UN Women to push for concrete action at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict
Date:
London — British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Angelina Jolie are co-chairing the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict on 10-13 June 2014 at ExCel, an exhibition and conference centre in London, United Kingdom. It aims to bring together the international community to agree on actions to end the use of sexual violence in conflict, seek reparations for those affected, and to shatter the culture of impunity by bringing those who commit these crimes to justice.
This is the largest gathering ever brought together on the issue, with over 1,200 attendees including 100 NGOs and international partners, 48 Foreign Ministers and over 600 government delegates from 113 countries. The Summit comes at a time when the world is witnessing a run of shocking cases of violence against women including the kidnapping of 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria by the rebel group Boko Haram, the stoning to death of a pregnant woman in Pakistan in a so-called "honour killing", and the recent gang-rape and murder of two Indian teenagers.
UN Women Executive Director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, will attend the summit to advocate for greater global action and to continue to advance the work of UN Women in this area at a global level.
UN Women’s work on the ground:
Ugandan Parliament adopts resolution to address needs of war-affected women
Years of advocacy by women’s rights groups including those monitoring justice for women with disabilities in northern Uganda pays off.
Trainings in Colombia build expertise on investigating gender-based crimes
With participants from around the world, a special training course on investigating sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes recently took place in Bogota, Colombia.
In India, special training and all-women peacekeeping units confront sexual violence
Over the past two years, UN Women India has facilitated more than 20 training sessions on gender and sexual or gender-based violence prevention and response.
Demanding Justice for Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge
A UN Trust Fund-supported programme works to ensure that sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge during the 1974-1979 genocide in Cambodia is never forgotten.
Syrian women refugees face forced early marriages and restricted mobility: UN Women report
UN Women-led research on violence complements a programme for Syrian women refugees who have fled to neighbouring Jordan by increasing their access to life-saving protection including health, psychosocial and legal services.
Protecting witnesses of wartime rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina
UN Women works with partners to monitor wartime rape trials, document the treatment of witnesses by judges and prosecutors, and provide training and technical support to improve prosecutions in a country with as many as 40,000 survivors of sexual violence.
UN Women trains experts on investigating sexual and gender-based violence in conflict
For more on UN Women’s work on Women, Rule of Law and Transitional Justice, see: In Focus: Women, Peace and Security