Women Not Getting UN Protection in War
by Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press
October 30, 2024

UNITED NATIONS—A landmark U.N. resolution committing governments to protect women from the abuses of war has done little to keep thousands of women in conflict zones from Congo to Colombia from falling victim to rape and sexual violence.

"The law of the gun has devastated the condition of women," Amy Smythe, who advises the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo on women's issues, told a Security Council meeting marking the third anniversary of the resolution.

Also largely unheeded has been the resolution's call for countries in conflict to give women a major voice at peace talks and for the United Nations to give women top jobs in settling wars, diplomats said.

"In modern warfare civilian casualties are far greater than military casualties. ... so women and children are much more affected than they used to be," U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said Wednesday. "No approach to peace can succeed if it does not view men and women as equally important components of the solution."

In eastern Congo "tens, if not hundreds of thousands of girls and women are being raped as a result of the conflict," Smythe said, citing data collected by the U.N. peacekeeping mission, other agencies and local communities.

"The consequences for women throughout the Congo have been devastating, as they have suffered the most" from the war, she said.

Institutions starting with the family have broken down and crops are not grown, while there is "complete impunity for perpetrators of these heinous crimes," she said.

Colombia's U.N. Ambassador Luis Guillermo Giraldo said female soldiers make up half the membership of illegal armed gangs in the South American country and were often victims of sexual violence.

Violence by the gangs often targeted civilians, especially women and children, he said.

Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Munir Akram accused the Indian army of using rape as a weapon in their conflict over Kashmir. India's U.N. Ambassador Vijay Nambiar denied the accusation and charged that Pakistani fundamentalists had launched a terror campaign targeting women in Kashmir for their so-called nonobservance of moral codes.

Canada's deputy U.N. ambassador Gilbert Laurin lamented that the goal of a 50-50 gender balance in the U.N. system by 2000, which was adopted at the 1995 U.N. women's conference in Beijing, had not been met.

Neither had the 2001 resolution's call for Secretary-General Kofi Annan to appoint more women as special representatives to conflict zones, he said.

"There is only one woman at the level of special representative of the secretary-general out of approximately 50 such positions," Laurin said.

Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno urged member states contributing police and soldiers to U.N. peacekeeping operations to provide more women.

return to top