David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That this House condemns sexual violence in conflict; and calls on the Government to:(a) affirm Ireland?s commitment to implement United Nations Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security;
(b) play a leadership role in international efforts to end sexual violence and bring about accountability and support survivors of sexual violence in conflict through Irish diplomacy and development assistance; and
(c) support the efforts of organizations to draw attention to, and denounce, sexual violence.

I am pleased to welcome the Minister of State.

This is an issue in which he has had an interest, over many years, as a decent humanitarian. I thank the Leader of the House, Senator Maurice Cummins, for accommodating me and the other parties. It is significant that this is a unanimous motion supported by every Member of the House. It is reasonably unusual that we have this degree of unanimity and I am glad Members are unanimous on the issue, which is highly important and which has been drawn to our attention by a series of groups throughout the world. It will reinforce the work of groups such as Médecins sans Frontières, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and strengthen the involvement of the International Criminal Court.

Sexual intimacy constitutes a radiant element in the marvellous vocabulary of the language of love. To misuse this wonderful capacity by using it as an instrument of coercion, violence and abuse is one of the greatest and most gross perversions of which humanity is capable. The object is not pleasure but domination. It is now widely used in a military sense, tragically, particularly in the continent of Africa. In that continent, it is probably used in that manner partly because it is extremely cheap. Weapons are relatively scarce as the continent has not been quite so militarised as the rest of the world. Sexual violence provides a convenient and cheap method of terrorising, humiliating and subjugating people. It is a substantial change since the classical period, when rape was one of the spoils of war. Now it is an instrument of war and one of the most horrible in its prevalence and consequences for the victim. It is not peculiar to Africa. One can look at the situation in Europe after the convulsion of the Second World War and the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was with the troops who entered Berlin. Many of us read the remarkable documentation of that period by Antony Beevor and in the Berlin diary and the account of mass rape by the Soviet troops. Alexander Solzhenitsyn has left us a remarkable testimony and witness to what happened:

22 Horingstrasse. It's not been burned, just looted, rifled. A moaning by the walls, half-muffled. The mother's wounded, half alive.
The little daughter?s on the mattress,
Dead. How many have been on it
A platoon, a company perhaps?
A girl?s been turned into a woman,
A woman turned into a corpse.
The mother begs "Soldiers, kill me."

What struck me is how extraordinarily close it is to prose accounts of, principally, women who have been subjected to rape. I say "principally women" because it is by no means only women. In Africa, a number of reports document men and boys also being subject to this. For this reason, I carefully framed the motion in order that it should not, in its entirety, be gender specific, although the majority of attacks are upon women. It is also deeply humiliating, scarring and disempowering for men in traditional cultures to be subjected to this kind of abuse.

We hear little about the Congo. That is where I am concentrating, not only because it is my place of origin but also because, tragically, it has been appropriately described as the rape capital of the world, a title no area of the world wishes to have. The hopeful aspect of this tragic matter is the appointment of Ms Fatou Bensouda as a prosecutor of rape, specifically, at the International Criminal Court. My interest was first sparked as a supporter of Front Line Defenders.

At this point, I pay tribute to the work of Front Line Defenders. In 2007, I attended, as did the Minister of State, the presentation of an award to a woman from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gégé Katana, who had worked, despite considerable harassment, in that area recording instances of violence, sexual violence and rape. She created a network of women that stretched across the entire region of the Congo and started an organisation called Solidarité des Femmes Activistes pour la Defense des Droits Humains, SOFAD. This was not particularly popular and she was attacked, her house overwhelmed by soldiers and all her property taken away. As she said herself, "I was pushed into peace", because there were no women's structures to combat the multiple violations of human rights during armed conflict.

It is important to look at particular resources. My attention and that of other Members of the Oireachtas was drawn to the situation by Mr. Peadar King, a film maker and presenter, who made a contribution to the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and drew the attention of those present to a remarkable document produced by Harvard University. This was a report by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative with support from Oxfam America. The report looks at the entire world situation and puts it into perspective. It mentions not only Berlin, but also what happened at the rape of Nanking when 20,000 women were raped in the first month of the Japanese occupation. This was what, ultimately, led to the Fourth Geneva Convention which included an international prohibition on wartime rape and enforced prostitution. This prohibition has been amplified with judicial findings since, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which establishes rape and sexual enslavement as crimes against humanity. The countries principally involved are Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Liberia, the Balkan countries, Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is, again tragically, suggestive that so many of them are in the African region although Europe is not entirely immune from this situation.

It is important to look at the Democratic Republic of Congo because it presents a microcosm of the entire situation. In South Kivu women are subjected to sexual violence regardless of age. The army uses rape as a weapon. Women are raped in front of their children and there is genital mutilation. There is forced sexual activity between members of families whose homes are invaded. The overwhelming majority of these attacks are conducted with a military objective.