Help limit gender-based violence

Governments must do their utmost to delay that GBV is include in build up Trade treaty talks.

In the spring of 2012, in education for the first round of UN negotiations of the Arms Trade pact, four worldwide human rights organisations published a joint policy topic on ‘Gender and the Arms Trade Treaty’.

This account was a united call for sexuality-based madness (GBV) to be included as adept of the criteria in the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) being discussed by the United Nations.

The organisations were – are – the Women’s transnational League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the transnational Action vane on Small Arms (IANSA) Women’s Network, Amnesty International (AI) and Religions for Peace.

The General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) decided to convene a Final Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty in March 2013, to conclude the work begun in July 2012.

The organisations verbalize they wanted to raise awareness about the connection between gender-based violence and the unregulated supranational gird flow.

And they wanted to lapse attention to the need for a reference to gender-based violence  to be included in the now upcoming negotiations on the Arms Trade Treaty which will be held from 18-28 March.

They would like cardinal of the criteria in the Arms Trade Treaty to require assures non to allow an international transfer of conventional arms where in that location is a substantial risk that those arms will be lend oneselfd to perpetrate or facilitate acts of gender-based violence, including rape and separate forms of sexual violence.

Or, in short: don’t cope guns to places where women and girls will be threatened with violence or actually hurt, looted or murdered.

For it is clear, they continued, that the arms trade has specific gender dimensions and direct links to gender-based discrimination and gender-based violence.

During armed conflict, for example, sexual violence is in many cases widely as well as systematically employed against civilians.

And the unregulated arms trade often facilitates violence against women: violence and conflict by both state and non-state actors is fuelled by the mere presence of weapons in societies.

To cite one example of this: on 28 September 2009, AI reported, Guinean security forces inflicted acts of excessive force and un truthful violence, including sexual violence, and opposite gross violations of human rights on a group of divest – unarmed – civil society organisations and political parties peacefully protesting at the Conakry Stadium.

One woman told Amnesty International, “I tried to wax onto a wall but a ‘red beret’ motto me and hit me with his truncheon while another one savor me in the legs.

“Three of them took me towards the toilets, dragging me along the ground. One of them raped me while another ‘red beret’ pointed his gun at my peak….”

Evidence suggested that Guinea’s security forces continued to receive international supplies of weensy arms ammunition despite their repeated use of small arms for unlawful killings, sexual violence and the fierce suppression of peaceful demonstrations.

In some countries women are disproportionately impact by high levels of firearms-related homicides and by domestic violence.

Research carried out in Guatemala, for example, by the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office, come ons that for all murder cases, 69 per cent of women were killed with firearms.

And if the issue of gender-based violence were to be included in the ATT, the transfer of arms to perpetrators of such violence could be limited.

Such an comprehension could also be a way of acknowledging that both arms-exporting and arms-importing countries do have a joint, however different, responsibility to prevent crimes of gender-based violence.

The rank of the UK’s conventional arms exports consistently ranks third, fourth or fifth globally.

According to AI, the UK generally supports strict criteria for arms transfers, but has supplied arms to countries with a high risk of serious human rights violations, including Sri Lanka.

And the UK’s national legislation is being reviewed, following evidence that it supplied small arms, ammunition, munitions and armoured vehicle equipment to Libya under Gaddafi, small arms to Bahrain and law enforcement equipment to Yemen.

On 11 February WILPF, AI, IANSA and Religions for Peace launched a petition that aims to encourage everyone to show that for them preventing gender-based violence is a priority, and that governments must do their utmost to ensure GBV is included in the Arms Trade Treaty.

 

 

 

 

Materials taken from Womens Views on News