everything in place, especially within the United Nations Security Council, to combat sexual violence against women in conflict zones.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, having participated in this recent trip to the Congo, like Mrs. Vautmans, I would like to give my testimony on the troubling situation of women in this country. But, earlier, I would like to say that it would have been interesting for a man to speak at this tribune today to defend these women.

On the occasion of this trip, we were able to see, especially in eastern Congo, that rape, sexual violence had become a weapon of systematic warfare, a weapon of destruction of the rural society of this region.

After being raped, women are chased by their families and find themselves alone or with their young children without any means of subsistence and completely traumatized physically and psychologically.

I speak here, of course, to ask you to support the vote on this resolution, but also to tell you that this vote is not enough. In fact, we must – and I address here in particular to mr. Charles Michel who is competent in development cooperation – continue to support these women not only through health care and helping them reintegrate into society, but also by providing our support for the establishment of a judicial system so that the perpetrators of such acts are not impunity. Let us not stop at this resolution!