... to prevent and eliminate VAWG by Peacekeepers!

Call for Action

Ensuring Human Rights for Women and Girls in Conflict Zones:

Oversight, Accountability, and Reform of the UN Peacekeepers

Two key Commissions of the International Alliance of Women — the Peace Commission and the Human Rights Commission—received credible information about women being raped and sometimes impregnated by UN peacekeepers in the MONUSCO peacekeeping mission. This information comes through reports by our members in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and media outlets. [1]

We are deeply concerned for the health, safety, and human rights of victims of these horrific events – the women, girls, and children born as the result of rape.  Even worse, this shocking information echoes evidence of rape and trafficking in women by UN peacekeepers in the aftermath of the Balkan war.

Further, we are alarmed about the societal impact of this scandalous behavior on the reputation and effectiveness of the UN, the UN Security Council (UNSC), and all peacekeeping units and missions.

UN mandates are undermined by so-called peacekeepers who commit grave crimes against women and girls. Impunity for these crimes leads to more violence and undermines trust in judicial and political institutions. Without accountability for the perpetrators’ actions, women’s voices are not heard, and the cycle of violence continues.

International Alliance of Women therefore calls for immediate action by the UN, as follows:

1. The UN shall investigate and prosecute alleged perpetrators and put an end to impunity for alleged perpetrators for their violent crimes against women and girls to establish a sustainable peace.
2. The UN shall allocate adequate funds to update and improve training and instructional materials and methods regarding women’s human rights for its peacekeeping forces. This includes instructions to uphold UNSCR 1820 [2]: end war crimes against women, uphold women’s human rights, provide equal protection under the law and equal access to justice, promote women’s health and safety, and hold its own staff accountable for violations of these guarantees.

3. The UN shall evaluate and improve the selection process for members of its peacekeeping forces. This includes developing an early-warning system that identifies individuals with misogynist tendencies in order to proactively exclude such individuals from the peacekeeping units and missions. Further, all mission and unit supervisors, personnel observers, and ombudspersons must affirm that they will oversee peacekeeping forces to ensure the end to gender-based violence.

4. The UN shall supply women and girls, especially those living in conflict regions, with information flyers outlining their human rights and protections by the UN peacekeeping forces. The flyers shall include emergency numbers and contacts to ombudspersons to be used in case of threats or violence.

IAW further calls for oversight of the UN by the international community, as follows:

1. We urge the Global Alliance of the National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) and all National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) to accelerate the actions sought from the UN in national and regional governments.

2. We call on all National Machineries of the Advancement of Women (NMAW) to remind all entities and institutions, including the UN, of their responsibility to ensure women’s civil and human rights and ensure their protection under international, national, regional and local law.

IAW, supporting its Peace Commission and Human Rights Commission, calls on other Civil Society Organisations, especially, but not only, women’s rights and peace organisations to sign this open letter, and to use the text in whole or in part, to approach the above mentioned entities and their Member States with this and their proposals for safer peacekeeping missions.

In expectation of an energetic response from the addressed organisations to this continuing injustice, I wish you power and strength for the ensuing activity.

Alison Brown, President
International Alliance of Women (IAW)
Alliance Internationale des Femmes (AIF)

[1]  2025/01/07. https://www.passblue.com/2025/01/07/paternity-claims-against-peacekeepers-the-problem-that-wont-go-away/

[2] https://www.un.org/shestandsforpeace/content/united-nations-security-council-resolution-1820-2008-sres18202008

IAW Open Letter on UN peacekeeper rapes 2025

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OPEN LETTER

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GENDER BASED VIOLENCE

Since its inception, IAW has been working tirelessly to end gender-based violence in all its forms at national, regional, and international levels. Our Commission on Violence against Women is leading these efforts through advocacy campaigns, policy actions and programs to support vulnerable women and girls, especially in the context of national disasters or armed conflicts.

Over the years, we supported the struggles of the North American Indigenous women to fight the violence affecting them in their own communities and families. We promoted the WHO’s campaigns toward ending the barbaric practices of Female Genital Mutilation affecting hundreds of thousands of women and girls in Africa. We applauded the actions and public statements of our sisters from Cameroon aimed at eradicating gender-based violence in their community. We stood with the Iranian women and girls peacefully uprising against the violently imposed mandatory hijab and the killing of their sisters for incompliance with this draconian rule. We condemned the brutal sexual violence against Ukrainian women and girls by Putin’s military forces and stood with the victims and their families in demanding justice and the support of the international community.

Today, and every day since October 7^th, we have unequivocally stood with the women and girls of Israel victimized by the horrific atrocities and gender-based violence perpetrated by Hamas. We stand with them in expressing our outrage about Hamas’ barbaric rapes and other crimes of gender-violence committed against innocent Israeli women and girls at their peaceful homes, at a community event celebrating peace or while captive as hostages. We condemn these grave crimes against humanity and call for an international outrage against the perpetrators as well as collaborative efforts to bring them to justice. Our hearts go out to the victims, their families, and the entire Israeli community for the horrific trauma and loss of lives. In light of the recently commemorated International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we call on all feminist organizations and international bodies to join the condemnation of the gender-based violence perpetrated by Hamas and demand for justice to be given to the victims.

PEACE

IAW and its Commission on Peace actively support the world-wide implementation of UN Security Resolution 1325, the subsequent United Nations Security resolutions for women, peace and security, and the United Nations efforts toward the implementation of the universal declaration recognizing the human right to peace. This implementation would further the strong commitment to build a culture of preventing war in the name of sustaining peace. It would help to protect the human rights defined in so many international treaties, but so often violated or completely lost in conflict.

With these principles in mind, we stand with all the civilized world in expressing shock and condemnation of Hamas’s violent assault on peace by the October 7 terrorist attack on the sovereign territory of Israel, murdering, mutilating, torturing, raping, and kidnapping Jewish, Muslim, and Christian men, women, and children, both Israeli and foreign nationals and taking 238 hostages in Gaza. We are terrified by the stories of horror and abuse shared by the released hostages and stand with the international community in demanding the immediate release of all those who are still in captivity. We urge the Red Cross and World Health Organization to visit them and ensure vital medical attention. We also call for provision of medical aid to the civilians injured in Gaza and return of the hospitals in Gaza to full functionality by restoration of power and water.

We urge the international bodies and national governments in the region to sustain the diplomatic efforts to restore peace. While we condemn Hamas’ use of civilians as a human shield and support the right of the Israeli state to defend itself and its citizens, we strongly oppose the Israeli government’s military response that puts in grave danger civilian lives, leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, women, children, and men, and threatens to spread the war over the entire Middle East. We appeal for a diplomatic solution that will bring peace to the region and make the long-sought two state solution possible. Our thoughts remain with the affected families, yearning for security and peace. Every person has the right to safety and freedom as expressed in seminal United Nations documents.

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At a time when Turkey has withdrawn from the Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Girls,  and Poland has announced that it intends to do the same, the European Women’s Lobby publishes a report marking the 10^th anniversary of the convention. The conclusion of the report is clear: The Istanbul Convention saves women’s lives.

Towards a Europe free of male violence against women and girls looks into the state of play of the implementation and impact of the Istanbul Convention within the context of an alarming surge of male violence against women and girls due to the COVID-19 crisis.

The report was developed with expert analysis from the EWL Observatory on Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG)

IAW is a member of EWL and is represented in the Observatory.

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Open letter to …

Call to end the Illegal and Immoral War on Women in Afrin by Turkey! 

London, 20 March 2021

Dear … ( Turkish Embassies, NATO, Council of Europe, National Parliaments, etc……..)

We are writing to you because Afrin Canton is still under occupation and the international community has done far too little to end this unacceptable situation. Under the illegal Turkish occupation, crimes against humanity and war crimes continue to be committed on a daily basis. In particular, we are very concerned about the situation of women living in Afrin.

We demand an end to all forms of violence against women in the Afrin Canton of Northern Syria and for international pressure on Turkey to withdraw its forces. We demand justice for the many victims of the crimes of Turkish-backed militias and the return of the thousands of internally displaced persons who have had to flee Afrin as a result of the Turkish invasion.

In January 2018, Turkey and allied Syrian militias began an assault on Afrin Canton, part of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). This illegal act of aggression was first and foremost intended to change the demographics of the region, which had historically been majority-Kurdish with smaller Yezidi and Alevi communities. Over the course of the brutal invasion and occupation, which continues to this day, more than two-thirds of Afrin’s original population has been displaced.

In addition to an act of ethnic cleansing, the invasion and occupation of Afrin has also been a targeted attack on women. The women of Afrin had created and implemented some of the most advanced laws, institutions, and policies in the world in order to fight all forms of violence and discrimination against women, and had ensured that women were represented and empowered at all levels of political and military decision-making.

Occupying forces have not only destroyed these advances, but continue to terrorize the women who made them possible.

Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) groups have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity targeting women, including rape and forced marriage. More than 200 women and girls whose identities are known have reportedly been abducted by armed groups since 2018. Sexual violence and torture are common in SNA detention sites. It is likely that these crimes are even more prevalent than is known, due to social stigma around reporting and the inability due to the risk under the occupation regime to expose cases and make them public.

The occupation has also actively increased social and political discrimination against women and girls, and has led to an increase in harmful practices outlawed by the AANES. Women and girls in Afrin feel unsafe leaving their homes unless they adhere to conservative religious dress codes and are accompanied by a male relative. Rates of child marriage have increased due to pressure from armed groups on the families of unmarried girls. Official religious authorities affiliated with the Turkish-backed SNA and Syrian Interim Government (SIG) have ruled that killings of women by male relatives are sometimes permissible.

The AANES was the only political authority in Syria to ban polygamy, forced marriage, and child marriage, and to consider so-called “honor killings” as equivalent to any other murder cases. These protections were strongly implemented in Afrin, along with legislation guaranteeing equality in inheritance, marriage, divorce and other personal status matters. The Canton adopted landmark Women’s Laws in 2014 in order to specifically address existing inequalities in Syrian law; the SIG classified these progressive laws as equally bad, i.e. “terrorist,” in their impact as the laws introduced by ISIS.

In terms of political discrimination, women now make up less than 10% of members of the Turkish-backed local government. Some Turkish-backed councils have no female members at all.

No women currently serve in leadership positions on any local councils in Afrin.

Under the AANES, women were required to make up 40% of any elected body by law, and leadership positions were shared equally between men and women through a co-chair system. Parallel women’s councils and assemblies existed alongside mixed-gender bodies, and had the ability to overrule them on legislative matters concerning women’s rights.

According to the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria, the pattern of discrimination and violence inflicted on women by occupying forces in Afrin has created a “pervasive climate of fear which [has] in effect confined them to their homes.” Many women and their families have even fled Afrin specifically because of threats of sexual and gender-based violence, suggesting that these crimes are playing a role in mass displacement and forced demographic change.

This illegal and immoral war on women cannot go on any longer. Thus, as feminist organizations, human rights organization, and concerned individuals, we demand:

• an impartial international investigation into all forms of violence and discrimination targeting women in Afrin;
• that all perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence in Afrin, and individuals with command responsibility for perpetrators of these crimes, be brought to justice;
• international pressure on Turkey and the SNA to withdraw from Afrin and allow all displaced persons to return home as part of any political settlement in Syria;
• increased support for IDPs displaced from Afrin and now living in other parts of Syria.

Supporting organisations

Congress of Women‘s Organizations from Rojava – Kongra Star;

Kurdish Women‘s Movement in Europe (TJKE);

The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID);

International Alliance of Women (IAW);

Women in Kurdistan National Congress (KNK Jin);

Terre des Femmes e.V.;

Kurdish Women‘s Office for Peace – CENÎ;

Umbrella organization of the Yezidi women’s councils (SMJE);

Deutscher Frauenring; Internationale

Frauenliga für Frieden und Freiheit (IFFF); FiLiA UK

You can support our demands by writing to info@kongra-star.org

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They are not prisoners. In the judicial system, to be considered as such, one must have been the object of a warrant of arrest and sent to prison. They are not in supervised residence either. This is a judicial sentence arising from a court decision in which a judge orders a person to live in a given perimeter, which may be no wider than his/her place of residence, with limited means of communication.

Yet, the political leaders locked in their homes, are not sequestered: in criminal law, confinement without physical violence by a local authority is  not sequestration. The opponent personality locked in his/her house thus finds himself/ herself in a lawless situation. Although no official authority formally forbids this, he/she can’t leave a home surrounded by the police. In fact, he/she is really under siege conditions.

BOMBING RAID

Until the 20th century, the treatment reserved to opponent leaders has ranged from imprisonment to assassination, including house arrest duly notified, not forgetting exile and bombing raids on immovables, by tanks and planes. Brutal as these punishment mechanisms could have been, the opponents that were submitted to them had a clearly identified, judicial status:  they were “dead for liberty”, political prisoners, assigned to their residence, exiled. Although they were the only ones who communicated – imposing their point of view at national level through the State media and presenting pleas before the international instances to justify their acts – the powers in place have taken precautions to wrap their punishments under the legal coat.

The current regimes are freeing themselves of this minimal precaution and  are  blithely disrupting justice, as if it was the only way to insure the longevity of power. Indeed, things have changed a lot over the decades.

First, since 1990, political assassinations are no longer an option unless one wishes to attract the wrath of the international community. Moreover, sending to jail a political leader can contribute to forging him a stature as the people’s defender and help increasing his capital of sympathy among the population, and conversely give the regime a disastrous international image, when it is trying to play it down. Finally it is impossible to deny the role of the social networks that have freed the people’s voices in those countries, and who, nowadays, appear as a counterweight to the State media.

No privileges

Those little arrangements with the justice seem surprising since most African States have ratified international documents meant to guarantee every citizen the right to an equitable Justice. Besides, many countries have enshrined the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in their constitution.

In fact, only Declarations find grace in the eyes of those states because, contrary to Conventions, to Charters and International Treaties, they have no coercion power at all. It is a   moral norm and violating it implies no form of punishment so, African countries tend to disengage from international instruments that make them respect their engagements. This has been happening for some time with the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

The only solution remaining is the enactment of the Rule of Law at national level. In order to avoid arbitrariness, the law must be the same for all: no privileges, no exceptions, All the citizens must be able to know if their acts are legal. And to prevent, in spite of everything, the state from abusing its authority, the separation of powers must be effective. Through a right balance, power must stop power.

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Progressing with our feminist goals through alternative narratives that will allow us to fight effectively against women’s human rights’ violations.

Today it is 25 years since the Beijing Platform for Action was adopted. The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing took place at a moment of great global optimism when a new world order of cooperation was emerging after the end of the cold war, the dismantling of Apartheid and the emergence of new democracies.

The question to be asked is whether there has been any progress concerning gender equality and women’s human rights. The answer is yes, many advances have been reported around the world. However, the results are very unevenly spread across countries. So, progress has been variable and slow.

Many of the gains that women and girls have made are now under threat. Women are attacked for trying to enjoy their rights to education, are raped and turned into sex slaves, while they constitute the majority of the world’s poor and illiterate. Moreover, in conflict situations we continue to see atrocities that transform the bodies of women into battlegrounds for warriors.

What are the reasons for this backlash? An international environment that is not conducive to the realization of human rights, in particular women’s human rights.

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, its processes and their impact on Women’s empowerment.

Before examining the challenges in the external environment, we have to look into the United Nations system, in particular the Commission on the Status of Women, and whether it has delivered progress for women and girls.

We have to examine what has to change in the Commission on the Status of Women to make it a positive force for women’s rights.

The active participation of Non-Governmental Organizations is a critical element of the work of the Commission. Yet the Commission on the Status of Women does not institutionalize consultations with women’s Non-Governmental Organizations that possess first-hand knowledge around what women need and are critical of their state’s progress.

The state-centric process followed by the Commission on the Status of Women best represents state representatives of women and limits women’s Non- Governmental Organizations to the Non-Governmental Organization’s Forum rather than giving them voice to deliberate as equals at official proceedings.

The United Nations should devise effective mechanisms of consultation with civil society organizations before the sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women and elsewhere. Feminist organizations should hold the Commission of the Status of Women accountable for the systematic participation of women in its processes.

Fundamentally, we need a new way of thinking. We need to effect a change in our global culture whereby United Nations member states will be convinced to acknowledge the value of the input and constructive criticisms of civil society.

Global challenges to gender equality, women’s human rights and the empowerment of women.

There are a lot of global challenges we have to face in the external environment like neoliberal policies, fundamentalisms, increased numbers of refugees and displaced persons, climate change, poverty and violence, populism, the shrinking space for civil society, an emerging movement against gender ideology and many others.

The greatest challenge we have to deal with is neoliberal policies. Neoliberal capitalism is a key driver of the current global crisis. Its core positions are a free market and profits, above people and the planet. Patriarchal structures are central to its current functions.

Neoliberal capitalism in its pursuit of profit has caused ecological devastation, underdevelopment, violence and repression through deepening authoritarianism worldwide.

It has provoked a dramatic increase in income inequalities across the world and a backlash against social and political gains resulting in an increase of systematic attacks on human rights in general and women’s and vulnerable groups in particular by regressive forces that are coming to power in many parts of the world.

What can we do? Time has come to develop counter strategies from a feminist perspective.

Feminist organizations should transform neoliberal policies by using feminist economics. We have to rethink the very concept of the economy, if we want to make economic policies more gender equal. To begin with the economy should focus on well-being instead of competitiveness.

We need a new concept to bring care and unpaid care into the heart of the understanding of the economy. Care economy is one such concept, reproductive economy is another one. We should consider both as integral parts of the economy.

Feminist organizations should elaborate a gendered analysis of climate change, which is not just about collecting gender disaggregated data showing that the impact on men and women is different. Neither is the solution to simply ensure that equal numbers of men and women participate in climate change decision making. It is about including the knowledge and voices of women and men in designing effective responses to climate change. It is not just about women. It is about gender relations and how to change them.

Globalization and neoliberal policies have contributed to the growing influence and power of non-state actors such as business, financial institutions, corporations, over states and societies.

Today, corporate lobbying and interference in everyday governmental affairs is so significant, that it threatens the fundamental value of society namely, that the will of the people must be the basis for governments.

Transnational corporations exploit ideas of feminism and gender equality to improve their image in some countries, while systematically abusing women’s human rights in other parts of the world.

Women’s empowerment, once a radical feminist idea of transforming society, has been manipulated and reduced to an individualistic focus on self-esteem, entrepreneurship and consumerism.

Feminist organizations should support the elaboration, by the open-ended working group created by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 26 June 2014, of an internationally legally binding instrument to regulate within international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business in respect to human rights.

A very important aspect of our efforts to deal with global challenges has to do with power.  We have to gain and retain power by transforming power relations between women and men which are anchored in patriarchy.

We know from research findings that women’s substantive participation in peace processes increases the potential for these processes to succeed. The reasons are that women in their negotiations include broader issues than power in order to build a sustainable peaceful society. We need to systematically listen to them and learn from their leadership.

A deep concern is the rise of the concept of gender ideology. Right wing and reactionary forces fought against this concept as a social construct in Beijing. However, nowadays they are gaining ground amid the resurgence of conservatism and fundamentalism.

In recent years, the rise of right wing and nationalist populism across the world has led to an increasing number of governments implementing repressive measures against the space for civil society.

One way through which women’s and girls’ voices are silenced is through that shrinking space. Moreover, without the active input of women and girls we cannot advance and repeal the backlash against women’s human rights and make governments accountable.

Neoliberal policies have exacerbated violence, although we have seen an unprecedented level of awareness globally due to the mobilization of women survivors of different forms of violence. Violence has persisted and deepened as the structural issues related to women’s oppression have not been seriously addressed.

The same is the case with poverty. Policies elaborated by governments to reduce it have failed as they did not address structural inequalities neither the social and economic barriers that lie on the route to poverty. Women constitute half of the poor population globally.

In order to deal with the exacerbation of the above phenomena of poverty, violence, the shrinking space for civil society, climate change, power relations anchored in patriarchy, growing influence of corporations, the implementation of repressive measures by governments and the rise of the concept of gender ideology, all due to neoliberal policies, we should try to align these policies with international human rights law and promote the rights of the traditionally marginalized. Feminist organizations should report anti-rights organizations, hold them to account and build alliances with progressive policy makers/politicians.

The future we want: Our vision.

The alarming rise of all the challenges we have referred to can also be dealt with by revitalizing the conviction that multilateralism is the key to working together through global problems solving. We should also promote and lobby for a more democratic version of it in which citizens are enabled to have more agency and voice.

What is also alarming is the fact that member states continue to pay lip service to the principle of ‘leave no one behind’. So, there is lack of political will from member countries to make the Sustainable Development Goals meaningful, including Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality. There is also a general lack of political will to change development models to ones that prioritize people over profits.

2020 will be a crucial year for reaffirming, taking stock and moving forward the Beijing Platform for Action and the Sustainable Development Goals.

We should plan and propose an alternative Agenda and program of Action based on answers to a number of questions such as: How has the 1995 agenda been realized?  What remains to be done? What are the new ideas on feminist agendas in 2020? What kind of new ideas do we need for the future?

In our view we must elaborate on this alternative Agenda in which equality does not mean just women’s issues. There is a need to move beyond binaries. Our strategies to resist the backlash on human/women’s rights should take into account not only gender inequality but other inequalities as well. We have to accept the interconnected nature of inequalities.

Intersectionality recognizes that people can experience multiple oppressions which intersect in powerful ways.

How do we make sure that this new alternative Agenda is inclusive and addresses and challenges global issues as they impact the rights and position of women in different countries?

The answer to that will depend on whether an alternative narrative of our feminist goals can be built on the basis of our Agenda that will allow us to bring regressive forces to a halt. For that we need allies to support us.  Alliances with other like-minded organizations are likely to be especially necessary in difficult times. Mobilizing to have an impact, we must make advances firmly grounded in institutional frameworks and norms.

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Mohinder Watson, a colleague in Geneva for the ICW, wrote probably the first report about them. She is the driving force behind Action on Child, Early and Forced Marriage. In her work for this NGO she came across an even sadder kind of girl: the Child Widow.

Child widows – young girls who have suffered both child marriage and widowhood before the age of eighteen – are a neglected group of vulnerable children, They have experienced multiple violations of their human rights from their premature and unlawful marriage to the compounded effects of widowhood, poverty, illiteracy, youth and lack of education. Mostly they lack access to justice and are unable to claim their inheritance as they are unknowledgable about the law or manipulated by others. Upon the death of their husbands, many are evicted from their homes and left destitute, some bound by cultural traditions never to remarry.

Mohinder Watson undertook research about what these children need and how they can be supported.

The first thing they need is recognition of their existence, to be nationally and internationally on the agenda. Another important thing is play and contact with other girls.

In the last session of the Human Rights Council a resolution about the consequences of child, early and forced marriages was adopted without a vote. Resolution A-HRC-41-L.8-Rev.1 in its operational paragraph 17 Calls upon States, (…………)

‘to support girls and women who are affected or at risk, who have fled such a marriage or whose marriage has dissolved, and widowed girls or women who were married as girls, including through the strengthening of child protection systems, protection mechanisms such as safe shelters, access to justice, the sharing of best practices across borders and the collection of relevant, reliable and disaggregated data‘

This seems to be the first time that child widows are mentioned in a UN document.

Mohinder Watson, PhD MPH, founder of Action on Child, Early and Forced Marriage is the author of the report.

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