Angelina Jolie is continuing to champion the cause she started years ago to end sexual violence being weaponized in conflict.
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At this year’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict conference that took place in London, the special envoy to the United Nations refugee agency appeared in a video message to speak on behalf of the continuing use of rape during wartime.
Angelina Jolie Criticises Governments Over Their Inaction To Stop Sexual Violence Being Weaponized During Conflict
Jolie is pointing out the “deeply painful and frustrating” slow progress that is being made towards stopping wartime rape. She reminded governments that not enough is being done to support survivors of the abuse or to punish the perpetrators and stop the cycle.
Writing in The Guardian on Monday, she said: “There has been some progress … but it has not been nearly enough to meet the needs of survivors, or to deter perpetrators from using rape as a weapon of war in almost every new conflict in the past decade. Despite the commitments governments made, we have not seen significant, lasting action at the global level. This is deeply painful and frustrating.”
In 2012, Jolie founded PSVI with the then foreign secretary William Hague. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, a conference was held in London, bringing ministers and representatives from 70 countries together, along with survivors of the crime, nobel laureates Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege and many others working in the field, including the Countess of Wessex.
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On the first day of the conference, Jolie said: “We meet and discuss these horrors and agree that they should never be allowed to happen again. We promise to draw – and to hold – that line.
“But when it comes to hard choices about how to implement these promises, we run into the same problems time and again. We run into some security council members abusing their veto power, such as in the case of Syria. We run into economic and political interests being put first, treating some conflicts as more important than others. And we run into a lack of political will, meaning that governments in recent years have downgraded the importance of efforts to combat war-zone sexual violence, despite the direct link to international peace and security.”
Angelina Jolie Calls For “Decisive Global Action” Against Weaponizing Sex
Still speaking via video message, the actress shared that there needs to be punishment for the perpetrators of the heinous crimes, if global progress is to be achieved.
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“When human beings are physically assaulted in this way, & in some countries for decades, there has to be a decisive global response. When there isn’t, it sends a message to both the victim & the perpetrator that we don’t truly regard this as a significant crime that needs to be punished and prevented. So this conference should in my view, take a hard look at what has succeeded and what has not.”
Others at the conference also said that care should be taken to “stop these attacks before they start” and swift response will help deter its continuation.
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