UN Passes Version of Anti-Rape Resolution That US Planned to Veto

The United Nations Tuesday passed a resolution that appeared as if it should have been uncontroversial—a resolution designed to curtail the use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war, and to provide support services for victims of wartime sexual violence. But the version passed by the international organization was significantly diluted, because the United States joined China and Russia in threatening to use their veto powers to block the resolution, according to a CNN report.

Rape has been an all-too-frequent occurrence in wars “for as long as armies have marched into battle,” according the UN High Commission on Human Rights. But where in earlier eras rape was seen and largely excused as the inevitable result when male soldiers spend long periods of time without having sex with women, in recent wars sexual violence has been recognized as tactical weapon, especially in “ethnic cleansing” and campaigns of genocide.

While hard statistics about the frequency of rape in war situations are difficult to compile, according to estimates by the Women’s Media Center, there were more nearly two million rapes committed in World War II, while more recent conflicts in Rwanda, Bosnia, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo also saw rapes numbering into the tens of thousands. 

But the first provision removed from this week’s U.N. anti-rape resolution after the joint veto threat by the U.S., Russia, and China would have created a new mechanism to monitor and report sexual violence in war—a provision that would have promoted more accurate statistics about the use of rape as a weapon. The U.S., Russia, and China said that they did not support the creation of a new agency.

But even after the monitoring provision was excused from the resolution, the U.S. under the Donald Trump administration continued to threaten a veto because the resolution contained a mention of  “reproductive and sexual health,” according to the Guardian, which said that “the Trump administration has taken a hard line, refusing to agree to any UN documents that refer to sexual or reproductive health, on grounds that such language implies support for abortions.”

The Trump administration also objected to the inclusion of the word “gender” in the anti-rape resolution, “seeing it as a cover for liberal promotion of transgender rights,” the Guardian reported.

Ultimately, the references to sexual health were removed from the version of the resolution that ultimately passed the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, with 13 of the Security Council’s 15 member countries voting in favor, while Russia and China abstained, but did not exercise their veto power.

"It is intolerable and incomprehensible that the Security Council is incapable of acknowledging that women and girls who suffered from sexual violence in conflict, and who obviously didn't choose to become pregnant, should have the right to terminate their pregnancy," French UN Ambassador Francois Delattre said after the vote, according to the BBC

Photo By Cancillería Ecuador / Wikimedia Commons