Consultations on the content of CEDAW General recommendations on the position of women in conflicts and the post-conflict context
In Istanbul, UN Women organized a regional meeting of activists and experts with consultations on the content of the Committee's future General Recommendation on Women in Conflict and Post-Conflict Contexts on 11 and 12 May. From Croatia, Dubravka Šimonović, a member of CEDAW and the Working Group that will draft the General Recommendation, Đurđica Kolarec, a member of the Center for Women Victims of War, and Sanja Sarnavka, a member of BaBa, participated in the discussion.
The day-long discussion presented the experiences of the region, which unfortunately, in the countries of the Western Balkans and the Caucasus, has experienced war conflicts and is still feeling the consequences of interstate or intra-civilian conflicts.
Along with the identical experiences of all women around the world, from which it is clear that women during and after conflicts almost never receive recognition for everything they did – participating in defense, caring for their families, enduring torture and rape, the region has particularly highlighted several key problems: the issue of so-called "frozen conflicts" in which the stalemate has lasted for decades and de facto no one (neither the conquerors of the territory nor those whose territory it was before the conflict) takes responsibility for the non-respect of fundamental human rights, but rather, when asked why citizens are constantly discriminated against, they pretend that it is a no-man's land that no one is responsible for taking care of. In some countries, such as Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina or Macedonia, the resolution of existing and long-standing conflicts, which every now and then demonstrate the fragility and semblance of peace through incidents, does not actually see any possible relatively permanent resolution.
The use of rape as a war strategy is one of the issues that the General Recommendation must specifically address, the representatives of the region emphasized. The report on the situation of women victims of war rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina, presented in 2009 by Amnesty International, clearly shows how little has been done – thousands of raped women are still stigmatized and do not receive the vital support they need to continue living empowered lives. The situation in Croatia is no better. In 2011, sixteen years after the end of the war, the association Women in the Homeland War demanded that the president and prime minister finally grant women the status of war victims and award them appropriate compensation. In both countries, only 18 court cases have been or are still being conducted for war rape. In Croatia, according to data from legal experts Documenta, out of 18 cases, only 8 defendants were found guilty, but in as many as 6 cases, people were tried in absentia. None of them have been actually brought to justice to date and are serving a sentence for the crime they committed.
In addition to the measures that will be proposed to the states as effective protection and reparation mechanisms for the suffering of women in conflicts and post-conflict contexts, it was especially emphasized that women should not necessarily always be victims, but that they are actively involved in conflict resolution - from peace initiatives, as fighters, workers...
Pramila Patten, the Chairperson of the Working Group for Drafting the General Recommendations, took very careful notes of the presentations and asked questions seeking additional clarifications.
The draft General Recommendation will be presented in spring 2013, and until then, consultations continue through correspondence.
Since 2010, Sanja Sarnavka has been actively involved in the Colombo Group, which began lobbying and negotiating with CEDAW members in Sri Lanka about the future content of the General Recommendation, and was founded at the instigation of the IWRAW Asia Pacific organization.
