The InterDependent

Almost a year ago, when the Security Council had all but despaired of seeing serious action taken against sexual abuse in conflict zones, the council asked Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to appoint a watchdog. Early this year, he chose Margot Wallstrom of Sweden, a former government minister and a vice president of the European Commission, and gave her an internationally recognized panel of experts to advise her.

It has not been the best of times to break into this cycle of abuse. This summer, little more than a few months after taking office – and with her staff still not entirely in place – Wallstrom, now the special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, is in the middle of another UN self-examination about how rape on a large scale could be occurring in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the UN has it largest peacekeeping mission.

This time, she said in a recent interview, the UN has not only to acknowledge its shortcomings, as it did last week, and pledge to “do better,” but it must also look beyond the frequent promises to work harder on prevention and start behaving more like cops. Sexual abuse, she said, is not confined to conflict areas. It is a tactic that has entered political disputes – in Kyrgyzstan and Guinea, most recently – and in the economic exploitation of resources, a significant part of the problem in Congo, she said.

Margot Wallstrom, special adviser to the UN (far left); President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia; Ellen Margrethe Loj, UN envoy in Liberia. Crossed arms and clenched fists symbolize a UN-wide Stop Rape campaign.

In mid-August, Wallstrom wrote an opinion article in The Guardian of London on the direct links between the exploitation of precious metals or minerals and war, mentioning coltan, a rare ore used in making mobile phones.

“Although it is complicated to track conflict minerals, this cannot become an excuse for not trying,” she wrote. “After all, neither American nor European consumers want their MP3 players and mobile phones to be funding gang rape in Africa.” She praised the Obama administration for including a provision in the finance bill passed by Congress in July demanding the labeling of “conflict minerals” on the market.

Sexual assault is a phenomenon that “is planned, it’s systematic, and it’s carried out to control the territory, to instill fear, to terrorize the population,” she said. “If you as a child have seen, maybe, your mother being raped in front of the whole village, do you ever feel safe again? This [fear] is often carried over from generation to generation, and this is why it is such an impediment to restoring peace and security in a country.

“We must go after the perpetrators, because if you think that we have only one spotlight, the UN system -- were they slow, all those relevant questions – [then] the spotlight turns on the UN,” she said. “Meanwhile, we allow the perpetrators to walk free. Where are they now? They go to the next village and continue to rape and loot and pillage. We have to prosecute them, because otherwise the whole talk about ending impunity means nothing. We have to start being serious about how we go after them.”

Wallstrom said she also believed in the wisdom of listening to women in disturbed areas, assuring them that the UN is there to help and asking their advice. She tells of victimized women in Congo drawn into discussing reparations who suggested “bringing something back to the village” – not money but a community project, perhaps, that would restore their dignity among villagers.

In Afghanistan, she said, female UN police officers assigned to patrolling back streets or quieter neighborhoods, where their presence gives a psychological lift to local women, are also able to collect intelligence as they get to know people.

She related an example told to her by a female UN officer: “Women would come up to them when they saw that they were women police, and would report about a big wedding taking place on the next day or on the weekend,” Wallstrom said. “They could tell them that there were 600 guests arriving from all over. This was not told to the police patrolling the main streets because [they would have thought] it was not important. [But] it’s a security issue. That’s very valuable information women could obtain by engaging with other women”

Wallstrom welcomes and would not squelch reports of abuse or security threats from any quarter, including the media and nongovernmental organizations closest to the scene, because these could set off quicker investigations by peacekeeping missions and more rapid responses, possibly allowing troops to chase down perpetrators of crimes before they disappear into the bush or urban neighborhoods. The UN, she said, needed better monitoring systems everywhere and all help was appreciated.

Born in 1954 and married with two children, Wallstrom was elected to Parliament while still in her 20s. She later served in three ministerial positions for civil affairs, culture and social affairs, respectively, before becoming executive vice president of Worldview Global Media, an organization based in Sri Lanka. She joined the European Commission in 1999 and in 2004 was appointed the commission’s vice president for inter-institutional relations and communication. Through her years on the commission, she followed the UN’s efforts to counter sexual abuse as she also promoted women’s rights and political inclusion in Europe.

In tackling how to better understand how sexual violence is used – or what taboos in some places keep it from happening – Wallstrom said she was aware that men and boys are also targets, because rape may be intended as the ultimate humiliation.

“We know this, that it is not exclusively women that are targeted,” she said. “Boys are also raped and sexually abused. It is important to understand that phenomenon as well, unfortunately. Maybe this is a way to mobilize more sensitivity, because some could argue that people are being tortured, their limbs being chopped off, and here you talk about rape. They try to play it down by comparing it with other atrocities. I think if we explain that this happens not only exclusively to women, maybe we can also mobilize a deeper understanding and sympathy.

“Sexual abuse is not cultural,” Wallstrom said. “It isn’t even sexual. It’s criminal. And that’s how we have to treat these things. Can you think of any other human rights violation where we would conclude that it is inevitable? It’s collateral damage? This is what we have to change: the whole attitude to the problem.”

The world has focused on rapes in African conflicts, partly because of repeated reports from places such as Congo, Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone. But the problem knows few boundaries, Wallstrom said. “We had it in the Balkans – a horrible expression of this is that there were rape camps for ethnic cleansing. We cannot say that it is cultural. It is not African or any other culture. It exists, unfortunately, everywhere.”