 Good morning and welcome back to the Missing Peace Global Symposium on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence. We are in day two and our first plenary of the day is on survivor-centered approaches in research and open exchange and we are lucky to have our colleague, Professor Kim Twi Selinger, who is part of the International Criminal Courts Office of the Prosecutor and she is also known as a professor at the Washington University in St. Louis and I'm going to turn the floor over to you. Thank you very much to the panel and we look forward to it. Thank you. I told this would automatically go on. Can you hear me? No. No. It's a tech... Ah, thank you. All right. Okay, so this is actually the plenary on survivor-centered approach and we'll have the open exchange in the concurrent following this. We hope those of you are interested in having a deeper discussion directly with survivors and survivor advocates will join us for the concurrent after this. But right now, I am so, so pleased to facilitate this conversation this morning. We're going to talk about what it means to take a survivor-centered approach in different aspects of our work and this is critical because one of the things we've certainly learned since the last missing piece meeting was the importance of doing so and as many of you have pointed out, we're invoking the need to take a survivor-centered approach in much of our work in policy and practice and research but it's still, we still haven't quite figured out exactly what it means and how to do that in a truly concrete and operational way. So we thought how wonderful to have the opportunity to learn directly from the experts. So this is what this panel is about. I want to introduce our experts and then we will get started. So from right here is Ms. Nadine Tunasi who I'll keep it very brief but she is a member of Survivors Speak Out based in the United Kingdom and she's also one of the survivor champions of the UK government's Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative. Mr. Artemis Akbari is right here and he is the founder of Afghan LGBTIQ plus organization. He also is a founder and one of the hosts of a very unique radio show for Afghan and Iranian LGBTIQ individuals and his partner in that work is here with us, Ali, somewhere, so there's Ali. So we can't wait, we hopefully will be able to hear the radio show sometime. And then we have Leila Damon who is, she was born as following sexual violence and rape in Bosnia and she is a member of Forgotten Children of War and we're very delighted to have her with us. Thanks Leila. Next to Leila is a very dear friend of mine from many years ago, Jane Fleming who is huge inspiration to me. She's done refugee protection and asylum work all over the world for 23 years now and is the co-founder or the founder of LifeLamp Boat Ladder which we'll hear more about soon. She's a human rights lawyer that whose work really embodies survivor centered approach. And then the guy on the end over there probably needs no introduction at this point but that's Kolbazia Haosu who is also, like Nadine, a key member of Survivors Speak Out and like Nadine also works at Freedom Firm Torture in the UK on behalf of Survivors and he is also a PSVI survivor champion. They don't look like twins but in some ways they have a whole lot in common but thanks for joining us of course Kolbazia. Okay, we're going to start with some framing comments from Kolbazia. He's going to just give us a quick encapsulation of what the conversation will be about and then we'll start our conversation with the individual experts. Thanks Kolbazia. Thank you and good morning and really lovely to see you all here today. And I think you know the fact that we came together, I mean there's two elements, one is the evil element that's the conflict-related sex violence and the other part that I call it is a good element is you know policies and practices and support that in our objective with the survivors or without the survivors is for the betterness of you know tackling the impact of conflict-related sex violence and also creating a better support system for you know for survivors in order for survivors kind of to move on you know their life and diminishing the impact of conflict-related sex violence and that can be you know policies that can be support that can be the work that we do in our daily life and you know daily practice. And for it to be really informed in order really to meet the need of the survivors, what are that in terms of the justice, what are that in terms of you know the support, what are that in terms of you know the logistic that we need or in terms of the research that we want to think to try to understand you know the context that we need to work in in addressing the conflict-related sex violence initiative require really the integration of survivors within within the work that we know we do because without that we're missing a key ingredient the most important ingredient where the expertise and the insight that survivors can bring in order to inform us to better shape the policy that we need to shape and that's one element that you know we sitting here you know in that panel we want to bring the insight and the expertise that we have in our daily work and in the organization that we do. Thank you very much. Thanks for setting us up Colbasia. Alright so my first question is for Nadine and I was asking Nadine if she could help identify some of the main myths and misconceptions or just assumptions that many of us make about survivors that need to be addressed and then what are the dangers of failing to address those? Thanks Nadine. Thank you. You can hear me okay. I mean there are a lot of misconceptions and I've sort of thought about three that I'm going to try and share with you today and I think the initial one the first one I want to highlight with you is the misconception that survivors are vulnerable. I come from an organization where I feel from torture I used to be a service user so I've benefited from the service of that organization and from there when I finish therapy I move into the survivor speak out network so you quite often we see organization I think the intention are quite well funded or being overprotective and not allowing survival to engage in certain things or participate in certain things because in coma survival are too vulnerable. I think we have a duty of care to ensure that survival participate and engage safely but what we've seen is that that misconception has not really allowed survival to be empowered. I can speak from my own personal experience I think that there is a transition where you know you move from that vulnerability stage and that doesn't mean that survival are not vulnerable but if we can provide the platform that are safe and allow people to engage people are able to be supported and be you know strong leader and advocate so vulnerability has been used and you know I take a really responsibility of my word as an excuse to end the survival from participating in certain events and sometimes we hear people saying this is too high level or too sensitive and I think the survivor have the agency to make that decision to whether to participate or not and if we really believe and facilitate those leadership we can allow people to engage safely and then the second misconception is I think we've heard it a lot and I'm grateful for all the participants yesterday I think people mentioned how we are not a nomogenous I think I'm saying that right group and many survivors have experienced sexual violence differently and therefore the impact is different and that's why we need to make sure that when we are talking about the issue of sexual violence we you know I think it was well I liked it yesterday context you know is put into place because region the cultures are different and I think that to really kill that misconception misconception is to understand how the survival group in a certain region or even for a particular religion background are impacted as you know stigma also plays a big role in impacting survival sexual violence and therefore depending on the region in which you live survival will experience or be or will be impacted differently and I really want to say survival you know I'm not necessarily defined by their experience there are survival who have you know apart from you know going through the orific experience that they are mothers they are father they are lawyers they are doctors and sometimes we forget that we forget that this is you know beyond that there are you know normal people who have a big role to play in our society so I think I mentioned the context and also I think it's really important that I also talk about the access to justice we forget that the meaning of justice means different things for different survivors and we turn to assume that all survivors want to see the case in court and I think that's the case and if we really have to have a survival centered approach is to make sure we deliver justice that is survival centered meaning that you know respecting the wishes of the person do they want an outcome in court or do they just want you know to be rehabilitated or to have repression to what has happened to them and I think that is very important I've you know in our work we've been involved in a lot of projects where everybody says survivors need access to justice but they try to define it for survival and the last misconception and really I want to talk about this as well is that and I've heard is grateful we had an opportunity to visit Colombia and we met I think Obasi said yesterday 600 survivors and one actually pointed out that you know not all men's survival are most actual you know this is what the survivors said we assumed that just because a male survivor speaks they are homosexual and that's you know a misconception and also another survivor who is homosexual did say that just because I'm quoting them I'm homosexual doesn't mean that I've enjoyed being raped and sometimes we turn to forget that and I think that is really important when we are talking about the survival centered approach you know we try and kill or sorry if killing is the wrong word but we really deal with those misconceptions thank you thank you Nadine it's actually I think this warning about homogeneity is is a good one that's not an assumption we should be making and I think Artemis will help us clarify one the concerns and issues in one particular group so maybe Artemis if you could tell us for the LGBTIQ community or the individuals with whom you work do you think that the current legal framework are protective enough are the inclusive enough and also what are some of the unique challenges of the LGBTIQ individuals who with whom you work and how can we better address some of those challenges that they have. Good morning everyone thank you so much for this question I think it's very it's a very important question because in my opinion the current international norms and frameworks do not protect LGBTQI people in conflict zones when we want to make some policy changes we want when we want to protect LGBTQI people in conflict zones first I think it's very important we should have the tools, methods, frameworks, mechanisms to protect them without them it's not possible and I've I heard this many times that many people told me we have the frameworks for example we have R2P principles we have Geneva Convention that prohibits violence against all civilians regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identities but in my perspective it's not enough are the current international norms and frameworks LGBTQ inclusive no they aren't do they address the unique challenges that they face in conflict related in conflict zones no they don't and are do they address the intersectionality of the people in different contexts no they don't I think as a survivor not as an expert as a survivor as a person who is in contact daily with LGBTQI people in afghanistan in conflict zones the current international norms and frameworks are inadequate they they are not addressing our unique challenges they are not addressing our the intersectionality of LGBTQI people in conflict zones and they are not enough because they cannot protect us they are not they even even they don't address the unique challenges that we face even at the international level when we hear about sexual violence we usually hear about the violence against women and children sexual violence against women and children and they don't talk about the sexual violence against LGBTQI people because in my perspective LGBTQI people because of their gender expression sex characteristics or sexual orientation that they can be easily targeted and be persecuted or they can be sexually assaulted by by non-state actors by by paramilitary groups or even by the soldiers by the governments and in the context of afghanistan speaking about LGBTQI people is a very big taboo speaking about sexual violence is taboo even for women and and speaking about sexual violence against LGBTQI people it's something impossible in afghan you cannot talk about this issue in afghanistan unfortunately and and many LGBTQI people following the fall of afghanistan were targeted by the taliban they were harassed they were and some of them were sexually assaulted by the taliban last year we received many requests for help and 67 people were sexually assaulted by the taliban and we are at the moment we are conducting a documentation about a conflict related sexual violence against LGBTQI people and our report will be published by the end of next month and i i want you to read it and and there are many terrible stories and narratives that just people because of their sex characteristics during the conflict they were targeted and they were sexually assaulted not just by the taliban by the by other non-state actors by other paramilitary groups by even by the government and they cannot talk about their experience the sexual violence that they experience with their own families because they can be they can be killed by their own family members because it's a shame for for their family that one of their their family members were raped by someone else so i think it's very important for us to talk about the sexual violence against LGBTQI people in conflict zones because they usually experience unique challenges you they have unique problems and and also we need a international a concrete and a specific frameworks for that so that so that it can address these challenges and problems in the in conflict zones thank you thank you Artemis and i think on one of the panels this afternoon we'll talk about some of the new issues in international criminal law and special advisor lisa davis will talk a little bit about gender persecution which helps address some of the challenges you're you're referring to a little bit thank you leila let's continue Artemis gave us some insight about some ways in which family are relevant actually in in these situations can you share a little bit about the invisibility of children who are born of wartime rape and just shed some light on that for us it's something we don't know enough about and we look forward to hearing from you yes definitely thank you um and thank you all for uh listening today um so as a child born out of sexual violence um i'm i can talk from my own personal experience of um how i kind of came to knew my story and also this kind of support that was there so personally i would call myself and use the term a child born out of sexual violence i wouldn't use a term a victim or a survivor however when we think about children that have been born out of conflict related sexual violence they are a victim and a consequence of the sexual violence that has been perpetrated to their mothers and they are an invisible consequence i think for a really long time children born out of sexual violence they're the second generation um that have to live and face the same and very similar issues of trauma to um their mothers however there's a harder task and uh that they face which is ultimately about the childhood development that they could experience growing up specifically to do with um themselves and their mothers but also not having the right the rights that every child should have which is fundamentally around education healthcare being recognized by the state and also being loved being supported and those are really key factors in childhood development but also into the adults that they become later on we know that every child has the right to be recognized and also we know that children being born out of sexual violence isn't a new topic we know that there have been children born out of sexual violence after world war two we know that they've struggled through their journeys and finding out about themselves and this has been really difficult and i've had the privilege of meeting many of them and they are incredible people but ultimately child children born out of sexual violence is a topic that's being discussed a lot more and has been on the agenda a lot more since i first came out came out with my story only when i was 18 back then i felt completely alone you know being a child born out of sexual violence from bosnia having grown up in the uk none of my peers set you know it potentially knew about the conflict you know i didn't have any friends or community in which i could necessarily share that with i had parents adoptive parents that absolutely loved me i had a fantastic education i was supported you know in terms of any health care or anything like that yeah i still felt incredibly incredibly alone and i think it wasn't until um 2017 when i was put in touch by researchers who had been doing research on children born out of sexual violence they put me in touch with another child born out of sexual violence uh in Bosnia and her name's i know you sit and she is the president of the forgotten children of war association when i first met her and i told her about my story finally i had someone that you know i could connect with a safe space a safe environment to talk about the ways that i've been feeling about myself the whether or not i was a bad person because i had been born out of sexual violence and this awful atrocity and it was a really freeing and opening experience and ultimately for me the things that i needed growing up throughout my teenage years was support in terms of a community to think that you know to know that i wasn't the only one you know and i really did feel very very alone for a very long time since then after as well as that i think the one thing that i grew up feeling um having been adopted you felt different that's that's you know a kind of something i had to come to terms with but it was shame ultimately i wasn't able to talk to my friends or you know i my family necessarily about the feelings that i had about myself and that shame and that silence i held for a very long time and it wasn't until um later on where i met a counsellor who uh within the uk was trauma informed and had previously um worked with uh victims of sexual violence but within the uk framework and i it really helped having someone that was trauma informed having someone that wasn't my family you know someone that was kind of out of that zone and because ultimately my family loved me and you know they gave me all the support that i needed but i really needed to work through things myself that was really what step changed things so it was community and and psychological therapy those were the two main factors that really supported me in my journey and made and helped me to kind of become the person i am today and to be able to talk about my story in that sense i think there's been a lot of progress made to a certain extent in terms of raising the profile of children born out of sexual violence the research that's being done in this area the work that the forgotten children of war association are doing and many others however i do think there is um a need to there is still work to be done on this topic in terms of how we support children born out of sexual violence in the best way possible in their countries and that insight comes from uh comes from their mothers comes from the children and again talking about that survivor-centered approaches making sure that it fits that person not everyone's the same and they will have different needs that need to be met thank you thank you so much um i'm a little floored by these panelists frankly um thank you jane i know i've had the opportunity to jump in and support in some of your work over the last few years and in your program you actually have given safe harbor to children born of wartime sexual violence to lgbtiq individuals to women girls survivors really it's incredible can you tell us how you have how you built this program and how you envision survivor-centered approaches to the work uh good morning everyone and it's great to be here uh i definitely feel like i don't belong on this panel and have a bit of an imposter poster syndrome but i'm gonna comment about our program in relation to some of the comments so far um because i think that as international human rights lawyer running a program for survivors i've worked with survivors for 23 years and i i think for me the key piece of advice i would give to others for myself for our teams is um listening is a thousand times more important than speaking and i've been listening to our panel this morning and just sort of writing down little bullet points for myself in terms of what i think are the key elements of a survivor-centered or a survivor-led approach um not in terms of a label not in terms of a claim that we are survivor-centered but in terms of a practice that gets incorporated and woven into our program hopefully inshallah every hour every moment every day of our program i work very closely with Colbasia he's a member of our team and um i often will simply pick up the phone and call him and consult with him about an issue i'm struggling with or our team is struggling with because we don't know the answers and we don't know how to approach an issue and so i'll ask and listening becomes the core element i think the most critical element that we can create for survivors in a survivor-led or survivor-centered approach is safety um safety and space space for people to feel safe and the core essential elements of safety that are very practical and material shelter food access to whatever their particular goal is so when someone comes in to meet me the first question is not tell me your history tell me your trauma history tell me your story let me develop a legal case the first question is what do you need and then we try and understand how we can meet that need whatever it is we're a holistic program and we're a longitudinal program so we work across country across border across time periods it's a temporal program going to a point about vulnerability as a lawyer i can use vulnerability in a very strategic tactical way we all know that if somebody is vulnerable you might be able to get them faster resettlement you might be able to get them shelter you might be able to get them food sure i would love to advocate that all of my clients are vulnerable so that i can get them tangible results but i don't use vulnerability to say that someone should be immobilized that someone is incapable of speaking for themselves that someone that i should be a voice for someone never individuals who have been forced to leave their countries who are in flight who are survivors are very adept at utilizing the concept of vulnerability to their advantage this is because they're survivors a survivor knows that they need to claim their vulnerable in a court in order to get legal redress a survivor knows that they should not be vulnerable if they want to go to a country that doesn't want vulnerable refugees and so then they're going to be the strongest person in the room so vulnerability can be manipulated and it's not a bad thing that's a survival strategy and we recognize that but we never we never diminish someone by saying they're vulnerable we ask people vulnerable vulnerability relates to risk and a risk assessment again what do you need what do you need in order to feel safe what do you need in order to feel that you're on a journey of healing what do you want from us and we don't say here's the menu of things that you can have from us we do a b c and d oh i'm sorry you wanted e if they want e we create e we make e because we're accompanying someone on a journey we're not creating the journey we're not dictating the journey we're accompanying someone on their journey sometimes we carry sometimes we listen sometimes we hear but we're not the architects of that journey i think language is very important Artemis is talking about language we completely lack in a humanitarian context appropriate language and narrative for a survivor's journey because we're not listening enough we're not allowing the survivors to speak enough we're not providing safe space for survivors to be able to speak so our narrative is completely wrong rescue savior entitlement benefit all of those words should be discarded we need survivors to be able to create the language and we need to use that language and i think we have to learn i learned from sir from kubasi i learned from kim i had a case one time and it was a new area of law for me and i didn't know what language to use and kim has expertise in this area of law she's worked in these communities so i shared my affidavits with kim and i said can you give me feedback because i don't think i'm using the right language in this legal brief and we work together because she had the experience that i needed and we do that all the time with survivors what are the words we should be using what are the language how do you want us to articulate this need how do you want us to articulate this risk and that becomes the language that we use in the dialogue i know that i'm taking a lot of time i'm almost finished community you talk about community and community being creating safe space for survivors to be able to lead so if it's one survivor and we say oh you're the leader that's very difficult it's scary they then are sort of us in them create that dichotomy but if we create community we have a running team in our program and we have 39 survivors on our running team and they run races the running team is much more than just races they communicate at races they train together they share their stories together they rebuild and they heal together that's not us that's survivors creating a community that is safe for healing and that journey becomes part of our survivor centered and survivor led approach and i think identity and control survivors having control over the journey survivors having control over how their identity is defined and us always in every step every measure trying to make sure that we're affirming why is that so important because torture and sexual torture is about removing identity it's about erasing identity it's about removing control every single thing we do in our work should be about returning control returning agency returning that sense of personal power over our survival and our existence thank you thanks jane i know you truly believe that listening is a thousand times more important than speaking but i'm always so glad when you do speak so thanks for that um all right we're going to leave it to kubasia to add his comments um in light of everything that we've heard and learned go ahead kubasia yeah yeah thank um thank you i i think that i also been learning i think um yeah my my journey as an advocate and and an activist and somebody that you know from um early 2006 seven decided that you know my past should not define me in the present also should not define me in a in a future and also who i won if i'm looking in the in the future five ten years who i want to see who's that person that i you know i want i wanted to see and at the end i come to the conclusion that if i can contribute you know to the overall um you know direction of how survivors and victims can be seen in a different light so then whenever i pass i have turned you know my experience to something a more positive and you know sitting here today really listening to every single you know person in um in the panel make me really believe that you know within ourselves um you know survivors um you know non-survivors that together we are the key in really addressing you know the impact of the sexual violence we also key in you know putting the shame back into the uh into the perpetrators and also we are key into creating the platform you know for survivors victims and everybody that they're related to that in order for us to feel you know i wouldn't say you know proud but at least you know accepting our past but then being proud of of our present and and in our future and you know thank you for that thank you so much um before we turn it over to the audience q and i didn't know if any of you had anything you wanted to comment on from each other not to put you on the spot but this would be the time now anything that i wanted to comment on was around the dean's point around justice and what justice looks like um having uh met my own birth mother and having a relationship with her now for six years very grateful for that initially you know ultimately looking at survivor-centered approaches and the approach to justice and she didn't want to go down the legal route and that's absolutely fine and and we need to honor and respect those choices and i think but what did help and what did benefit her was um i know and i were able to get her a victim status and some reparations from the government to support her in her day-to-day life financially and i think just holding on to that point of justice looks very different for different people and we just need to make sure that that's at the forefront of um you know our approaches and how we communicate and speak to survivors thank you now that's a great point and justice is defined differently at different points in time right and i think particularly when you work in a court that the timelines don't always sync up right the timeline for an investigation or a case may not be the same timeline as an individual survivor has for wanting to disclose so we have also have to be mindful of that in the systems that we work in and um thanks anything else from you for each other before we turn it over thank you i think i'm very impressed that we have a panel you know focusing on the subject on survivor centered approach alone i think that alone is something that we need to applaud and recognize that it's one of the things that we want to be seeing more conversation purely about you know talking about what does it look like to have a survivor centered approach and also looking at the panel you know we all represent different issues and i think it's really important that we we bear in mind the issue of representation just to emphasize on your point how to master about you know how some survivors you know our the LGBT community are invisible and we have a duty to make sure that nobody is invisible and is not spoken about so i'm really grateful thank you so much jane i want to just briefly say about the survivor based approach how and how can we adopt it and i think one of the main thing that is very important in our work is that the researcher policy makers service providers should be well informed and and trained about the impact of trauma on individuals because because sometimes for us as a for me personally as a survivor we we all have trauma we survivors have trauma and sometimes a single word a single sentence sometimes a smell in a particular moment can trigger us and and it's very important for example for a researcher if they don't they want to conduct a research and they want to interview a survivor they prepare their questions carefully because it can trigger that person in a very close consultation with the with psychologists and also they should do some background check to make sure that that that person will not be retraumatized and another important thing about the language i want to say that i think it's very important that the researchers and policy makers they should know properly about the cultural differences language language differences sometimes the terminology that western countries or european people or the people in the united states uses for some particular things is completely different in that country or in that society for example i can say about the lgbtqi people at the terminology that we use is completely different from the terminology that people in the united states that they use and sometimes it's some it's very offensive i can give you an example at the beginning of this year i think it was february uh you and a special reporter for afghanistan published a report about the human rights situation in afghanistan and and and unintentionally unintentionally at the end of the report they used some homophobic transphobic and offensive terms for lgbtqi people of course it was unintentionally but but it was very traumatizing personally for me and also for many other lgbtqi people and it's very important that in our work we should have a close relationship with the local organizations or we should have a we should have a depth knowledge about the cultural differences cultures and also uh terminology i think this point is very important for me because i experienced it yes thank you thank you for sharing that Artemis all right jane did you want to add something quick yeah i just want to make one appeal and maybe it's for the people who are online as well um you know every survivor led group or organization that i've i've encountered or interacted with is struggling for funding and every international NGO in the world is maximizing every opportunity to get millions of dollars based on the latest conflict in the world and if we can't get funding into the hands of small community-based grassroots organizations led by survivors we're never going to achieve our goals that we're talking about on this panel thanks jane very true and this came up a little bit yesterday too i think that's right um okay we're going to take some questions for the panel again we're going to ask you to keep your questions very concise so that we can get as many in as possible let's okay i'm trying to figure out who hasn't asked a question yet but i don't quite remember all right all right let's start in the back and then the middle here and then madam here and then right here too and then so if you have things we'll grab the five and then we'll respond to those okay thanks should i stand up okay um my name is no one susan sabid william i'm from south sudan i'm a lawyer and i'm the founder of the south sudan national line of women lawyers and one of the activities we do is to ensure that we provide pro bono services so i am so much impressed with my colleagues i will call your colleagues and landed colleagues from el smith so um my question is very brief because i also work with survivors of conflict related sexual violence and in south sudan we have the most fragile situation that doesn't allow victims to speak because you know there's question of victims and witness protections which we also don't have the mechanisms and i personally have an opportunity or with the transitional justice working group to interact with survivors of conflict sexual violence they are not able to speak because they don't have any grantee who how they will be served their families so listening to you was very good and maybe i'll reach out to you bilaterally but i want you to maybe explain to the audience by what you mean by saying we don't need to speak for the survivors because in the situation of context of south sudan i have to speak for the survivors because they also don't have a guarantee of protections thank you thank you the next question i think was in the very back there and please remember to state your name thank you thank you so much um i am most um a global disability advocate working in Haiti um i understand that a survivor centered approach requires a shift in power dynamics centering survivors as experts of their own experiences and needs i'd like to know based on your experiences and with a disability lenses or can the survivor centered approach ensure that women and girls living with disabilities have the necessary agency to make decisions about their own lives during the recovery and response process and the last one is in what ways can a survivor centered approach effectively address the wide ranging impact of CRSV on survivors physical psychological social and economic well-being thank you thank you for the concise question um it's been noted and then i think our third question i think we had said we would come around here actually in the front here thank you again for a brief question and then we said we would go across to any and then so yeah thanks thank you very much um uh uh my question is actually your name please okay thank you very much i am i'm satra lemon from nigeria yes my question is actually to the experienced finalists where do i start on the issue of the invisible children of the conflict i am i am a muslim coming from a very religious society in a context that any child born out of wetlock doesn't belong to anybody but the mother and then there is a nasty word they said is a bastard so the mother will not even want to identify her child as born without a father or neither will the child if grown up from childhood because he will be ashamed to be called to be what he is and i have registered right now in my hands i have 800 of such children that i registered when i took about three of them and kept them in my house people were saying what are you going to do with children without roots without basis they will even spoil the blessings in your family this is the extent of this so my little thinking now goes to going to the legislature to seek for a recognition for these children but then even within the islamic scholars that i placed this issue impact everybody is just trying to shy away cutting corners and leaving me alone impact last year i was went to even indonesia largest muslim community to table this because they have a congress of women muslim scholars honestly i did not get an answer and then somebody from thailand just wrote me something but even then that not solve that problem please help we really we are in dear situation that needs urgent attention thank you thank you so much we also had two on this side um let's let's finish we had committed to this side and then we'll come back around i see your question then a few other on their side if it's okay i see you dr nene okay let's come here and then so if you and then we'll answer and then we'll make time for one more round thanks yes really my name is bina neprum and i'm the senior policy advisor on indigenous issues at usip but before that for 20 years we started the money for women gun survivors network and have been working for survivors for almost 20 years so my my point is first i think really agree with miss fleming when you said nine out of all the humanitarian aid which is given to the world only two percent goes to victims and their families so there is a dear need what you said but my point is in terms of really thankful to each and every one of you at the panel your incredible courage your resilience and your strength has moved us and thank you for your work talking about this different survivors issues 80 percent of the world's conflicts now happen in biodiversity hot spots where indigenous people live and i want to know from this esteemed panelist where does the sexual violence in conflict of indigenous women how are being debated how are they being included in the global platform number one number two going back to miss fleming again on community led driven aspects we are looking at indigenous techniques and methodologies of peace building of healing of reconciliation in the state of manipur where i was born we established 37 survivor groups and we use theater we use weaving we use livelihood methods psychosocial healing to be able to turn the lives of our women and our people around we have done it and we can do it collectively together bringing our wisdom and our heads and hearts thank you thank you can i just quickly understand what is biodiversity mean because i don't understand what is the terminology just it's it's where the world's like biodiversity is areas we are environmental which are environmentally sensitive areas of the world where in the world of climate change and you know these are where there are more in short places which are beautiful where there's still mountains rivers running where we all need them okay thank you i'm gonna okay sophia the last question right here for this round and then we'll try to keep things very brief so that we can grab a couple more questions thanks sophia um as you all know and we all know in humanitarian work i'm sorry i'm sophia cardona from unhcr in mexico um humanitarian work has many unintended but unfortunate impacts and the worst of them is sexual exploitation and abuse by humanitarian actors any any international organization working and their partners there is because it's such a scourge there is mandatory reporting of any sea that takes place this is an obligation handed down from the secretary general how would you approach a survivor centered approach with the obligation that humanitarian workers have a duty to report when sea happens victims can be anonymous but all humanitarian workers we have a duty to report if it occurs and i'm always very concerned about how to explain this to survivors in a way that respects them when i have to explain that even without their names the incidents have to be reported so your advice would be most welcome thank you these are incredible questions and please feel free to respond to any aspect that you like yeah nadine go ahead can i quickly start with the last one it's up to nadine uh okay i was you let him or no okay i mean yeah i you know the last one about the reporting i think it's really important you know to to report but also i think you need to understand the context of the reporting are you reporting by reporting are you also creating a safety risk for the individual can you um i think the one of one of the question that you know raised raised there by doing so do you have a protective mechanism in place in order to protect you know the individual that you're reporting the case because if the case happened in in in a conflict setting on in a setting where you know the perpetrator is still there and perpetrators still have you know the impunity then what are you going to do because that's the question that you need to ask and say what are you going to do in order to protect you know the survivors that you wanted to report and do you have the mechanism in place in in order to do that so those kind of you know the risk assessment that you also you need to take into consideration in terms of the reporting yes the reporting is very important but it's not to put at the risk you know the individual that you know you're reporting the case and thank you thanks kubasi i'm back to you nadina thank you i think i'm going to pick up two questions i'll start with the the question about the representation of the indigenous community i'm glad you asked that question um so kubasi and i as part of our um our role is the uk survivors uh champion for the preventive sexual violence initiative we work with the uk government to put the survivor advisory group and one of the things that we wanted to make sure was to have a representation of all the background and again because of our experience with uh our colleague from colombia we met with a survivor from the indigenous community from guatemala and last week in new york we were able she was part of the delegation that came to talk about the issue of the indigenous community from uh from guatemala i have to say you know i read in my life about indigenous people but that was the first time in colombia i actually met someone from the background and i was very grateful and really representation is very important to us and we're trying to make sure you know we continue to work on that and i'm on the issue of survivor not being safe to to speak i mean i do really understand the challenges i have to say i mean i don't speak in you know in all the event i still have to make my own assessment about my safety whether i feel comfortable and what we try to do in our network we always you know ask people whether they are free to engage and i know in some countries or contexts speaking can be very challenging but i think you can really be innovative about the way you represent someone you can take someone's statement you can record uh a person and hide the faces or even you know um hide the voices i mean there are so many ways and in our network the survivors speak out network we have survivor who never will never speak in public but that doesn't mean they are not contributing they are happy to write down a statement and whoever is able to to present a statement can speak on behalf of them so i think it's about really being creative and see how what is it that you can do to represent the voices of uh the survivor who are not safe to speak thank you nadina erdemus what about you yes i want to respond to the first question whether we should speak on behalf of the survivors or not i think we in some particular situation it depends on the context and the country the situation but sometimes we can speak but we cannot determine their needs and and what they want and what they need it's very important that we should ask them what do you need and i was refugee in many countries and also i'm contact with many refugees in different countries and and one of the main problem that we struggle in many countries is that most of the NGOs and organizations cannot um assess our needs properly and they usually determine our needs instead of asking our needs they they usually don't ask what do you need what is what do you want and and this is one of the main problem and also when we want to speak i think it's very important that we look at the individual with an agency as a that can be empowered and can be uh parts involved in decision making in all aspects of decision making actually and and we shouldn't look down on the survivors that they are vulnerable and they are not capable of doing anything and this perception is very common in afghanistan unfortunately and and in many other countries that i've seen that even in europe i've seen it many times that they look down on refugees and survivors of conflict related sexual violence that oh my god that person very sexually assaulted so he's so vulnerable and he's not able and capable of doing anything so that's why we assess their needs and and this perception i think is very wrong yes i agree with you but some in some particular cases we can speak on behalf of them what we cannot assess their needs but in europe we can speak for ourselves but sometimes there is no platform or yes thank you thank you miss i just wanted to address the uh question around um children uh and children that have been um a result of sexual violence and it's you're the situation that you described it sounds really dire in terms of you know where do i start ultimately it sounds like you have started by supporting them and taking them in and that is a massive step but not i totally understand not necessarily your responsibility and there isn't anywhere to be able to support them further you know no one wants to know and it really comes back down to that stigmatization and people just don't know don't want to and don't know how to support i think from a perspective of any kind of guidance that i could give you it would be around understanding a bit more what's going on within the current context and i'd really like to have a chat with you offline and also the same and to see whether or not anything that the association has been doing around the forgotten children of war in bosnia could help in some way whether that's toolkit advice informed you know anything to be able to support you further that would be fantastic thank you thank you never jane uh i'll try and respond to a couple of questions on the issue of indigenous communities and the wonderful practices you have of weaving and and theater and other vocational trainings and livelihoods when i was trying to figure out how to create a leadership council for our program i went online and i just searched for community based or grass root spaced uh led organizations and i ended up finding a model in indonesia that had nothing to do with our topic that we're discussing today but it was a model that was community led so the more that you can publicize or write or communicate about those models the more we can incorporate those models into our practices i think that's really essential we have a running group we have a writing group we have a survivor council that leads us in every aspect of our program so i think that we were learning from communities not only in the human rights context but many contexts on the issue of voice you know as lawyers we're in positions of power and privilege absolutely we use our voice to advocate often in situations of conflict or situations of crisis and that's different than using our voice in an individual circumstance with an individual client where we really want them to be able to tell us how to speak what words to use how much to disclose where's privacy where's confidentiality what's safe what's not safe so we're talking about two different kinds of voice and both are critical both are essential and both require expertise as attorneys so i by no means meant to say that we should never be a voice for communities at risk or for communities that can't articulate necessarily or disclose experiences of violence and this is important because we don't always have to many countries in a resettlement context will have what are called classes of asylum where an entire country the drc for example if i have a woman who's 20 years old who's single from the congo i need to know nothing about her history because there's an assumption that she's at risk in the congo and she can be resettled to canada don't widely publicize that but that's a legal argument that we can make because sexual violence is so prevalent in the congo and there's many situations like that in the world so certainly we need to be a voice in terms of the the children and and the issues that we're talking about you know sometimes i think people who are in situations of violence conflict right on the front lines are planting the seeds and then bringing to us information at these bigger wider conferences where we can develop networks and relationships those seeds are the first step and the work the hard work that you're doing and advocacy that you're doing are the first step and those seeds will eventually over time grow into something bigger into a movement and so all i can do is is say respect and continue to fight thank you thank you and i'm getting the signal from kathleen that we have no more time for further questions but kovas and i wanted to invite you to the concurrent particularly if you do research and want to understand have a deeper conversation with many of our survivors present so join us for that concurrent if you're interested but for right now please join me in thanking this incredible incredible panel thank you we have one more message of the morning but i do want to acknowledge that was not only a very moving but very learning rich panel so thank you her Royal Highness Sophie the Duchess of Edinburgh had hoped to be here for these three days uh she sends her regrets but she has also sent a message and i think it's appropriate uh in that survivors are a very key part of her mission so uh we're going to turn down the house lights and the very brief just stay right there it will be showing right in front of you okay thank you i'm delighted that your host the United States Institute of Peace has invited me to speak to you all at this important missing peace global symposium i'm sorry that i cannot be there in person although i'm delighted to be able to share this message with you sadly even as i speak today women men boys and girls will be experiencing conflict related sexual violence in many places around the world including Ukraine Myanmar Sudan and the drc the scale at which this so-called weapon of war continues to be used remains formidable effective in destroying lives livelihoods and tearing families apart around the world despite the many collective efforts to end it the devastating and lasting impact of crsv is felt across whole communities as well as by the individuals themselves who have to contend with immeasurable long-lasting physical and psychological trauma and while survivors and their children born of sexual violence in conflict face terrible stigma and rejection often struggling to get the services they need to help them rebuild their lives the vast majority of perpetrators go unpunished and remain free to carry out more acts of atrocity however i remain truly hopeful that we can bring about change and i am committed to preventing and responding to this horrific crime and supporting the wider women peace and security agenda part of this commitment is my support for the UK's preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative or psvi launched over 10 years ago and with survivors at the heart of it the initiative recognizes what you are focusing on today the role that different stakeholders have to play in order to end sexual violence in conflict governments multilaterals academics ngos grassroots civil society organizations and importantly survivors need to cooperate and collaborate if we're really going to stop this crime and ensure survivors receive the holistic care they need and we must work together to create the enabling environment for progress promoting and protecting women peace builders and decision makers championing male allies and engaging with spoilers i'm privileged to have met incredible and inspiring survivors including children born of sexual violence in conflict as well as those that work with them like the remarkable Nobel laureate dr denis mcqueague i'm continually in awe at how these extraordinary people turn the most awful of experiences into the most powerful advocacy tool directly informing the policy and programming of governments multilaterals like the un and non-governmental organizations it is on this basis that i'm so pleased to learn that the missing peace global symposium will review the barriers to supporting and protecting survivors the significance peacekeeping and transitional justice plays in allowing society to rebuild and in particular learning from survivors to ensure that appropriate holistic support is provided for these women men boys and girls i wish you all the very best in your discussions today and look forward to how you turn the research you have into practice the practice that which is needed by so many thank you