UN Women: How many more mass rapes are needed before words will be replaced by funding?
When Congolese military commander Lt. Col. Mutuare Daniel Kibibi stood in court to receive a 20 year jail sentence this week for ordering the rape of an entire village, rare justice was received for the women and girls of the Congo. An estimated 200,000 of them have been raped in the past decade, the sheer number highlighting a massive failure by the international community. For too long the international community, including the UN, has failed to focus on delivering real change for women across the developing world. It has allowed governments to ignore women rights, failed to address women's needs in its response to the AIDS pandemic and left women largely on the sidelines of peace negotiations - even in places like the Congo where rape is still being used as a weapon of war. It is therefore unsurprising that women and girls make up and estimated 70 per cent of people living in poverty and 60 per cent of those living with HIV and AIDS in Africa.
But now there is real hope for women across the globe. On Thursday UN Women is being officially launched in New York. It promises to hold senior roles on key UN decision-making bodies such as UNAIDS, hold governments to account for meeting international conventions on ending discrimination against women, and to have the funding to deliver programmes that result in real change for women and girls in the developing world. VSO and Oxfam delivered a report this week with a strong message from organisations across the globe working to improve women's lives: ending violence against women must be the top priority for UN Women.
Astonishingly among women aged between 15 and 44, acts of violence cause more death and disability than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined - nowhere has this figure been more starkly illustrated than in the Congo. But as Kibibi begins a 20 year sentence - many of his surviving victims face a life sentence. Many of the women and girls raped in the Congo have been left with life-long physical and psychological scars; they are twice as likely to have contracted HIV compared to other women; and face a life of poverty for them and their children as they are abandoned by their husbands and community due to shame. It is a story not just experienced by those in the Congo, but by women and girls in homes, behind closed doors, across the world. In parts of the developing world where access to education, employment, land rights and justice are limited or non-existent for women, the chance of escaping violence is almost impossible.
UN Women faces a monumental task to end violence against women and it can't do it without adequate funding. As it was officially launched, it had received less than half of its initial funding target - not even one per cent of the total UN budget and no more than had previously been dedicated to women by the UN. Among member states yet to commit funding is one of its biggest potential donors, the UK Government. It has recognised the importance of addressing poverty among women saying that "women and girls are at the heart" of its aid strategy. The Government previously committed to announcing its funding pledge for UN Women at the end of the Multilateral Aid Review in early March. Now the Secretary of State for International Development says he plans to wait until June. Meanwhile, other potential donors are looking to the UK Government for a steer and holding back too. At risk is the very success of UN Women and the millions of women and girls it hopes to lift from poverty and violence. How many more mass rapes in the Congo are needed before words will be replaced by funding and action?
Kathy Peach is the Chair of the Gender and Development Network Working Group on UN Women, and VSO UK Head of External Affairs and is attending the official launch of UN Women.
