Experts report on women, war and peace

A report by two independent experts commissioned by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) on the impact of armed conflict on women in the world has recommended that an international Truth and Reconciliation Commission on violence against women in armed conflict be set up as a step towards ending impunity. The recommendations, written in a book: Progress of the World's Women, Vol. 1: The Independent Experts' Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women's Role in Peace-building - said targeted sanctions, among other things, should be put in place against trafficking for its perpetrators. The experts, Elisabeth Rehn, a former Defence Minister in Finland, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first African woman Finance Minister [Liberia], recommend that domestic violence be recognised as systematic and widespread in conflict and post-conflict situations. As such, it should be addressed in humanitarian, legal and security responses and training in emergencies and post-conflict reconstruction. It urged the UN, donors and governments to provide long-term financial support for women survivors of violence through legal, economic, psychosocial, and reproduction health services. This should be an essential part of assistance and post-conflict reconstruction. At a briefing at the UN headquarters on Sunday, the experts said there was a need for the review of national and international laws and standards that applied to the protection of women, in order to ensure that those laws recognised the vulnerability of women and their peculiar needs in a war situation. One of the authors, Rehn, said there should be no impunity for anyone who had committed crimes against women. According to her, the international community should address the weaknesses in the system that led to the subjection of women to crimes. "If there are weaknesses, they must be immediately addressed, and when there are abuses, they must be handled in the right way," she said. Through the report, she said, the voices of women from the war situation would be heard. For the report, she said, they had traveled in East Timor, Cambodia, Colombia, Palestine, Israel, Balkan countries, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Rwanda and other nations. They had found out that the similarities among the different conflict situations were strong. Rehn said it had been amazing to find out that despite the brutality they suffered, women were always prepared to assume their own part of the responsibility for building up sustainable peace in their countries. She called on the UN to support a 30 percent quota for women candidates in general elections. Sirleaf for her part, said the study was an "attempt to bring to the world's attention the voices, the feelings, the experiences of the women out there who are affected by conflict". She said the world should move away from merely talking about the situation to doing something about it, and stressed that the voices of women were strong. "We were very shocked ourselves; we were not prepared for the intensity of the suffering to which women are subjected in times of conflict." Sirleaf standards and laws that applied to the protection of women may need to be revisited to ensure that they recognized the vulnerability of women. Those laws should contain provisions to address the particular needs of women and their vulnerabilities. She expressed gladness that the International Criminal Court (ICC) now included rape as a crime that could be punished by the Court, and hoped to see some assistance so that women victims were provided with the means to bring their cases to the attention of the Court. More women should be appointed to positions such as Special Representatives of the Secretary-General and Special Envoys, she said. They should also be appointed senior gender advisers in the field, particularly in peacekeeping operations where women could be affected. In her opening remarks, the Executive Director of UNIFEM, Noeleen Heyzer, said the experts' assessment was very much grounded on their 14 visits to war-affected countries and zones to look at the impact of war situations on women, and what had been done or had not been done to address them. Heyzer added that the report showed women not just as victims, but also as people who, despite the kind of suffering and experience of war they had undergone, had also taken the role of leadership and had played a major role of peace building and reconstruction at the community level. The two experts were appointed in April 2001, to carry out a global assessment of the impact of armed conflict on women and women's role in peace building. The book also documents other issues such as; war and health of women, HIV/AIDS, women and peace operations, organizing for peace, media power, prevention and early warning and reconstruction. The assessment