 Good morning and a very warm welcome to the United States Institute of Peace. Allow us to extend a very special welcome and appreciation for the many of you who have traveled from around the world to be with us. My name is Lisa Grande. I'm the head of the United States Institute of Peace. We were established in 1984 by the U.S. Congress as a public nonpartisan institution that's dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. The Institute is delighted, we're proud, we're honored to host the Missing Peace Global Symposium on Conflict-Related Violence. This is an extraordinary event. It brings together survivors and victims, policymakers, and practitioners. This is the second Missing Peace Global Symposium. The first was held 10 years ago in 2013 when the Missing Peace Initiative was first launched. At the time, many people viewed conflict-related sexual violence as something that was terrible. It was acknowledged as a weapon of war, but it was also viewed as somehow inevitable. That something was terrible, but it couldn't be stopped. The people who launched the Missing Peace Initiative wanted to change this view. In the decade that has passed since the initiative was launched in 2013, concrete, meaningful progress has been made. The work and the research and the dialogues that have taken place under the auspices of this initiative between practitioners, survivors, and researchers has shown all of us how conflict-related sexual violence can in fact not only be prohibited, it can be prevented, and it can be stamped out. The Missing Peace Initiative is based on a really wonderful partnership that includes very special institutions and organizations, including the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, Women in International Security, and the Human Rights Center at Washington University in St. Louis. We have colleagues and friends that are joining us today in Washington for more than 30 countries, and we know that we have many friends and colleagues from many other countries who are joining us online. This shows that this is truly a global initiative. At the top of our shared agenda is a very strong commitment to hold the perpetrators accountable for this crime, and most of all, to improve and expand the care, the support, and the justice for survivors. In support of the Global Symposium, the Institute is hosting a special exhibition right outside of the doors here called Nobody's Listening. The photos and the portraits and the narratives that are part of this exhibit document the genocide of Yazidi communities, and we're very proud that it's here during the symposium so that we can share it with you. We're honored to begin the symposium with keynote remarks from Pramila Patton, who is the United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence and Conflict. The Special Representative serves as the United Nations Spokesperson and Political Advocate on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence. Special Representative. Thank you, Liz. Good morning, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished participants, we are gathered here at a dire moment for humanity, at a time when one crisis eclipses the next, to ensure that the scourge of conflict-related sexual violence and its survivors are not forgotten. I extend my sincere appreciation to Liz Grande and the United States Institute for Peace for convening this symposium, bringing together scholars, policymakers, civil society representatives, and critically survivors themselves to inform the global search for solutions. I'm pleased to be speaking alongside Gita Rao Gupta, the U.S. Ambassador at Large for Global Issues, and commend her leadership and steadfast commitment to this cause. Thank you, Gita. As tensions rise, coup erupt, and conflicts rage, this symposium provides space for strategic reflection to take stock of what we know and what is missing from research, policy, and practice. I thank all participants for their engagement, noting that in our collective endeavor to close the knowledge, resource, and implementation gap, we are only as strong as our partnerships. From day one of my tenure as special representative, I have made the survivor-centered approach my top priority. After centuries of suppression and forced silence and misplaced stigma, we must navigate a way forward that is guided by the ground troops of survivors as our moral compass. Indeed, the most recent policy framework issued by the Security Council on conflict-related sexual violence in Resolution 2467 of 2019 marked a turning point in calling for a holistic approach centered on survivor's rights, needs, and wishes that ensures their full and meaningful participation in the decisions that affect their lives. Last week, the Security Council convened its annual debate on women, peace, and security, focused on moving from theory to practice. Yet this aim is everywhere, imperial by growing global turbulence. It was noted that more than 600 million women and girls live in conflict affected countries, where women's rights are under attack, as are the courageous individuals and organizations that defend them. At the same time, the delegations negotiating peace are overwhelmingly, in some cases, exclusively male. We are witnessing the highest number of conflict since the close of the Second World War, with over 110 million people now displaced, marking a grim global milestone. Militarization is on the march, resulting in shrinking civic space, virulent backlash on gender equality, and rising reprisals against human rights defenders and journalists who bring atrocity crimes to the attention of the world. Even as entrenched cycles of violence remain unbroken, new threats emerge. Gender-based harassment and hate speech are surging in the relatively ungoverned digital space. An array of new actors, such as mercenaries and private military and security companies, are complicating attribution and accountability on contemporary battlefields. Climate-driven insecurity and displacement is exacerbating competition over scarce resources, increasing inter-communal violence, including sexual violence, notably in places like Somalia and South Sudan. Moreover, the security umbrella for humanitarian protection and assistance activities is closing, and peacekeeping missions draw down in Mali and the DRC. Against this backdrop, we are compelled to recognize that conflict-related sexual violence is not a niche technical issue that can be addressed in isolation from prevailing geopolitics. Global macro trends are turning the clock further and further back on women's rights and leaving survivors further and further behind. Every new wave of warfare brings with it a rising tide of sexual violence. It is vital to the credibility of the multilateral system that we demonstrate to survivors that international law is not an empty promise and to perpetrators that it is not an empty threat. Yet the attention bandwidth of the international community is limited. As the world turns its gaze to the deplorable violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip, other protracted crises fade from the front page. In relation to the escalating violence in the Middle East since the 7th of October attacks, I have requested UN partners on the ground to remain alert to the risk of sexual violence, which we know is often invisible and chronically under-reported. The UN Action Interagency Network, which I chair, facilitates the sharing of UN source and verified information as a basis for coordinated advocacy and action. We are aware that disturbing allegations, including forced nudity, have surfaced in the context of abduction and hostage-taking. As always, we call for such incidents to be independently investigated with a view to ensuring that survivors have access to specialized services and justice. As always, we call for the parties to abide by international humanitarian and human rights law, which exist to restrain violent excess, even in the midst of war. Currently, there are more than 20 country situations within the remit of my mandate. And in each of these contexts, I use my public advocacy platform and direct diplomatic reach to galvanize action in response to credible UN-verified information on incidents, patterns, and trends. For instance, I visited Ukraine as soon as the first reports of sexual violence surfaced last year and returned this March. I heard firsthand the searing accounts of sexual violence perpetrated by Russian soldiers, including as a form of torture to extract confessions and to punish and intimidate both men and women in detention. The ages of the victims ranged from four to 84 years old. When I visited refugee reception centers in Poland and Moldova, I witnessed the vulnerability of women and girls who comprised the vast majority of the nearly 8 million refugees to criminal and trafficking networks. For these predatory actors, the forced exodus was not a tragedy, but an opportunity for exploitation. In Sudan, since the conflict erupted on 15th of April, between the Sudanese armed forces and the rapid support forces, sexual violence against displaced and refugee women and girls has dramatically increased. In September, I visited the border area where I met a seven-year-old girl who, after fleeing with her grandmother, was raped in the refugee camp, where conditions remained precarious, being overcrowded and under resourced. Sexual violence remains a prominent feature of the unbroken cycles of violence in Darfur, where women's bodies are on the front lines of the conflict. Young women have been abducted from dormitories and hospitals, shackled and transported in the back of pickup trucks by fighters, to be sold in slave markets in northern Darfur. Women and girls have been targeted for rape, gang rape, and abduction on the basis of their ethnicity. Impunity for war crimes in this region since 2003 has emboldened perpetrators, silenced survivors, and undermined prospects for peace. In June, I visited Eastern DRC following alarming reports of a spike in sexual violence due to the resumption of hostilities involving the M23 armed group. Many of the women and girls I met had been recently raped and were visibly traumatized. They stressed the daily risk of sexual violence while undertaking livelihood activities, such as searching for food or collecting wood and water. These women faced an impossible choice between economic subsistence and sexual violence, between their livelihoods and their lives. In this climate of interlinked physical and food insecurity, brothels called Maison de Tolerance have proliferated in and around the displacement camps with women and girls driven into prostitution by sheer economic desperation. Over the past three years, the war-integrated northern Ethiopia has been one of the deadliest on the planet. Sexual violence, including rape, sexual slavery, mutilation, and forced pregnancy have been used as tactics of war and terror on a widespread and systematic basis. According to the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, who I met last week, the conflict has left more than 10,000 survivors in desperate need of assistance and redress. Yet, due to restricted access and official denial, these survivors are left to suffer alone. One of the few bright spots on the horizon is Colombia, where historic progress is being made in terms of transitional justice. The special jurisdiction for peace has opened a dedicated case on sexual and gender-based violence, including reproductive violence known as macro case 11, following concerted advocacy from women civil society organizations. In May, during my official visit, I heard from survivors of wartime sexual violence about the transformative power of recognition and reparations. There are also signs of progress in Guinea, where a former head of state and 10 senior officials are standing trial before domestic courts for crimes of sexual violence committed as part of the repertoire of political repression used to quash a pro-democracy rally in Conakry in 2009, though the pace of justice has been painfully slow. In Nigeria in 2022, sexual violence was included for the first time ever in an indictment against Boko Haram, contributing to evolving understanding and jurisprudence on sexual violence as a tactic of terrorism. Each year, my office compiles the report of the Secretary General on conflict-related sexual violence, which provides a public record for a historically hidden crime. The latest annual report debated this July at the Security Council records 2,455 UN verified cases committed in the course of 2022. 94% of them targeting women and girls, 32% affecting children. But we know that for every survivor who comes forward to report, humanitarians in the field estimate that 10 to 20 others are never able to reach a clinic, let alone a courtroom. The report includes a list of credibly suspected perpetrators as a basis for targeted action by sanctions regime and accountability mechanisms. The latest report lists 49 implicated states and non-states actors, of which 75% are persistent perpetrators who have remained on the list for several years without taking any remedial or corrective action. And in this regard, women protection advisers are mandated to engage with parties at country level to foster compliance and behavioral change and to convene dedicated monitoring analysis and reporting arrangements as an evidence base for action. Yet despite numerous resolutions calling for their swift deployment, just eight out of 20 focused countries currently have this critical frontline capacity. The persistence of sexual violence on 21st century battlefields as a tactic of war, torture, terror and political repression is not due to a lack of normative frameworks or institutional arrangements. It is because existing norms are inadequately enforced and existing institutions are not backed with the requisite level of human and financial resources. Our singular focus must therefore be to bridge the gap between resolutions and realities between our highest aspirations and operations on the ground. States bear the primary responsibility to protect their citizens, yet conflict decimates the very institutions meant to deliver justice, services and security. As a contribution to gender responsive security sector reform, my office has recently established a dedicated security sector hub to help bring national security forces into compliance with international standards in line with the joint communique my mandate has signed with a dozen affected countries to date. Today we know more than ever before about the drivers and dynamics, the causes and consequences of wartime sexual violence. To translate these into practical results, my mandate has developed a range of tools to build a skill and will for effective action. These include model legislative provisions and guidance to help harmonize national laws with international standards, guidelines on private sector engagement and a prevention framework which sets out a two-track approach to constraining sexual violence in the first instance and mitigating its secondary harm such as stigmatization. Last year we also published a special report on women and girls who become pregnant as a result of sexual violence in conflict and children born of such violence which spans 24 conflict settings from 1990 to the present time. This report sets out a platform of legal policy and operational recommendations for states and partners to take forward in response to a global protection gap concerning a population that has long been understudied and underserved. By helping to disseminate and socialize good practices and lessons learned, every expert in this room and online can help to maintain momentum to eradicate and spare succeeding generations from this scourge. Each year that I have served as special representative, the number of states requesting our assistance has increased and the geographical scope of the mandate has expanded. Yet the stark reality is that funding has not kept pace. Our conflict-related sexual violence multi-partner trust fund supports the operational arms of my mandate to implement a range of survivor-centered interventions. This includes my team of experts on the rule of law which has assisted national authorities to strengthen institutional safeguards against impunity in over a dozen countries. It also includes the UN Action Coordination Network which has supported more than 50 projects in 17 conflict-affected settings. Yet the volume of available resources is far from commensurate with the scale of the challenge. We cannot continue to shortchange survivors and those delivering on their behalf. As we look toward the 15-year anniversary of my mandate in 2024, I will continue in my advocacy role to galvanize the international donor and diplomatic community to give the scores the attention and investment it deserves. 15 years is in fact a short time in the history of an atrocity as old and enduring as war itself. In that time we have written a new norm, drawn a red line and built a new response architecture. Today the UN is reaching and supporting thousands of survivors who had once been invisible and inaccessible. Slowly but surely we are expanding the circle of allies, champions and stakeholders. Slowly but surely we are expanding the promise of protection but in the final analysis this is a matter of political will and no amount of protection or assistance can substitute for what we are missing which is peace. A world free from war and sexual violence seems distant but it is attainable. I thank you all for your partnership and unwavering commitment to this cause as one of the great peace, security and rule of law challenges of our time. Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening for those of us who are online. My name is Kathleen Keynes and I direct the women peace and security work here at the Institute of Peace. Thank you so much SRSG Patton those were direct remarks difficult to hear but we work in a very difficult field and this field has been growing with your leadership and the others here today so I want to thank you and your charge to us is well taken. We need to build skill and will but bridge the gap between resolutions and reality and that is really our mission over the next three days. Thank you. It is now my distinct honor to invite Dr. Gita Rao Gupta to the podium. She is our new ambassador at large for global women's issues at the U.S. Department of State. Dr. Gupta previously served as the executive director of the 3D program for girls and women at the United Nations Foundation. She was also a part of the executive director for the United Nations Children's Fund otherwise known as UNICEF and of course we know her very well as president of the International Center for Research on Women here in Washington. The floor is yours Ambassador and congratulations on your new appointment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that kind introduction. Thank you Lees for inviting me and thank you to the U.S. Institute of Peace and all the dedicated partners for convening us here today and thank you SRSG Patton for your friendship, for your advocacy, for your strong voice and thank you to everyone in the audience and those who are watching online for being here and for the work that you do every day to build our collective knowledge, inform policy and strengthen programming to prevent and respond to conflict related sexual violence globally. I couldn't help but think that missing peace aptly describes the world that we live in today and that's why it is vitally important that we're taking the time over these three days to critically reflect on the last decade of collective efforts, identify remaining gaps and barriers and examine research and policy implications to be able to make real tangible progress in addressing conflict-related sexual violence. I don't need to tell anyone in this room that the brutality and prevalence of CRSV has not subsided. As we so clearly heard just now from SRSG Patton, it is a scourge on humanity affecting a diverse range of individuals and communities across countries and conflict situations in every region of the world. Looking back over the past 10 years, it is through innovative partnerships with many of you here today that we have transformed the understanding of CRSV from an inevitable cost of armed conflict to a preventable act of violence. The missing peace scholars network has been a vital source for building an evidence base of research and data for action on CRSV and I'm looking forward to upcoming sessions that dive into current research more deeply. Similarly, the powerful testimony and advocacy of survivors has reshaped our understanding of the role CRSV plays in conflict. No longer is CRSV considered a private shame or ancillary spoil of war. We know that CRSV is a key driver of conflict and instability that undermines international law and prospects for peace. It is often a particular feature of conflict in settings with already high rates of gender-based violence. It is why perpetrators commit these terrible acts of violence and why we must prevent them. The agency and courage of survivors to share their experiences has transformed global consciousness. We must now show them and the world the same moral courage to do what it takes to ensure that they can thrive, not just rebuild their lives and we must always remember that our primary responsibility is to the survivor, to center their voices and their needs in everything we do. Let me share just a few examples and lessons learned from our recent work across survivor services, justice and accountability and multilateral efforts where we've seen partnerships with survivors, scholars, practitioners and like-minded policy makers transform the way we prevent and address CRSV. We know that during conflict many forms of gender-based violence including rape and sexual assault but also domestic violence and intimate partner violence and forms of human trafficking increased due to the breakdown of the social fabric of community services and norms that protect members of vulnerable populations. It is crucial that in our policy and our programming we understand the full gender-based violence continuum, ensure access to life-saving GBV services for all survivors, promote funding of GBV prevention and response as part of humanitarian assistance and coordinate our efforts. We've learned through our programming and from our partners that to address the needs of conflict-related sexual violence a fully functioning gender-based violence response system is critical and that for their own safety we must avoid deliberately singling out CRSV survivors in terms of service provision. The humanitarian response to GBV including CRSV supports survivors in line with GBV guiding principles through a well-established survivor-centered approach and we need to support and fund that infrastructure as a global community. I'm proud to share a few examples of how the US government is doing just that. One year ago the USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance and the US Department of State's Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration launched safe from the start revisioned building upon 10 years of lessons learned on preventing and responding to GBV in emergencies. This initiative promotes women's leadership, prioritizes support and advocacy for GBV prevention and survivor-centered response programming and shifts funding influence and decision-making power to women and girls within humanitarian response systems. Alongside this effort the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor has managed the Voices Against Violence initiative for nearly 10 years. This initiative ensures that GBV survivors have better access to services, protection and justice. We have directly supported more than 4100 survivors of extreme GBV including survivors of CRSV to strengthen existing locally led documentation efforts and build civil society and survivor coalitions. At the Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues which I am honored to lead, we work across the State Department and the US Government to integrate gender equality and equity into our foreign policy. As we all know there are deep linkages between each of these areas of work, between gender-based violence including CRSV, humanitarian emergencies, women's peace and security, conflict and atrocity prevention, international law and global criminal justice and accountability. By working together with colleagues who advance the US Government's efforts in each of these areas, we are striving to build a robust ecosystem within government and successful partnerships outside of government to better prevent and respond to all forms of GBV including CRSV and whole perpetrators accountable. The result of one such partnership is a new program that I was proud to announce yesterday at the launch of the updated US Strategy and National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security and some of you may have been there at the launch. Earlier this year my office awarded two million dollars to support survivors of CRSV and other forms of GBV in Ukraine. This project advances survivor-centered approaches to justice and accountability by providing survivors and local GBV service providers with a range of capacity-building reintegration and psychosocial support services needed for individuals and communities to holistically recover and thrive. It also works to enhance the capacities of national authorities and institutions to deliver survivor-centered services and ensure that the needs and perspectives of survivors are meaningfully included in peace and justice processes. Access to comprehensive services and holistic care for survivors is a moral and programmatic prerequisite to justice and accountability processes. This is the first step in breaking the silence and stigma that survivors experience, changing the practices that exacerbate violence and conflict, and securing the justice survivors deserve so they can use their voices as agents of peace, live free from violence and have access to equal opportunities. Justice as defined by the survivor is vital for achieving this goal, as is ensuring that local women-led groups and survivor networks are included across the justice continuum. Achieving justice for victims and survivors, including criminal accountability for perpetrators of CRSV, requires improved documentation efforts that are robust, survivor-centered and trauma-informed, consent-based and appropriately linked to GBV response services. Data collection and documentation can only take place where it is safe and when services for survivors are in place. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the Department of State is investing an additional $10 million over the next two years in projects that support civil society efforts to investigate and document CRSV to uphold truth and justice for victims and survivors, including integrating best practices like the Murad Code. As a complement to this work, the Office of Global Criminal Justice is launching a program that integrates survivor needs into the transitional justice process by providing interim reparative measures to survivors of CRSV and including them in designing community-based projects to provide individual or collective reparative measures. These interventions empower survivors to build their lives and reduce the stigma they face in their communities and I hope Beth will talk about some of this on the next panel. We must also work together to turn the evidence and data compiled by human rights monitoring mechanisms into action to hold those responsible accountable. We need to better understand what tools to promote accountability also serve to prevent and deter future violence. And we must do this while ensuring that GBV service providers and organizations serving women and girls are not exposed to harm, including retaliation by armed groups and that they're not cited as sources of CRSV evidence. President Biden's memorandum on Promoting Accountability for CRSV commits to exercising the full authorities of the US government to advance accountability through the use of legal, policy, diplomatic and financial tools. Over the last few months the US government has sanctioned ISIS members, South Sudanese officials, a Syrian-based armed militia and a Sudanese paramilitary leader, all of whom are connected to CRSV alongside other human rights abuses. Tying US sanctions directly to these acts of violence is a first for the US and something that we hope other governments will also commit to doing alongside us. A third line of the US effort to turn partnership into action on CRSV has been to elevate CRSV concerns within multilateral forums and partnerships. We proudly support SRSG patterns office and the vital work that she leads with her team to provide technical support to member states on prevention and response efforts as well as monitoring analysis and reporting mechanisms. In the UN Security Council we stand alongside a broad group of member states to condemn CRSV and to urge commitment to prevention and accountability. As part of the UK-led International Alliance on Preventing Sexual Violence and Conflict we're working together with more than 20 government survivor advocates and civil society organizations to share knowledge and create opportunities for joint action in the multilateral and global space. In fact I was just at the first meeting of the alliance last week in New York alongside SRSG pattern and courageous members of the PSVI survivor advisory group among others and I was heartened both by the discussion and the opportunity that the alliance presents for future partnership and collaboration. We're also leveraging multilateral forums working on atrocity prevention to incorporate CRSV specific early warning prevention and accountability options into atrocity prevention toolkits. GBV including CRSV can be an early warning sign for the onset of further atrocities and we're working to integrate an inclusive and intersectional lens into atrocity prevention efforts globally. We are constantly striving to pursue prevention not just response as an explicit objective within CRSV policy and program implementation. Similarly we are collaborating with partners to identify upstream approaches to preventing CRSV within fragile and conflict affected context recognizing that addressing the underlying drivers of gender equality contributes to reinforcing cycle of prevention and deterrence. Addressing GBV including CRSV is an opportunity to break the cycle of conflict and forge a just and sustainable pathway to peace. So as we take the opportunity over the next three days to look at what we have accomplished and what more we must do we let me emphasize that we must continue in the spirit of partnership. Let us build upon the commitment and expertise in this room and seize the opportunity to act urgently to expand our research and knowledge base on CRSV prevention and response to use survivor center trauma informed evidence-based approaches to our policy and programmatic work inside and outside of government and to always keep survivors front and center in everything we do. In conclusion I must say that ultimately to stop CRSV we have to stop conflicts. I have as a child growing up in India been a part of three walls it's triggering nothing was destroyed in my neighborhood nobody was raped in my neighborhood but just those air raid sirens getting up in the middle of the night sitting in the trenches with the women in the neighborhood singing my mother would sing Frank Sinatra songs the neighbors would sing Bollywood songs just to calm us down the drives for blood for the soldiers in the front the care packages all those experiences I was six for the first war nine for the second sixteen for the third before my mother passed she told me that when I was six and my father was in the Navy and away from home I said to her if we are taken as prisoners of war ma don't worry about me they won't kill me because I know how to wash dishes and I can serve as a servant in one of their households I share this with you just to say that I watched how that trauma actually begets a cycle of hate and further lays the foundation for conflict so just keep that in mind that ultimately to stop CRSV we have to stop this vicious cycle we have to stop it somehow thank you thank you ambassador and really thank you for keeping this very real and keeping the understanding of what we will be working on because this is work these three days are about work and as you've identified partnership and relationship building and I've been very privileged over the last decade to have the partners that Lisa Grande mentioned the Peace Research Institute of Oslo the University Washington University at St. Louis and also the women in international security along with all of you here today we intend to make action happen together so thank you we're going to transition now to our first panel and we're going to focus on very much what our keynoters have directed us to making policy count to end conflict related sexual violence we're going to look at the progress and obstacles and as everyone has noted this is about breaking down the silos we are trying to bring all the sectors together to talk with one another which is tough sometimes because we work in different languages even if we might speak the same language so I'm going to now invite our panelists to the stage beginning with my co-moderator Kim Tui Selinger who has been an anchor and also a visionary about how to prevent and also how to keep the survivor in our focus Kim joined the international criminal court's office of the prosecutor as its first senior coordinator for gender-based crimes and crimes against children she oversees all policy and casework related to this issue seeking to bring survivor-centered trauma-informed approach to all investigations her bio is quite lengthy as her many titles are but we welcome her to the stage to set the stage at that end and all of the panelists cabasia margo beth and tom dry all right yeah thank you the floor is yours all the mics are already being managed up above so just start talking there might be a minute delay a second delay no last time uh we sat here for the first missing piece meeting I didn't need reading glasses 10 years ago so now things have changed um but it's great to see you all and like I know most of you in this room and I'm aware of your incredible brilliance and commitment to this issue and guarantee you whoever you're sitting next to has given up a full day of putting out fires to be here just as you have and so really take advantage of of meeting everyone you can in the room because there's so much brainpower and commitment here so I am Kim and I also teach at Washington University in st. Louis but I am on leave this year so I can work at the international criminal court and I am so excited to welcome our panelists to uh to this first conversation um I think they don't need much introduction so I'll be very brief but we have here um it's margo wallstrom who as many of you know has who's the first secret special representative for sexual violence and conflict starting in 2010 and has a long record of civil service uh in sweden on women's issues and many other security issues and she has also of course as you see in the bios served as the minister of foreign affairs in sweden and we're very lucky to have her here guiding this whole event this week so thank you for for coming um next to miss wallstrom is very beloved friend and housemate even briefly uh kovasia how is who who many of you know as one of the most sort of just leading voices to keep us um aware of survivor centeredness and what it means and all of our work he is the survivor champion one of the survivor champions for the uk governments preventing sexual violence initiative and received his mbe for his incredible efforts just a few years ago so welcome kovasia next to kovasia we have ambassador beth van schaak who is our lead she's our ambassador at large for global criminal justice in the united states government um which is when i heard of the appointment beth i literally stood up and just i think i shouted i was so excited because beth ambassador van schaak is she's actually a very long time friend and colleague back from california days and just knowing that you're at the helm for this incredible piece of work and our our government's face on this gives me such hope so thank you for for being here today and then we have tondra chikua who i also know from a long time ago he has been sort of a backbone for the srsg's office for since its start actually and is a real expert on how for example the security council moves and thinks on these issues and has shaped a lot of that movement and thinking himself so we're grateful for your time to tondra and then my very dear friend kathleen who also needs no introduction but kathleen i thought that what we might do with this incredible panel is just start with an opening question that they can all respond to and then we'll have some individual questions for you and then a closing question in common so and then some audience discussion so we'll try to keep things moving and ask for concise maybe three minute remarks um so our first question is when you think back to when you first started engaging on the issue of conflict related sexual violence in whatever your role was at the time what did you not know about it there may have been many things but what strikes you as like a real key knowledge gap that you had at the very beginning of your work um so maybe we can start with you margo thank you very much and first of all thank you for the previous speakers interventions and of course a special thanks to pramila who is my one of my successors and i know that she and and her team they are just doing a tireless work on on this issue so thank you and for laying the ground for for this discussion this is now soon 14 years ago and i thought i knew something i thought i could intellectually understand sort of the what this meant and how many people how many women were affected by conflict related sexual violence and i soon understood how much i did not understand and i think it was especially meeting all these survivors listening to their stories understanding slowly that this is makes such a deep imprint on us of course a person an individual person a family a society um a country uh and also something that quickly became clear to me that there are so many misconceptions about what this is and i have kept saying since then when i describe our mission and and the task that we have at hand that is really about those basic three misunderstandings first of all that this is inevitable because it has always been there in every war since beginning of time secondly that it has something to do with sexuality with sex and that can make it taboo in in certain uh sort of cultures or settings um and and not really about power with which it is with the sexual expression it's not the other way around and the third is that this is a lesser crime and as you know this has been even used as a defense saying i could have killed her he says so this is a lesser crime but it is not it lives on so 20 years after the when we visited uh both has ago in a we met with with women and they were 20 years after this happened they were still trembling when they sort of gave their recollection of what they had been through so and so it's really the meeting the the survivors and and listening to to their stories that we understand what it is that we did not fully uh take in only by intellectually learning more about this and i think that has to guide us also the survivors exactly as Pramila said the survivors centered the policy and and i would say it changed my whole political life this made me introduce a feminist foreign policy in sweden my experience is from from this so that was the background to that thank you so much Marco um Colbassio what about you yeah thank you um i think there is um i think there's a few things you know as i mean the first thing for me as a survivor is the backlash that i received especially you know from uh family members and for example you know my uncle you know said to me that don't bring shame on the name of the family and that was quite you know difficult for me because i was thinking that probably you know family is going to be um the solace you know the place where i can you know find you know comfort and then you know i find it how difficult and also lonely you know the journey um is to um for healing and you know to recovery and it took me for me in order really to uh to unlock that and i also want to thank you um you know the ambassador um get uh i think there is one thing that i think um i think we need to embrace you know our um vulnerability and if we if we feel it i think we need to um allow that and that's one thing that i also learned and the one other thing because i have a few people on that point that i want to kind of highlight quickly i think the one second thing that also i want to highlight especially for policymakers or for us is that uh sexual violence as is violence and also deminaging you know i said it does not define you know survivors right and that's something that you know i see quite quite a lot is um whatever that experience you have does not define you and you can see quite a lot of survivors here um leaders and and and and so and and so and so and i think the other thing that also i think i um i learned you know through throughout the time is that you know survivors you know as such we are not um one one simple group you know in that group there's a complexity in that group there's a you know individual within within that group and you know we need to consider survivors you know as an individual there's no one solution fit all you know each um survivors their needs are different and also i i want to also highlight that when we are thinking about you know policy especially it is not about we as a policy maker our want is all about the survivor need and i think that's really um really important um for us as well understand so i think those things that i learned you know through my journey of doing advocacy and stuff and also i think one thing that i want to highlight as well i i saw so many survivors here in this symposium you know today and i think that's the standard we need to set because when we debate in conflict related sexual violence one key is stakeholder that need to be part of that conversation our survivors and at time you know we miss that hour thank you we're trying club asia we're trying thank you for guiding us um ambassador well thank you so much it's it's an honor to be here on this panel and in this conversation um and i really look forward to learning more from all of you about what we can do now that i'm in a policy making role as the head of the office of global criminal justice so i started my career right out of law school at the office of the prosecutor of the tribunal for the former uslavia and rwanda it was a joint prosecutorial office and it was very much this was in the late 90s um very much a blue sky moment this was the first time that these crimes had been prosecuted really since nuremberg we had a handful of domestic jurisprudence that we could look at the claus barbie case in france et cetera the demiania case here but really we were going back to the nuremberg era and if you've read those records you know that sexual violence was virtually invisible there there are these little euphemistic references in the record etc but it was not actively charged it was not pursued there was not evidence placed into the record there were some national trials in various occupation courts in the post world war two period that did look at sexual violence more directly but very very rare and so we were starting with a blank slate here on many fronts but definitely when it came to sexual violence and the prosecutor at the time had the vision and the foresight to hire patricia visor sellers who maybe is too many in high patty if you are um to basically lead the work on conceptualizing how the prosecution was going to approach conflicted sexual violence and other gender-based violence that happened during both conflicts the war in the form of Yugoslavia and then the genocide in rwanda and it was really through her tireless efforts in ensuring that investigators were asking the right questions and were approaching survivors in a sensitive way so as to not re traumatize them to ensure that there were women who were integrated into investigatory teams so that women survivors had and sometimes men survivors had someone whom they felt comfortable revealing what may be the most um horrible thing that they could ever have conceptualized for themselves making sure prosecutors had a theory of the case so that they could charge these crimes and knew what type of evidence would be necessary to establish the responsibility not only of the direct perpetrators but also those up the chain of command and because patty was in the role that she was in it had this incredible ripple effect throughout our entire organization and so we saw the case right which charles charged rape as torture because we had torture listed and so we could use that as the hook to charge rape we had the case which was able to establish the precedent that rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence could be the predicate acts for genocide even though the genocide convention does not mention sexual violence anywhere in it or gender-based violence anywhere in the treaty and so she was able to help establish this precedent that precedent then was able to be picked up by subsequent international and domestic tribunals it's not legally binding but it was highly authoritative so you saw the special court for Sierra Leone building upon that foundation and charging forced marriage as a separate crime why because the prosecutor spoke to women and women described a different violation than sexual enslavement or sexual assault it was the imposition of a status of marriage that would then follow them forward for the rest of their lives they wanted that to be charged separately the prosecutor did that and the appeals chamber ultimately ratified that approach then we see that theory being picked up by the ICC the international criminal court the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia then we have the extraordinary African chambers which prosecuted the crime of sexual violence crimes for the the Chad era under Ethan Habre that tribunal did not necessarily charge sexual violence at first what happened was survivors while they were testifying suddenly began to speak of what had happened to them on the stand spontaneously and it caused the need to pause and to revisit and one of the survivors was able to directly identify he sent Habre himself as her perpetrator so the lesson that I took from all of this experience is the importance of individual human beings being willing to have the courage to step out of what is a the one pathway and to pursue a different pathway and to say wait I'm going to look for this evidence I know it's there I'm not going to be satisfied with these 15 other counts that may be much easier to prove and to investigate I'm going to go searching for this evidence I'm going to do so in a way that's careful I'm not going to get impatient with survivors because they take time to maybe come to a willingness to be able to speak about these issues more publicly I'm going to do this in a way that is survivor-centric I'm going to work within communities to be able to surface this experience amongst individuals and then survivors feeling comfortable to be able to move forward and that's where you all come in I think so many times that we've seen survivors being willing to tell their stories it's because they have a vast support network behind them one of my clients when I was a practicing lawyer and he was describing his experience testifying in court for the first time he was a victim of sexual violence he described it as rowing a boat and he was at the front of the canoe and he described looking backward and knowing that there were other survivors in the canoe with him he was at the front he was there on the stand he was confronting the defendant who was a former minister of a defense of El Salvador but he knew that he had people behind him rowing with him and that is you you are helping to row behind those individuals who are at the front of that boat and so my big learning is the importance of individual human beings and that's why this gathering and thank you so much to the USIP for having this be a signature topic and being able to have the power and the resources and the willingness to convene all of you here so I really look forward to the conversation thank you thank you thanks ambassador um Tondra what about you then well thank you very much Kim it's difficult to follow all of that um but um I began working on this issue um in 2010 uh working on this issue full time when I joined the office of the special representative um hired by Margote in fact and I'm not sure whether to say thank you uh for that um because the the reality is that um once you begin on this issue you step into a shadow and it's a shadow that you that you can never truly step out of and that's something that you don't know until you are in the trenches of this um by that point I'd been working for 10 years on the children and armed conflict issue and we had focused on six grave violations against children including sexual violence so I came in with some confidence that I knew something and as the adage goes you don't know what you don't know and I realized that actually I have to say I was completely overwhelmed uh Margote was cool calm and collected as always focused but I was completely overwhelmed um when I started overwhelmed by the the sheer magnitude of the silence that shrouds this issue by the misconceptions as you mentioned Margote the myths um the false narratives that made it difficult to get a foothold to begin attacking the problem that made it difficult even to develop a conceptual and analytical framework to attack the problem uh it took me back I was completely overwhelmed and I also realized that I knew and maybe I can say we knew at that time very little about how to structure an operational preventive response because what we inherited was many years of work on SGBV um and mostly that work if I could be fair um on the UN side was on the back end of violations it was very structured deep and resourced work on services for those who had already passed through these crimes but we were very thin on the front end of the violations and I remember in the office we often used to say that an analogy that circulated in the office was that it was akin to trying to mop the floor with the tap still running and we had to begin thinking about how to structure an operational response to turn that tap off to prevent these crimes from happening in the first place um and we started on a on a on a clean clean page we're going to move into just drilling down a little bit more on these really important reflections that you've each helped us set the scene if you will because there are people in our audience who are been working on this for decades and then there are people who are new so I really appreciate your giving a little bit of your background here I'm going to turn to um Margo at this point Margo you talked about just coming to terms with this agenda globally but I'm curious what have you been most surprised by with regards to the progress since you were the SRSG for sexual violence in conflict so something that has surprised you that was unexpected in the storyboard how little we learned is that the short answer or or why why don't we implement uh the things as as we've heard the normative framework is is there by now we've had what is it eight consecutive security council resolutions establishing this as a very important point of of peace and security but but looking back at resolution 1325 it is almost like comparing failures uh these days and I get very upset because I can see that when there was a peace deal struck uh into Tigray about Tigray no women around the table no women as as we've heard also Pramila say uh they are they are nowhere still and if this if they are not there this will make it impossible to fight impunity for these types of crimes because they will not be brought up in any peace negotiations so what is it that that that makes it impossible to to implement it is almost like with climate change we have known this for so long but but we are still not uh willing to absorb the truth about what is happening and and act accordingly and I think that psychologists need to be involved in all of this the behavioral scientists instead to to explain why why this has not happened but here is really about insisting on women being there at the negotiating table and being involved in in the processes also in the security council I actually looked at my old notes from from those you know from those days and I said it was what worked well was setting we set a five point agenda um of course starting with fighting impunity uh we did the reporting to the security council I think that worked well uh also we um designated sort of five no seven um focused countries um and clearly is to have examples good examples and and provide results the media contacts worked well the feed field visits the documents were well written I had fantastic fantastic team and the joint communicators and things like that but then it was the struggle with member states in the security council trying to put cases on in our reports every year having to sort of negotiate what should be written there and and what can we not mention and and of course also making sure that this was taken seriously that that there something would happen afterwards and I think that this is still the problem there were a number of things that we knew early on that we would need to deal with but we could not we did not have the resources when we started like children born out of rape and I know that this is something that you have followed up since and my successors have been following up and I think this also as a weapon in the hands of terrorists it's also a kind of new phenomenon or new and new but it is something also that that um more recent uh teams have had to to deal with we were talking about the military how do we involve the military what about military doctrines and what is written there how do we make it a shame to to to do these things and I think we would have like to to do more or some on those so there were a number of things that we could early on we could see were were necessary and I think we still have to train prosecutors and judges and make sure that the whole justice system works works much better so these are some of the of the gaps and the understanding of of this um and how do you change norms and and change attitudes in society that's the most difficult no and and this is one of the reasons why it still looks so so problematic and so dark and now we see of course a new in the situation for women around the world where oppression is is clearly going on like in Afghanistan or or Iran but but everywhere in the world so women's rights are taken from them and this is what we have to look out for thank you it's back to me and I have the next question for um from Colasia actually because in your opening comment you touched on some of the myths and misconceptions or things that you wish policymakers understood about conflict related sexual violence so I'm wondering did you want to add anything to that or offer advice about how they can meaningfully engage with survivors I'm thinking of your activism with freedom from torture the networks that many survivors represent here if we want policymakers to understand survivors needs how can they learn that um what would your advice be yeah thank you um yeah I think when I um you know started you know doing advocacy especially on the source and to the approach and I think we have really traveled you know far um to the point where uh where we are and now you know um so centered approach became like a case first case phrase or something like everybody talking about so centered approach but there is so much learning that need to be uh need to be done and there is so much barrier that you know we need to jump as in tomorrow we have a panel on that we're gonna really elaborate but um what I one or two thing that I really want to say is that and what I also seen used as a barrier is the vulnerability that you know survivors too vulnerable that they cannot engage I mean there's no vulnerability that will stop you really know what you need what are your needs right there is no vulnerability will stop you do that and all what survivors need is the space and the platform you know to engage um in June uh my colleague Nadine and also I think Grace here were invited um by the red of uh Mohera and victims and professionalists I hope that I did not pronounce it uh wrong by you know Angela and her group to go to Colombia and we went to Colombia and throughout our time there we met over 600 survivors really engaging into the conversation and discussing about policies and when you know the government the Colombian government decided about the micro case I mean you know the cheer that was in the room really inspired me how survivors really consistently asking for things that they think that dies the thing that you know they um they want and also um in September um of my you know colleague Nadine and also Angela from Colombia we went to Guinea and there we made about 300 survivors really debating about what they feel that need to be done in order to address you know the justice or the reparation that you know the the one so there is even in the room how many survivors you know leaders they are here there are so many of us so we are here we really want to engage because we have something that we can contribute into the into the discussion we just need to create the space you know for it um you know to be and I think also implementation of that um and you know tomorrow you can hear about it as well lifeboard ladder which really implemented the so centered approach into the you know program that they have you know for um you know for women you know care of conflicts sexual violence initiative I hope that tomorrow you can hear about how you really put in practice the source and to the approach thank you it's called us yeah there's one more from me and it's for you ambassador um I think many of the folks in this room aren't yet familiar with the work of your office um and so I'm wondering if you could just shed a little bit of light on that and then are there policy priorities that you have with respect to conflict related sexual violence that you'd like to share with us um because I think people would be very interested in how their work might support the work that your team is doing yeah terrific thank you so much so this is an office that was the brainchild of Madeleine Albright when she was secretary of state she was very involved in standing up the two ad hoc tribunals that I mentioned in my opening remarks and she wanted there to be a direct point of contact in the state department to channel support for those institutions and she wanted that office to report directly to the secretary of state over the years and particularly under secretary clinton when she was secretary of state our mandate has expanded and so now we really work along the whole spectrum let's say of atrocity situations so upstream where mass atrocities are being threatened where we're starting to see the risk factors and as been mentioned we know that sexual violence is one of those risk factors it's one of the early forms of violence that can emerge and when impunity sets in that can often lead to a spiraling and an emergence of different forms of violence that then can result in a full-scale mass atrocity situation so upstream we work with our development colleagues our human rights bureau colleagues and other colleagues to try and build resiliences within communities to try and raise the profile and the voices of peacemakers to try and look at those risk factors and find ways in order to mitigate them working with our embassies and posts and with the diplomatic community in those countries then you know moving along the continuum when we're in a full-scale conflict or repressive situation we're thinking about mitigation we're thinking about documentation we're thinking about laying the groundwork for future accountability everything that would be needed to try and bring that situation under control and then we're often working across the state department and across the interagency system to try and surge focused expertise and diplomatic measures to try and bring that situation back under control and then after the fact we're very much focused on a transitional justice approach looking at all of the pillars of transitional justice accountability of course being among them but then also truth telling guarantees of non-repetition the rehabilitation of survivors reparation etc thinking about lustration removing individuals from positions of power if they have allegations against them so that the society can move forward with a new leadership all of that and so we work in many of the same countries that SRSG patent mentioned where we've seen sexual violence happening as part of a broader campaign of mass violence I deploy a very small programming budget and so I try and work in partnership with our human rights bureau with our GUI bureau our INL bureau which is our rule of law bureau in order to capacitate either the institutions themselves that are doing the accountability work or critical civil society actors that are part of the system ultimately I think my job is to strengthen the system of international justice globally and to make sure that the United States is a key partner in that system whether or not we're a member of the relevant institution or whether it's a security council initiated project or it's something happening at a very grassroots level I want this government to be supportive in whatever way that we can and so we really do think about the system as an ecosystem with many different nodes within it there are international institutions there are national courts there are my counterparts around the world there are civil society actors there are very very local actors and then there are communities that are directly affected by violence and so in my programming work in my diplomatic work I try and look for tools that can strengthen all of those different nodes within the ecosystem thank you for that ambassador and I'm going to pick up actually something I'm hearing throughout all of your commentary and that is these problems of institutionalization how can the institutions themselves change tondarai you have been at the intersection of the UN security council the women peace and security agenda and conflict related sexual violence can you give us a view on what is changing that is can give us a little hope and what needs to change and how we can help thank you well I would say that the first point to make and maybe it's a glimmer of light in the shadow is that there is for all of the fractures and the and deep divisions in the council there is a there is a remarkable consensus in the council around the CRSV agenda and I think that consensus has depended largely on a disciplined approach of framing CRSV as a protection issue in the frame of international humanitarian law as opposed to looking at it as a human rights issue covered by international human rights law and of course we understand it as a rights issue but I think that the discipline of the IHL frame has been incredibly important to to to bring everybody on board and generate the consensus and I think that that consensus is exemplified by the resolutions Margot mentioned eight women peace and security resolutions five of them focused specifically on CRSV six if you count 2331 which for the first time expressed the intersection of CRSV trafficking and armed conflict and violent extremism and what is very clearly understood in the council is that this is a legitimate legitimate peace and security issue that requires an operational security and justice response and the last years have been about working out what that operational response should should look at and I think it's also encouraging the recognition in the council that we need a structured framework to enforce compliance and the resolutions have essentially spelled out the key elements of that structured framework and I would say maybe there are four in broad outlines first of all the mandating of a global surveillance system and monitoring analysis and reporting system and understanding that without reliable and timely information there is no basis for action at at any level including security action council action and and action at institutional level throughout secondly the framework engineers a conduit of steady reporting to the security council which has also been mentioned reporting in the name of the secretary general with actually what is a remarkable focus on the perpetrators a mandate for the secretary general to include a list that for the first time shone the spotlight of international scrutiny on those who are committing the crime and I find it still remarkable to this day that a member state body like the security council would give a mandate for the listing of state and non-state parties it's actually a remarkable victory thirdly I would say it's also fair to say that the council committed and in some ways has lived up to the commitment of using all of its peace and security tools to attack this issue and that begins by focusing UN peace operations explicitly on CRSV we can't underestimate how important that has been and a commitment to use sanctions ambassador you mentioned US US sanctions which is such an important trend setting development I would say but we also can't underestimate how far we have gone in incorporating sanctions for CRSV into the DNA of the council's work on sanctions through designation criteria on CRSV and then lastly and I think that this is probably where the tires hit the tarmac and there is traction in the vehicle moves or not a mandate for the United Nations to engage state and non-state parties for concrete commitments and in that process as we have begun to use those tools I think we do see that it is possible to gain some tangible protection outcomes on the basis of this more structured operational approach and compliance framework established by the council thank you for deepening our understanding of those you have such an insight as being at the front table so to speak what could I shift gears here because we really want this to be a dialogue and we're going to come back to you for the last round but right now we want to open it up to our distinguished group of participants here today with us and uh great I already see hands up and we're going to take three questions at a time I see two here and I see one at the back and one down here so far uh mic runners might uh right one there one there I saw yes right over here and if you wouldn't mind standing up and just giving us your name and your organization or if you're representing yourself and I'm going to ask you to keep the comment or question very brief thank you so much and we'll take three at their time and then bring it back to you as panelists my name is Zahanta Mui from DRC uh Goma um if it's possible I want to speak in French I don't know if we will need an interpreter since we uh do we have the French Jennifer are you here okay they'll translate yes we we have a translator or two on the on the stage here okay thank you my question is in relation to justice we have a great problem in RDC in relation to violence it's first justice the impunity and the phenomenon of girls who are exploited in the homes of tolerance and come with the conflict sometimes there are also political actors who are at the base of these acts it's difficult to debate even for the actors we are also exposed and in insecurity to defend the right of victims how do we do to get back together or how do we collaborate with you at these levels there to achieve an effective justice and make just repair for the victims especially the fee the petit fee qui sont victimes c'est tout un avenir qui est parti et c'est les grands travail que nous avons comment arriver à contourner ça merci merci kubase will correct me if i'm wrong but i'll just translate this for now um our guest sara is from drc goma and she was her question is about justice she's asking i need my glasses to read my own handwriting she was asking about this big problem in in her country of impunity for this crime and we had mentioned the Maison that the the brothers and the sex industry and the exploitation that has arisen in the context of the conflict there um which is the main problem of course is that there are politics behind this conflict which are driving all of these downstream effects including sexual violence and so this makes it very hard to address and so her question is how can we collaborate with you with these actors that have power to intervene on behalf of victims and survivors in the public the democratic public of Congo to reach justice and make sure we have reparations for them including for the very young girls who are affected and this changes their future kubase how did i do i well we'll go to the second question thank you we have that please thank you very much my name is samsat alamin i'm a first building practitioner from nigeria yes making policy count i think before we make policy count i want to make some observations as barriers to making the policy counts coming from the developing country nigeria precisely battling with the boko haram insurgency for more than 40 almost 14 years now this i think understanding the context within which this kind of things happen is very very important particularly as emphasized by the ambassador at large because i'm saying this because our context is our context is that do not even consider sexual violence as a crime that is number one so much so that even policy makers when drafted in nigerian counter astra terrorism strategy and law sexual violence is completely missing is not even mentioned and then for the extremists who are abducting and then by sexually violating the boko haram women and girls to them honestly women and girls are just created for the pleasure of men so that their reasons for abducting women is just a strategy for producing future generation of jihadis not even a crime so therefore in such a context when policy makers are completely blind and then as the survivors started coming back and then i started engaging with them and registered up to 2800 survivors in my small ngo you know what i was condemned and abused by the whole society as a woman and grandmother talking about these issues which are a taboo to them but then i insisted documented the survivors gather their stories and then went ahead to document the invisible children who are born while their mothers were in captivity and as in detention now i have about 800 of such invisible children in our hands and then for the nigerian military and security agencies whenever these women run from boko haram over a rescued they are subjected to go through the same ordeals if not worse in the house of even the state security operators that many women will tell you nigerian soldiers are worse than boko haram so these are the contexts we operate so ambassador police as you walk towards policy in fact encouraging member states of the united nations to really come to the reality of the situation and then you are in power particularly yes we i may not say we cannot call on you and then do this for us but then empower us to please reach out to our policy makers so that they understand the gravity of the situation and then respond appropriately and then also a societal reorientation a society that does not see women as anything but just for that pleasure i think need a serious reorientation to be able to understand the value of women and girls so that impact we can respond appropriately we really approach appreciate impact the united nations leading in this i was even happy to hear the kind of strategies that are in place towards this kind the kind of thing i'm talking but then we need a scalar to scale it up and then reach out to particularly those who are able to engage these survivors because some of the survivors i am working with even if you take them to the criminal court they will say no it's okay we have forgiven them because yes because they consider it something maybe a kind of degrading yourself when you say you are a survivor or so so therefore we need to work seriously on our societies to be able to bring up these issues prominently so that the globally it is being as being appreciated in the civilized global world it is also taken up seriously in our local context thank you thank you and thank you for that we have one more question and maybe one more we'll do all four questions and then we'll turn it back to the panelists thank you my name is hillan touquet i'm connected to the university of antwerp and my question sort of connects to the previous questions in the in the dialogue i heard a lot of emphasis on retributive justice and we all know i mean i see the icc there global criminal justice we all know that there are limits to these mechanisms that we have we also hear that local judiciary can be very politicized you know there's a lot of obstacles and i wonder to what extent is there any thinking or is there any place for restorative justice practices within at the global policy level thank you helene and our fourth right here at the front row thank you so much thank you thank you very much this is fantastic panel i have a two short question one just yourself sorry oh my name is wei wei new and i'm from berma and ma currently in stuck in the us i guess um so my first question is iran um tundra you talk about um the concrete actions by the member states or you know generally and when we approach the um c rsb addressing c rsb it is often easier to talk about providing support for the um survivors right but it's not easy to talk about ending impunity or bringing justice and accountability especially where i come from in berma we don't have any local um mechanisms available how do we actually um what are ways for us to actually push for a concrete actions uh from the international community when it's come to ending impunity and holding perpetrators of these crimes accountable um and my second question is around providing support uh to the uh victims and survivors um ambassador you mentioned all the programs that uh you've been working on um through your uh uh department um okay department uh i'm not i'm not calling uh office to your office okay and and and through other uh offices um i i'd like to pose this question to all of you perhaps uh how do you actually ensure these uh supports are um tunneling to the victims directly because often when big uh big donors and states and organizations work with the victims is there's always different intermediary right there is a change of organization that work with the victim at the end how do you ensure to maximize the benefit to the victim and how do you ensure a direct kind of engagement to the victims group and and all these intermediary groups are actually um having a victim centered approach and really understanding the context and not actually making harms or making like how do you uh provide effective support i guess thank you thank you well thank you for those questions we were well represented drc nigeria i believe lean europe and uh thank you berma so um what i'm going to do and i'm also uh the timekeeper of our panel so uh we're going to take this very fairly rapidly um margo i suggest we begin with you we'll just go down the the uh panel here and you take whatever one of those questions you feel most passionate about or you feel that you can address directly no thank you very much i i'm interested in something that has to do with with all your interventions and questions here also and that is how do we measure results and i remember us talking about that from the very beginning how do we measure results in in this area because paradoxically it could be a very good result if the number of cases increases because then more victims feel that it is worth it to go through all of the pain of of becoming a witness or a survivor of of this and then using the the justice judicial system or going to the to the hospital to report or to go into the police to report but how do we follow up because as it is today we very much measure results in terms of new resolutions and the new sort of structures that we put in place legislative legislative and normative structures but that doesn't say anything about whether we succeed or not if do we have more cases or less cases what exactly has been most effective in in everything we're doing i worry a lot about that and and there are good examples and i think we more often should mention those and list those good examples and the the kind of actions taken but but we we still have to ask ourselves how how should we measure results and and maybe we have to do that of course your yearly report is a way to describe what is what is going on but i think maybe we need to break it down also member state wise or find other ways to sort of both name and shame but also lift sort of the very best examples and claim claim the best examples yeah thank you margo obasi yeah thank you um i think um i think we need to change you know approaches i think the approach has been in places if it's not 70 years or 75 years because i think the uh UN declaration of human rights will be 75 years this year or something like that so i think you know the approach has been in place it's always about in some group of experts thinking about solution and then providing the solution right and i do think they need to need to be look look at it um uh intensively because i mean you know we know you know justice even the question of justice if you ask it to survive as one person we we talk to you about justice different than the other person right and also if we take a justice this for example you know the case of sena brain you know i'm from from chat so how long it took for justice to be provided for for the survivors you know some of them even you know passed away in order to get those justice but it's in meantime while we're looking for um you know justice that in the court is there is any other thing that can be put in place in order to satisfy you know survivors you know there's any type of reparation that can be you know can be can be look at it what what what are the need that's what i earlier on i was saying it's not about what we want as a policymaker it's all about what survivors need i think you know the case of the you know the lovely lady from Nigeria i think understanding what is the what is the need of the survivors you know around those then what is the solution that can be provided to meet those needs and while we're looking at you know the court we're looking at you know perpetrators bring him to justice and they're responding to that i think the case of our course over for example understand that the justice through the course is going to take long so then i'm i think administrators call administrator i'm a lawyer yeah so then just bear with me administrator justice will put in place you know for for for for survivors i think you know they get those that you know come forward they can get uh no stepping uh Monday stepping and and so you know to look at the you know to address the you know address address the need one thing that is really important yeah and my friend keeps saying to me that if we are not sitting around the table as the survivors right and people debating is mean that we are the menu on the table and you as a menu on the table you have no figure no say whatever when people deciding what is the menu so this is really important that we need to change it so then when we sit around the table survivors as well sit around the table thank you thank you thank you thank you so maybe i'll address wayway's very practical question in my sort of new role as a in a doter country um which was not a role i'd ever occupied before and the first thing i want to acknowledge is just how profoundly difficult it is to apply for money from the u.s. government and it's even harder to apply to the e you so i take a tiny bit of comfort in that but it's really hard there are incredibly onerous deadlines paperwork obligations monitoring and evaluation requirements being able to use a website that is impossible to manage sometimes all of that um and so that is just to acknowledge that it's it's very difficult but once you get into our family of grantees we really try and work hard to make this very successful partnership so i would encourage people to not give up we have now particularly in the biden harris administration really worked hard across all of the donor offices including i'm sure gwe to co-create our notice of funding opportunities so we are not just sitting in our little offices thinking like oh what would be good to be funding no we are out there in the community tapping into the knowledge and the expertise that exists out there to help design a notice of funding opportunity that is directly responsive to the needs of those communities and the gaps that they're seeing within the larger justice architecture so part of you know the answer is to find ways to plug in and to be connected whether it's with a local ambassador the embassy there um the usa id member or reach out to our offices here in washington the second thing we have tried to do is to really encourage our grantee applicants to work in consortia so you're absolutely right it's much easier for intermediary or multilateral non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations to apply for money they're adept at doing so they have in-house staff that can do so they know how to manage the paperwork they've done it in the past so we're now encouraging them to bring in local groups as part of a consortia so there's a capacity building exercise that happens and so eventually those individual smaller groups have the ability they've seen it done they've worked through several grant cycles they can then apply on their own um and we're also asking all of our grantee applicants to describe specifically how they are operating in a survivor centered in trauma informed way not just having a sentence that says they'll do that but we want to actually see what concretely are you doing what staff do you have in house to be able to ensure you have the expertise to do this work what experience do you have what standards are you applying we're very keen to see the maraud code and other similar codes of conduct and and standards that have been developed internationally diffused out there into the system and so we ask applicants to show us that they're able to do that and so that's some of the ways we're trying to address the issues that you've described which is responsiveness to survivor communities but also making the funding available to more local groups thank you beth and I would just add for those of you who might not be familiar with the maraud code it is online and it is um Nadia Marat who is the 2018 co-nobel peace prize winner it's work and so I just wanted to acknowledge it for somebody who might not recognize that important code and and right you have and the pen holder for the maraud code is actually with us so hopefully you'll meet her at some point um Ingrid Elliot who's in the back there thank you for noting that welcome Ingrid you are the final word of this panel tondra that sounds like a setup um maybe just very briefly uh whether your question essentially about how do you get justice going I think one of the lessons we've taken from the last um 10 15 years is that justice survivors need support governments including those whose forces may be perpetrating these crimes also need structured support and and an investment in that support SRSG pattern mentioned one of the operational arms of her mandate a team of experts on the rule of law and sexual violence which is focused precisely on that and again I don't want to paint a rosy picture in shadows but I recall very clearly your first visit Margot to the DRC and at that moment of your visit there had been zero prosecutions of FRDC national soldiers and it felt at that time as if a week couldn't go by without some sort of story about mass rape in the DRC uh being perpetrated by the national army indeed indeed um and you know through um first of all their acceptance and breaking the silence that this is a problem in a formal agreement that was made with the office um the officers and the UN has invested now a lot in supporting the national justice system including the military justice system and they have been now um hundreds if not several thousand prosecutions of FRDC soldiers and this is not to say that sexual violence in the DRC is uh not still relentless but I would say to be fair we are not hearing weekly news reports about mass rapes by FRDC and so I think one of the lessons or encouragements that we have drawn from that is that with a structured approach to support member states on the accountability side of things it is possible to begin changing some attitudes and for messages to be sent that this crime is not cost-free and secondly to our Nigerian colleague I couldn't agree with you more contextual analysis matters and I think an open question and an open challenge is 15 years down the road from the inception of this agenda we're still struggling to stand up properly the global surveillance system the monitoring analysis and reporting mechanism the council gave us the gift of the mechanism and then with the other hand said but use existing resources to stand it up and so I think that there has to be a very serious question um empirical research into what it will cost to stand up proper contextual analysis reporting and monitoring in all of the situations of concern because without that we will not be able to design context specific solutions to this problem thank you very much and I want to thank my co-moderator as well as the panel I want to acknowledge our keynoters who helped really frame the concerns of the hour and I want to bring to conclusion this part of our program our online program and thank you for watching