United Nations

Sexual exploitation and abuse has tarnished the operations of peacekeepers charged with protecting civilians, thereby undermining the integrity and effectiveness of international peacekeeping institutions across the globe. It puts at risk the international aid community’s ability to deliver life-saving help to the people they are tasked to serve. Despite the policies, procedures, and practices in place to address sexual exploitation and abuse, cultures of impunity persist across the United Nations and the aid sector. Karen Pierce and Paula Donovan discuss innovative ideas to prevent the continued perpetration of—and lack of accountability for—sexual exploitation and abuse.  Transcript BIGIO: Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon. Welcome, everyone, to the Council on Foreign Relations. My name is Jamille Bigio, and I’m a senior fellow with the Council’s Women and Foreign Policy Program. For those who aren’t familiar with our program, it was established over fifteen years now. We’ve been working to analyze how elevating the status of women and girls advances U.S. foreign policy objectives, including prosperity and stability. I do want to take a moment before we begin to thank our Advisory Council members who are with us today, as well as the Compton Foundation for its generous support for today’s discussion. I also want to remind everyone that the event is on the record, including the presentation, discussion, and question-and-answer period. In the wake of the global #MeToo movement, the United Nations has faced mounting scrutiny over its handling of sexual exploitation and abuse cases. For decades now, allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse have been raised against U.N. personnel, against peacekeepers charged with protecting civilians against aid workers tasked with delivering lifesaving goods. Sexual abuse has violated the lives of countless women and girls, men and boys, while also undermining the integrity and the effectiveness of international peacekeeping institutions, the aid sector, and the United Nations more broadly around the world. The U.N. has a zero-tolerance policy in place. It has appointed new leadership to institute reforms, including a special coordinator on improving the United Nations’ response to sexual exploitation and abuse, and the U.N. rights advocate for victims of sexual exploitation. So why does impunity persist? What can the U.N. do about it? And how can member states and civil society help to address this issue? We’re thrilled today to be joined by two perspectives to reflect on this issue at the U.N. and among peacekeepers and across the broader aid sector. Shortly, we’ll be joined by Ambassador Karen Pierce, the permanent representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations. And we’re thrilled to be joined as well by Paula Donovan, who’s co-director of AIDS-Free World. And they have led the Code Blue Campaign that is driving attention to ending impunity for sexual abuse by U.N. personnel. I want to start first by identifying just what the problem is before turning to new ideas of how to tackle it. Paula, if you could start us off in sharing, why does the problem of impunity for sexual exploitation and abuse persist? DONOVAN: OK, thank you. Thank you very much, Jamille. And it’s a pleasure to be here with everyone, many faces I recognize, but many I don’t. The problem is, I think, most succinctly described as one of the misapplication of United Nations immunity. That sounds like a bit of a bureaucratic mouthful. But, of course, we all know that sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual offenses of all kinds persist throughout the world. And we know what the derivation is. And we know about the—about the inane and inadequate attempts to prevent and address these offenses that have gone on for generations, centuries. What’s unique about the United Nations is that the United Nations is covered by a Convention on Privileges and Immunities. This is absolutely essential to the functioning of the United Nations. It couldn’t do its work throughout the world if there weren’t the protection provided by the convention to ensure that one individual government can’t retaliate against the United Nations for something that they’re angry about or can’t bribe the United Nations, can’t simply interfere with the work of the world body by taking it out essentially on an individual staff member. So if you don’t like a resolution that’s just been passed and you did everything in your power as a member state to prevent its passage, and it went ahead anyway, then your proclivity might be to pick up all the people who work for the United Nations in your country and arrest them for missing headlights or on fraudulent charges, on fraudulent bases. And you could detain them for quite some time and send a message to the U.N. To prevent that from happening, in 1946 the founders of the United Nations decided to pass their very first convention ever. It was a treaty to ensure the free movement of diplomats and others who work for the United Nations between and among countries. And this now is a very different world. We’re in 2018; peacekeeping wasn’t even envisioned back when the Convention on Privileges and Immunities was put in—was passed. The United Nations has grown exponentially. And what we’re faced with now is an aberration. It’s the United Nations is still protected from scrutiny—and that’s for all legal process—it’s protected from scrutiny by individual governments, by jurisdictions, and so forth. What happens within the United Nations stays in the United Nations. And that means that you cannot be arrested and detained without the prior permission of the secretary-general. That means that, even if you are accused of a crime, which is not covered by functional immunity, the type of immunity that protects the vast majority of international civil servants from spurious claims, even if you are accused of a crime and you have only functional immunity—in other words, your words and deeds as an employee of the United Nations are covered by immunity, but not your private life—then still, the United Nations has the right, before you can be detained on any charge, to first determine for themselves whether or not immunity does or doesn’t apply. And that can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to fifteen months to fifteen years because these processes are all internal and they’re secretive. It is impossible, as the reporters in the room know, to file a Freedom of Information Act request for the United Nations because everything that the U.N. does is held in secrecy. And this is—I’m not saying “secrecy” in a pejorative way. So what it boils down to is, when an allegation of sexual exploitation or abuse, even at the most serious, grave levels, even felony crimes, is lodged against someone who works for the United Nations, personnel of the United Nations, then that becomes an internal matter to be dealt with, in an ideal world, first and foremost, by the United Nations, but in the real world it’s simply handled as an administrative matter. And this creates such a culture of impunity throughout the United Nations that, in particular, the civilian personnel—and that’s to exclude the military personnel who are contracted by the United Nations to become their peacekeeping forces—but the civilian personnel and everyone who works for the United Nations understand that they can essentially do what they want to do just so long as they’re able to persuade, cajole, or pull the wool over the eyes of the bureaucracy that is in charge of their fate. This leaves us with rafts and rafts of allegations, the nature of which and the handling of which none of us have any clue as to the—none of us know exactly how—or not even exactly, but in broad details, no one knows the names of the people who have been accused, and no one knows the processing of the people who have been accused and the processes that are followed. And as a result, we have—we have impunity. BIGIO: Ambassador Pierce, thank you so much for joining us. PIERCE: Pleasure. BIGIO: We had just begun. And Paula had laid out what the challenges are when we look at sexual exploitation and abuse across the U.N. system, the challenges how she framed it as a misapplication of U.N. immunity and the challenges when instances occur, when even at the gravest degree of a felony crime, that they’re handled as administrative matters. Now as we look at what are the gaps, why has impunity persisted as it has for sexual exploitation and abuse across the U.N. system? And Paula has, I think, so helpfully laid out how the system is put in place to encourage and permit this degree of impunity. We welcome if you have additional reflections on what challenges you see for ending impunity in the U.N. system for sexual exploitation and abuse. And then the question from there is, how do we tackle this, and what’s the role of member states, of civil society? How can both ensure that the U.N. system addresses this issue in a new and different way to end the impunity that we see has persisted? PIERCE: Well, good afternoon, everybody. And many thanks to Jamille and to Paula. Apologies for being late, but we had an emergency Security Council session on Iran, and then the normal New York traffic kind of got in the way. So I’m very sorry to have kept everybody waiting. And sorry, in particular, not to have seen Paula. Just on the specific question you mentioned—and I’ll get to that just in a minute if I—if I may—but I think what happened in Haiti with U.K. charities really shocked the system. And it was a huge shock to us as well. And it was—it kind of, although a truly terrible set of occurrences, it perhaps did us all favor by throwing the spotlight onto this issue in a way that we might not have been able to get the spotlight thrown onto it. And we had a safeguarding summit in London earlier this year. And we like to think of this in terms of four strategic shifts. One is around ensuring support for survivors, but also for victims and whistleblowers, enhancing accountability and transparency, and strengthening reporting, as well as tackling impunity. I think the second is around incentivizing behavioral change, both on the part of individuals, but also on the part of institutions. That’s not just the U.N., but obviously the U.N. is front and center of that. And once again, those sets of issues come down to things like strong leadership, organizational accountability, and human resources processes. So in that sense, although those things are obvious, in U.N. terms, they go to the heart of how the U.N. is run. And that’s an issue that goes more wider—more widely than SEA and is something that we grapple with with the secretary-general all the time. In particular, being able to sack people in the U.N. is incredibly difficult. And I’ll come on to that in a minute. There’s something—the third strand, I would say, is around agreeing the minimum standards, which we would obviously say ought to be quite a high threshold, but also really ensuring that once those standards are agreed that they’re implemented and that they’re met. And as the United Kingdom, we definitely want to do that for ourselves. And then there’s something about being able to strengthen organizational capacity and capability so that they can do all those—all those things. I think, as you’ve probably been talking about, the real difficulty with SEA outside the U.N. secretariat funds and programs themselves—I’ll come on to those in a minute—the fundamental legal construct is that individual countries remain responsible for their personnel, their military personnel on peacekeeping missions. And there isn’t a straightforward way of being able to exercise legal authority over those personnel deployed on peacekeeping missions. One can do things short of legal authority, like setting up registers to make sure that people don’t inadvertently get offered a job having once been found convicted of SEA. But in terms of actually taking them to a court and prosecuting them, that does, very unfortunately, remain a huge—a huge difficulty. If they were themselves active on the ground in conflict, actually fighting as a party, such that international humanitarian law applied, then it might be possible to have them prosecuted under ordinary measures for IHL and the Geneva Conventions, particularly since sexual violence and conflict now counts as a grave crime under the Geneva Conventions. But I think we all know that it’s terribly difficult, even now, to bring actual prosecutions. It’s not impossible, but it remains fantastically difficult. So this is one—but most of the time, I think peacekeepers are not involved as a party to a conflict. So there’s a question mark as to whether the Geneva Conventions would be applicable in every case. In fact, they wouldn’t be applicable in every case. I think there would be a question mark as to in how many cases were they applicable. So that leaves you fundamentally with the secretary-general or DPKO having to go to the country concerned to say you need to prosecute these people. And that is a very difficult—it’s not a difficult thing for the secretary-general to do. It’s a very difficult thing or it is proving to be a very difficult thing for the country itself to do. Sometimes they will claim that they can’t identify the individuals concerned, they couldn’t tell you which unit, or the victims can’t identify the individuals. The secretary-general has the option of asking the country concerned to withdraw their entire peacekeeping unit. It’s an option, it may not work in every case, depending on who would backfill and what the exact situation on the ground is. But there is no mechanism at the moment for compelling a country to take those people to court. And we can talk about that, and we can talk about what sorts of issues might be able to ameliorate that situation. For example—and I’m not a lawyer, someone like Larry will know better, many of you will know better. Even when that if the state of New York could play a de facto role in prosecutions on behalf of the United Nations—I haven’t got very far with that idea—(laughter)—but, you know, if the countries themselves can’t do it, who is going to do it? And how are you going to get the evidence needed to stand up in a Western court of law? So I’m very happy to discuss that. If you come on to the U.N. itself, as I say, it’s very difficult to sack somebody in the U.N. And I’m sorry to say that that issue tends to come down to the human rights tribunals. And some very eminent lawyers, including some British lawyers, sit on those tribunals, and they are quite proud of the fact that they hardly ever uphold the U.N.’s case against a staff member. So clearly, something needs to change there. But that goes to the fundamental heart of the secretary-general’s power over the whole organization, which we need to address. So those two things make it actually a much trickier question than it inherently ought to be, given the enormity of what’s going on. BIGIO: You’ve put on the table some really crucial questions on this issue. And there’s one in particular, the question of, how do you actually pursue justice against peacekeepers that have perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse, that Code Blue and Paula have put some innovative ideas on the table of how to move that effort forward. Paula, I wonder if you could share what you think could help solve the challenge of holding peacekeepers accountable for sexual exploitation and abuse. DONOVAN: Sure, thanks. So we were shocked in 2015 when we—when we first launched the Code Blue Campaign to find from our research that the vast majority of perpetrators of alleged sexual exploitation and abuse were not military, but civilian personnel of the United Nations. Even within peacekeeping, the division between the military perpetrators and the nonmilitary perpetrators is quite stark. And the civilians outnumber the military. When António Guterres took over as secretary-general in 2017, the first thing that he stated publicly about this phenomenon of sexual exploitation and abuse and impunity was the fact that he said, essentially, don’t focus just on the peacekeepers, meaning the military, this is a problem throughout the U.N. system. And as someone who had headed the High Commission for Refugees, which is the civilian arm of the United Nations that has more allegations made against its civilian U.N. staff than any other entity within the United Nations, he knew from whence he spoke. So I absolutely understand what you—what you’re saying, Ambassador, about the military needing to be pressed harder. The troop-contributing countries need to be pressed harder by the United Nations, which is their contractor, their employer, essentially, to ensure that they do uphold the discipline that they have been entitled to hold sway over. They say that they cannot discipline their troops if the troops report to two masters. And the Security Council and the member states in their wisdom have said, yes, that’s the case, so if the military mess up when they’re on assignment as peacekeepers, then you, the troop-contributing country, are responsible for their discipline and you’ve got to do your job. And the U.N., as the contractor of these troop-contributing countries must enforce that and they have to put their money where their mouth is or remove their money when the military don’t do what they need to do. The civilian personnel are the people that the Code Blue Campaign is focusing on primarily because there is no route to justice. And this is what I was talking about before. The immunity—the military are not covered by immunity. They are immune from prosecution in the country where they’re working, but not immune from prosecution writ large. They are subject to the jurisdiction of their country. Not so the civilian personnel. I worked for UNICEF. When I lived in Nairobi, had I committed a crime, the government of Kenya could not have picked me up without prior permission from the United Nations without an assurance from the United Nations that what I had done and who I was was not covered under the shield of immunity. So there’s no route to justice. This is compounded now by the fact that civilian personnel in countries where the U.N.—and I’m talking now not about the member states and not about the Security Council, but simply the appointees, the people who have jobs at the U.N.—have determined that the system of justice, that it’s essentially a failed state. So you’re in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Haiti at times, in various countries where the—where the bureaucrats who work for the United Nations feel as though the state is just not up to—up to its job. It doesn’t have the police power, it doesn’t have the judicial power to do a job well. And they feel—and I’ve heard this directly from the most senior people in the U.N.—we can’t throw our guys to the wolves. So if you’re a civilian person who’s working in the Central African Republic for the United Nations and you are accused of a vicious crime, that will be treated internally by the United Nations as though you had broken the rules, not broken the law, because the United Nations does not want to betray its personnel and have some its civilian personnel ending up in what the general counsel described to me as a dank hole in the—in the Central African Republic or in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They simply don’t want to have their personnel arrested by, questioned by, possibly prosecuted by, and imprisoned by the country over whom—the country that has jurisdiction over any crime that’s committed by anybody but military U.N. peacekeeping personnel. And so, to avoid that problem, they simply say we’re going to pretend the problem doesn’t exist and we’re going to keep quiet about the name of this person who’s been accused of this grievous crime and we’re going to send our own internal investigators who have no jurisdiction to act like regular police officers do. They can’t issue a search warrant. They can’t—they can’t demand that people come in for questioning, and they can’t hold the staff members, they can’t detain them in a jail cell somewhere. They can’t even—if they come across evidence, there’s no chain of evidence they can’t ensure that a courtroom ultimately will accept this evidence and say I know exactly where it’s been from the moment you picked up this bloodied clothing until today it’s shown up in a courtroom. So they have none of that power or authority. But they do have the power and authority to basically decide, as the ambassador said, whether or not this guy should be sacked. He almost never is. So what happens with these people who have been accused of grievous crimes? They are hidden under the system and they never face justice. And the U.N. explains that as we don’t want to violate the human rights of our staff who might be subjected to substandard beliefs and law enforcement and judicial systems, to which the Code Blue Campaign responds, who are you to decide which is a failed state? You’re not the Security Council, you’re not the General Assembly, you’re simply individuals who have jobs at the U.N. You can’t declare a state a failed state and say we are going to circumvent the law in this particular country. So we’re saying, if we’re at an impasse here, if you’re saying I won’t throw these people to the wolves, my people to the wolves, and I will not allow the government, this peacekeeping country, to prosecute this, to investigate and prosecute our people because they’re so substandard, then what we’re saying is the U.N., the member states must create a special court mechanism for these particular countries. Make a list of all the countries whose systems you do not trust, whose law enforcement and judicial systems you have no faith in, and create a special court mechanism that’s independent from, unbiased, and not reporting to the secretary-general or any part of the—of the U.N., the bureaucracy—and I’m not saying that as a pejorative term—reporting directly to the member states. And this special court mechanism would have its own intake officers. It would have its own lawyers. It would have its own police detectives and law enforcement function and would have its own judiciary so that people in the country of Central African Republic could know that if they wanted to—if they had been raped by a civilian person working under the aegis of the United Nations, they could go to an independent office, report the crime, make sure that it was investigated thoroughly and fully by people who really have the jurisdiction to do so vested in them by the United Nations member states, and then they could be brought to trial, prosecuted, and imprisoned if necessary. And yes, they might also be fired at that point by the United Nations, maybe that would be enough to get the guy fired, but at least there would be a path to justice. But before we can even—we can even lobby successfully for such a—for such a solution, which is only, of course, a path to justice for a small percentage of the people who are committing these crimes, because if you commit a crime in, you know, a refugee camp in Tanzania or something, then maybe the United Nations bureaucrats will decide that that country does have a standard-level jurisdiction and they do trust certain countries. When I asked, so is it all peacekeeping countries that you distrust, I was told by the under-secretary-general for improving the United Nation’s response, Jane Holl Lute, she said pretty much. And I said, but, you know, can you give us a list, these are the ones that we don’t trust and, therefore, we’re going to circumvent them, these are the ones we do trust? And she said I know it when I see it. And I said, Cyprus? She said no, Cyprus is fine, which she’s now, coincidentally, the special envoy for Cyprus at the same time as she is this under-secretary-general for improving United Nation’s response to sexual exploitation and abuse, which says something troubling to me about the importance that the secretary-general attaches to this issue, that his most senior-level person now has only a part-time job to focus on this. And clearly, it’s not improved yet. But in order to give the evidence to the United Nations member states that they need about how pervasive and deep and hidden and dreadful this problem is—and all those adjectives apply as well to the way they’re handled in an ad hoc and its sort of make-it-up-as-you-go-along way by the various—by the dozens of different entities within the United Nations—and things just—these horrible allegations that drastically change people’s lives for the worse are simply swept under the rug, and they go on and on and on for years. In order for the member states to know what we know as the Code Blue Campaign by virtue of leaked documents and people coming to us with information and doing extensive research, the member states need to know what’s happening in real time. You need to be able to see what we see, just snapshots of when someone, who’s desperate, who’s been through the system, comes to us and says I reported this crime and here’s what happened, you can’t imagine how poorly this was handled. And then we start to look into it, we get leaked copies of documents that are protected by immunity, and we see just how bad it is. We’re also suggesting a temporary independent oversight panel created by member states so that you can have experts who are available, you know, to dip in at any moment, who get a copy of every single report that’s made of any sexual offense at all throughout the system. And like the—for those of us who are American, like the Internal Revenue Service, although they’re not going to follow every single tax return and make sure that every line is correct, they have the authority to do that. So at any moment, someone from the temporary independent oversight panel gets a copy of an allegation that is made and then has the authority, without the hindrance of immunity, because they’re empowered by the U.K. and the other member states, to be part of the bubble, so immunity doesn’t apply to them, they can say I want to sit in on the interview, I want to see every single email and document that is exchanged about this allegation, I want to know what you’re doing with this person right now, I want to know whether or not that person is still in your employ and whether or not his passport has been held. I want to sit in. As you’re collecting the evidence, I want to look at the evidence, I want to know where you’re keeping the evidence, and follow this case from beginning to end, see the standard of proof that’s applied by UNHCR versus UNICEF versus the World Food Programme versus the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, get a bird’s eye view in real time, go back to the member states and say this is just a snapshot, but it’s this bad, the problem is this pervasive and this deep, and this is how poorly the bureaucracy is dealing with it. BIGIO: OK. So we’ll open it up now for questions and answers. So if you could please raise your placard if you have a question, we’ll try to get to as many as we can. So if you could keep your questions as concise as you can, that would be helpful. Q: Hi. Howard Stoffer. I’m now a professor at the University of New Haven, but still an advisor to the previous office, I was the head of the Counterterrorism Executive Directorate at the Security Council. I agree with everything you’re saying, Ms. Donovan. It is—it’s pervasive. But, you know, first of all, the P’s and I’s that U.N. personnel have are not the same as the P’s and I’s that diplomats have under the—(off mic)—convention. They’re more abridged. The problem that I think Jane Lute was reluctant to talk about is the fact that, you know, if you’re working for the member states, you can’t declare that one member state has an inadequate, you know, system for adjudication of justice. And for the U.N. to declare that would be—would be very problematic. How do you decide what standards are going to be used, et cetera? And I’m not trying to criticize the steps you’ve been describing. And, you know, if somebody were to be adjudicated by this other body that you’ve created, where would they be imprisoned? It’s one of the big problems that, you know, they’ve had with, you know, in the African missions and in the—and in Yugoslavia, the former Yugoslavia state. You know, where to you—fortunately, the Netherlands has agreed to take a lot of these people. But I don’t really see U.N. personnel being imprisoned in the Netherlands or anywhere else. It’s a much more—it’s much more a political issue about, how do you go about doing this? I remember when I was—when I had a staff member who came in drunk every day for six months and eventually was found in hospitals around New York City. I terminated her contract. She went to the tribunals and it took two years with hard evidence to be able to get her fired. It just—it just—it takes that kind of effort. You’re absolutely right, I think there needs to be some kind of—and every year when I used to be a Fifth Committee member for the U.S. missions for the U.N., which is torture—(laughter)—because they’re all going down to the Christmas deadline—system of justice, how do you fund it, how do you expand it, how do you improve it is always an issue. I think maybe the first step could be that—and I’m sorry this is not a question, but I just—I couldn’t resist. I normally don’t raise my placard first. But have a commission of the Security Council look into what recommendations could be made for a swifter system of adjudication of these kind of charges. And you may remember that the head of procurement at one point had his immunity lifted and he’s now serving time in a New York prison. So it is possible to prosecute U.N. personnel. And one thought that came to me when I was working there for many years was, if somebody is charged with a crime in another country and since the headquarters is here in the United States, they’ll force them to come back to the United—come back to headquarters, and then they get charged. The secretary-general lifts their immunity and then they get charged with these crimes in an American court. And that might be the path to trying to get this done. I’m not sure how the Americans might feel about that. And that’s a very tough road to go, but I think it’s more realistic even than some of the outline you have for something that might be much further in the future. So my apologies for talking so long. But thank you. BIGIO: All right. Do you want to reflect on that? PIERCE: I’m very happy to respond quickly. BIGIO: Sure, yeah. PIERCE: Or you can take a number of questions if you’d prefer. BIGIO: We’ll take them one at a time. PIERCE: Oh, OK. PIERCE: I think, you know, you’re right. There’s something about waiving immunity that all diplomatic services, including the U.N., practice or don’t practice, depending on their assessment of local justice. And the U.N. is no different about that. I haven’t studied the notion that you might come to a U.S. Court. But as I mentioned at the start, when I look at this, I find myself inexorably drawn to the conclusion that there should be—it should be part of the headquarters agreement with the United States of America, possibly with the Swiss in respect of Geneva as well, given how many agencies are headquartered in Geneva, because I don’t think there’s a perfect model, but I think that might actually get around some of the intractable problems. I suppose the other thing you could do is just have it agreed with each member state that they would always prosecute their own nationals, even if not seconded personnel, but U.N. staff. But then I think you get into Paula’s issue that the documents and the evidence itself from the location of the crime would then be subject to all sorts of complicated immunities. But we ought to be able to sit down and discuss all this rationally and see if we can find a way through. DONOVAN: Just quickly to the point of where do the people get—where are they imprisoned. We had a Chatham House meeting that Jessica and Larry—and I think that’s it from this room—attended, and for a couple of days we banged out the details of the special court mechanism and looked at all the legal hurdles. And basically, I think everyone in the room concluded that, yes, there are things that are fascinating to lawyers and need to be worked out, such as, should they be—should people be imprisoned in the Netherlands? Is that more or less a violation of their rights? But the reality is those are things that the U.N. is very good at. So I’m here criticizing the U.N. for things that they’re not good at. But what they are good at is basically working out the details. And there are a zillion committees that can do that sort of thing. This is not rocket science. So questions like—while it’s a—it’s a vexing one, where should people be detained, to say, because we have questions like that, people should be able to get—people who work for the United Nations, who are civilian personnel in countries X, Y, and Zed should all—I can’t believe I just said “zed,” I’m American—(laughter)— PIERCE: Come to the other side. (Laughter.) DONOVAN: —should get away with these crimes because it’s going to be so difficult to work out where they should be imprisoned that we should just basically fire them and let them be on their way. BIGIO: We’ve got—Evelyn did you want to— Q: Hi. Evelyn Leopold, correspondent at the U.N. Ambassador, for the last year, we have been hearing about UNAIDS, and the allegations are either that the top management is involved in sexual abuse or they’re covering up for people who are involved. How long does it take to resolve this? Cannot the secretary-general say you guys are gone? PIERCE: I can’t remember, I’m afraid, what the secretary-general’s authority is in respect to UNAIDS because each agency has a slightly different charter and governance. But I do know that the report is due to be published soon. And I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t think it’s going to be helpful for me to comment until I’ve seen that report. But, you know, it’s a serious issue, obviously, and it needs dealing with. But I think better to talk about it once we have the report. DONOVAN: Sure, can I just help with the—with the jurisdiction of UNAIDS? The secretary-general appoints both the under-secretary-general, Michel Sidibé, and the assistant-secretaries-general, including Luiz Loures. So Luiz Loures was the man who was accused of sexual assault of a colleague, and Michel Sidibé is the person who is accused of covering up the investigation. And they are directly appointed by and extended by or fired by the secretary-general, who professed his loyalty to Michel Sidibé and said that he was completely supportive of him and allowed Luiz Loures to retire after a botched investigation exonerated him. And then the secretary-general, under public pressure by AIDS-Free World and others, felt compelled to say that he was reopening the investigation of Luiz Loures, given new information that had come to the fore. The man is how retired, there’s not a thing that the secretary-general can hold over his head. He’s now retired, living off of his pension in Geneva. And Michel Sidibé remains as the under-secretary-general for UNAIDS. And this independent expert panel, which was sort of a halfway point, let’s not go over the details of who’s guilty of dreadful leadership and abuse of power and that sort of thing, let’s not go into the details of people, let’s just talk about policies and procedures, this independent expert panel worked for six months and it was actually—the U.K., as you know, is the chair of the governing body of UNAIDS. So under the auspices of the U.K. this independent expert panel was struck. It worked for six months, it interviewed many people, including me, for hours and hours. And apparently, they came up with such dreadful results that they couldn’t keep it specifically on policies and procedures, they had to get into the details of leadership. I have heard that the recommendation of this independent expert panel, among the recommendations, is to dismiss the senior leaders, Michel Sidibé and others. But yesterday, the report had been announced by the U.K.’s chairperson Danny Graymore. It had been announced that this report would be published online and made public yesterday by close of business. And at the eleventh hour after the UNAIDS management saw the contents of the report, including, coincidentally, let’s get rid of the under-secretary-general, they moved heaven and earth to suppress the report. And it’s now, you know, stuck in debate whether or not the initial declaration by Danny Graymore of the U.K., the chair of the committee, that this report would see—would be public yesterday. You know, how long is it going to take and will it ever see the light of day? BIGIO: Got late-breaking news and much to follow as this case and circumstance continue to unfold. Jessica? Q: Thank you. I wish that late-breaking news was surprising in some way, but, of course, we’ve seen that so many times. Many decades ago, I work in the U.N. Administrative Tribunal. And we handled a lot of these cases, so I saw it from the inside. And I know that structures have changed a lot in the administrative system of justice, but it doesn’t seem like much else has really changed. You know, there’s a culture. And it’s not just a U.N. culture as we’re seeing, it’s, you know, I don’t know who the wolves are. It’s pretty much every government in the world now that’s facing a #MeToo kind of expose of how imperfect the judicial system is. But it does seem like there’s a jurisdictional gap. There’s not a criminal jurisdiction for these people. And I think the New York court idea is very interesting. But, of course, the first thing that comes to my mind is, you know, all the witnesses and all the evidence are not in New York, so that makes it very difficult to do justice. And the idea of some more-mobile type of court structure is appealing. I’m not sure that it matters that much whether it’s controlled by governments or the U.N. because, in the end, I’m not sure who I would trust more, if any of them, to do justice, because it’s really almost kind of the same set of issues. And that really leads me to my question, which is, we do have these administrative procedures in the U.N. They’re not working well, which leads me to believe that no criminal—firstly, I guess a question on the criminal jurisdiction is, no matter what court you set up, you would probably have to change the agreements with the troop-contributing country agreements. How realistic is that, because somehow they would have to, I guess, allow for that jurisdiction wherever it is? And then, really, I guess my question is, isn’t this really a problem of political will? I mean, even the procedures that we have, people started getting fired in a regular way, which is completely possible within the scope of the rules. Wouldn’t that change the culture more dramatically than creating a new structure with the same people running it who can’t even use the structures they have in place? BIGIO: Paula, do you want to reflect? Is this a question of political will? PIERCE: Do you want to go first? DONOVAN: I think we probably agree. (Laughter.) Yes, they said in unison. BIGIO: Well, in the interest of bringing more questions in, I think we can bring more in and then reflect as well on the point that you’ve put on the table, Jessica. Simon? Q: Well, thank you. Thanks to both presenters, I think, for very interesting presentations. First, I would say no organization has done more than Code Blue in the last three years to push this issue forward. Seriously, we would not be having these discussions if it weren’t for you, so thank you for doing that. And also, thank you for the U.K. for pushing on this issue in a humanitarian context, but also here at the U.N. We appreciate your leadership on that. I think, as Jessica mentioned before, there are really three gaps here. There’s the jurisdictional gaps, informational gaps in terms of reporting, disclosing, referrals, and political will in terms of shifting the culture. But the jurisdictional gap is fundamentally the one that I think Paula focused on, rightly so. And I just have some questions, I guess, about the special courts because I don’t think we can gloss over the technicalities of how these are run. Yes, the U.N. is good at forming committees; no, they’re not good at agreeing to things. So I guess a few questions. First of all, would it only deal with SEA? Second, who would decide which states are the ones that don’t have judicial systems that be appropriate? Third, what laws would be defined? How would they be defined? And who would agree to them? Fourth, if not all states agree to it, would this be able to take off? Because management and reform issues in the Fifth Committee, that our colleague mentioned, the reason why they go until December is because they decide by consensus. So if we don’t have consensus, how do we have that? And related to that, how do you ensure the U.N.’s cooperation if you don’t have consensus within the U.N.? And then beyond that, how do you actually preserve the independence of those courts, because it’s not clear to me that member states will be interested in preserving the independence? And if the decision-making structures are so that they allow one country to veto or to stop or to block consensus, we might end up in a very—a position that’s worse than what we have now. BIGIO: We’re going to take one last question and then we’ll have final thoughts from our speakers. Q: Thank you so much. Just building on the points already raised by Jessica and Simon. Sarah Taylor, IPI. I run our Women, Peace, and Security Program there. Simon covered a couple of my questions, including what crimes this court would deal with. I think that raises questions around sort of segmenting off a particular type of felony or a particular type of grave crime, particularly when people in these contexts are often subjected to and victims of multiple different types of assaults and crimes. But I want to actually pull on that point a little bit and ask both the ambassador and Paula the extent to which these solutions are, as much as possible, survivor and victim driven, and the consultations around and with people who have been subjected to these—to these crimes, you know, clearly, that was a point that was raised in 2272, but it remains a sort of often missing piece of the puzzle. BIGIO: Ambassador? PIERCE: Well, thank you. I mean, I also struggle a little bit with how a special court would get around some of the jurisdictional issues because I would worry in particular that if rape were not a crime in country X, where would that then leave you? And sad to say, there are some countries where it isn’t a crime. So if you start from the premise that you have to look for something special vis-à-vis the United Nations, and I think you go down lots of other avenues, and I think we should definitely have a policy conversation about that at some point. Our parliament is also very interested and they came out, our development committee came out, talked to the U.N., talked to others about this. So rather than me rehearse those policy questions, I think it’s something we should make a determined effort to think through before we take it to any particular part of the U.N. But I think it is just worth emphasizing what Simon said about the way U.N. takes decisions. It does take them in this sort of area by consensus. And if we call for votes, the more progressive point of view is likely to lose. So it’s not as—it ought to be straightforward and everybody ought to be absolutely horrified by these crimes, but very unfortunately, in the world of the U.N., they are not. And therefore, we need to give some thought to how we would actually take things forward. I’m wondering, though it doesn’t meet the real test, but I’m wondering, in response to Sarah’s question, whether a part of the answer, possibly as an interim answer, is to focus much more on survivors and victims and compensation and something around the way one would deal with person-to-person complaints. As I said, it’s inadequate for dealing with serious crimes, but it may be more achievable in the short term than some of the harder matters that we’re all interested in. And I wouldn’t see them as exclusive anyway, but I think we could start doing much more on that level than on some of the others. But I’m quite interested in what would happen if a U.N. staff member murdered another member in a foreign posting. And let’s say it was a crime over which there was some doubt. Let’s take crime of passion for want of a better one. You know, not everyone sees crime of passion as outright murder. I mean, I’m not a lawyer, so forgive the amateurish way I’m describing this, but you get—you get my point. The U.N. would surely have a way of reacting if one staff member killed another. So how do we—how do we get at that? And how do we build on that to do something about this issue? And I don’t have an answer to that, but it strikes me we should look into that at a policy level as well. BIGIO: Paula? DONOVAN: Peacekeeping countries that require the help of the international community appeal to the United Nations to become peacekeeping countries. And it’s part of a bargain. So if you have a substandard judicial and law enforcement system and you want to be a peacekeeping country, then you agree to a special court mechanism, so it’s as easy as that, which answers the question of which states. There would have to be an international statute against—precedents for this. The International Criminal Court is probably the most problematic, but there are precedents for international statutes and that would be applied in these special court mechanisms. How to ensure the U.N.’s independence? I’m rarely the only person—the biggest defender of the United Nations sitting in a room, but I sense that that might be—that might be the case here. If you believe in multilateralism, you must suspend your disbelief that the United Nations is capable of doing anything. We either take the U.N. as it is with all its flaws and its cumbersomeness and we try to work out a way that 193 member states can be entrusted to do certain work, or we say forget it, let’s disband it and start from scratch, and let Donald Trump emerge as the—as the—as the world leader. So I think we simply have to accept the foibles of the United Nations if we believe in multilateralism. Whether or not it should be survivor and victim driven, I think that, as you were saying, Ambassador, if there—if there were murders that were happening in the U.N. at the rate that there are cases of sexual exploitation and abuse, even let’s just take the most grievous ones, let’s just take violent rape, if we had as many murders in the U.N. as we have violent rapes in the U.N. that are reported, then absolutely we would need a special court mechanism for the murderers in the U.N. who are getting away with it. But this has been described by Ban Ki-moon as a cancer on the system, by Antonio Guterres and the other candidates for secretary-general as something—it was one of the few questions they needed to address when they were applying for the job. This has been isolated as a serious problem for which impunity reigns. The victims and the—and the survivors of these crimes, like any victims and survivors, should certainly have their voices heard and should have their opinions heard, and they should be part of the solutions. That’s why, if you go onto our website, you’ll see that we’re—that we are undertaking community consultations with former and current and future—former and current peacekeeping countries, the communities within them, and talking to individual community members, and asking them for their expertise, not just their sad stories, but their expertise. But you can’t have crimes driven, the punishment for crimes and the adjudication of crimes, driven by the victims. They simply are—that’s not the way—the way we protect ourselves as a human community by having the people who are unlucky enough to have been subjected to this particular crime drive the response and whether or not—whether or not those criminals should continue to be at large or whether they should be apprehended and punished and in what way. BIGIO: Well, there’s much more to cover in this discussion. But please join me in thanking the ambassador and Paula. (Applause.) (END)

As crisis in Yemen continues unabated, United Nations Special Envoy Martin Griffith hopes to nurture a political process that would bring an end to the war and its dire humanitarian consequences. Dr. Sawsan Al-Refaei and Najiba Al-Najar report from the frontlines on daily life in Yemen and the prospects for a peaceful political solution. This meeting is part of CFR’s New Strategies for Security Roundtable Series, generously supported by the Compton Foundation. Transcript BIGIO: Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to the Council on Foreign Relations. My name is Jamille Bigio, and I’m a senior fellow with the Council’s Women and Foreign Policy Program. Our program has worked with leading scholars for fifteen years now to analyze how elevating the status of women and girls advances U.S. foreign-policy objectives, including prosperity and security. I want to take a moment before we begin to thank our Advisory Council members and to thank the Compton Foundation for its support for today’s discussion. I also want to remind everyone that the presentation, discussion, and question-and-answer period will be on the record. So today—in fact, in just a few hours—the United Nations Security Council will meet to discuss progress in implementing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, which was the first U.N. resolution focused on women’s contributions to security. It passed eighteen years ago, and since then, there is a growing body of research that suggests that standard peace-and-security processes routinely overlook a critical strategy that could reduce conflict and advance stability, and that’s the inclusion of women. In fact, research has shown that the inclusion of civil-society groups including women’s groups in a peace negotiation makes the resulting agreement sixty-four percent less likely to fail; and according to another study, thirty-five percent more likely to last at least fifteen years. According to the Council’s own research, since 1990, women represented fewer than five percent of signatories to peace agreements and eight percent of negotiators. This matters in Yemen as it faces a protracted conflict and dire humanitarian consequences. We can look just at the news from the last few days to see what the costs are. There’s ongoing debate on the U.S.’s role in the war, spurred most recently by the assassination of the Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi. Yesterday an airstrike on a market in southern Yemen killed close to twenty civilians. The U.N.’s humanitarian chief told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that, and I quote, “There is now a clear and present danger of an imminent and great big famine engulfing Yemen, much bigger than anything any professional in this field has seen during their working lives.” And yet U.N. Special Envoy Martin Griffiths’ latest attempts to restart the political process have faltered. With all this news, there’s little attention to the perspective of Yemeni civil society, and less so to the perspective of Yemeni women in civil society, who are doing so much every day to try to not only help their families’ communities survive, but to lay the groundwork for a hopefully peaceful and inclusive political settlement. We are so lucky to be joined today by Dr. Sawsan Al-Refaei and Najiba Al-Najar. Najiba comes directly from Yemen, and Sawsan most recently from Amman. They are Yemeni activists, political advisers, and members of the Yemeni Pact for Peace and Security, with whom successive U.N. envoys have consulted. I wanted to start by asking you—Najiba, as I said, you are based in Aden. Sawsan, you are continuing your work on Yemen and have close connections there. I’ve shared what the news tells us about Yemen. Can you share more about daily life there? What does it really look like for people that are surviving across the country? (Note: Ms. Al-Najar’s remarks are made through an interpreter.) AL-NAJAR: My name is Najiba Al-Najar. I come from the province of Aden. I could tell you about the situation in Yemen. And right now I could share with you that the situation is really dire, not only in the north but also in the south; that it’s very, very hard for people in Yemen in general. As I said, the situation and the suffering is great. We are facing a famine situation that is described as could be the worst in the world. One in five families suffers from food shortage. Thirty percent of children less than five years old suffer from malnutrition. As do two (thousand) of every ten thousand people. The situation has been exacerbated by the drop in the value of the Yemeni currency, the inflation that’s been tremendous, and that makes the citizen’s ability to survive very, very hard. Yemeni people stand in long queues to get fuel. The fuel has reached prices that are extraordinary at this point. My country now is being split by many powers in the region. For the northwest, it’s been dominated by the Houthis. Part of the north is dominated by the government of Al-Hadi, while the south is the terrain of the United Arab Emirates. The south was its own independent country up until 1990. Right now there is a conflict between the groups in the south that are allied with the United Arab Emirates. They are in conflict with people with the government of Al-Hadi, and they are both vying to control the province of Aden. And the burden of all of this has been tremendous on women. Women do pay mostly the price. Women become the breadwinner for the family as men go on fighting in the north. They go on fighting, wage war in the north, or try to liberate the north. People have not received their salary. Civil servants have not received any salary since over a year now, especially in the northern parts. The impact has been tremendous also on education for children. The schools have been shut down because there was a strike from the teachers. Teacher salary before the war was $200 and now it is a mere $50. Let me tell you that there are women, children, and men who cannot find anything to eat. And they are left to eat trees. And some parts, there is a famine. I’ll speak a lot about the suffering of Yemeni people. And I really appeal for support for the Yemeni economy, and try to stop the rapid downfall of the value of the Yemeni currency, because the Yemeni people are not able to survive at this point if things go down this way. BIGIO: We read of the costs of the conflict and the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. But to hear from people who are witnessing it first-hand is a different experience and a different call to action for us all. Sawsan, what are your reflections on daily realities in Yemen? AL-REFAEI: I wanted to add from a perspective of women, because I think that there are tremendous challenges on the ground. And still it is even more difficult to be a woman in such circumstances. And I wanted to highlight specific things that the Yemeni women are subject to. One important area is education. We have been working for decades to get girls into schools. Millions of dollars have been put to do that, and now there is a huge withdrawal of girls and dropout. The coping mechanisms to the economic situation, which my colleague has elaborated on, falls heavily on girls more than boys. There is a tremendous rise in GBV cases, in early-marriage cases. And people try to cope with famine and with hunger using their girls for child labor, for child beggary, and so this falls more heavily on women. I wanted to also highlight the security situation, the deterioration of security. It falls also more heavily on women. They are subjected to rape and harassment and kidnapping because of the collapse of the security system and the collapse of the traditional law-enforcement institutions. In addition to this, I want to add that even female humanitarian workers, female human-rights and civil activists, are now under double scrutiny. They are harassed. They are subject to detention. They face tremendous challenges to move from one place to another, to give or express their opinions. And, of course, they face even double challenges to go out of Yemen and express these opinions of women in Yemen, because not just of the general limitations to travel like the travel ban and other visa issues, but specifically because they are women and they are not able to cross these long hours through security checks to come, for example, from the north to the south due to the closure of the Sana’a airport and then go abroad to express their opinions of women. So I just wanted to highlight again that it is difficult for everyone, for every man and woman and child, but it is more on women and girls. And those women not being able to speak for themselves and to speak for their own suffering, this is causing a tremendous blockade for women in Yemen. BIGIO: You both have outlined the tremendous toll of the war in Yemen, of the conflict. On the other side of that, we see incredible work that’s being led by communities in Yemen to overcome these challenges, to survive and to try to lay the groundwork for a future. Can you tell us what some of these organizations are doing? How are they contributing to improving security in their communities and to helping to advance the potential of a political settlement in the future? AL-REFAEI: Despite what has been said and despite all the challenges and all the risks, it is amazing and outstanding how local women were able to stand out and upscale their role in this crisis. I’ll give concrete examples of how women were able to mobilize their local communities in order to fill the gap that is caused by the collapse of state of fragmentation of state. So one is there is a huge number of young girls who were students, who were housewives, who were normal women who upscaled their role and started to contribute effectively in the humanitarian sector, not as—of course, there are members of NGOs and of humanitarian agencies, but they have initiated their own humanitarian initiatives using their own funds, the funds that they mobilize from the communities. Women played an important role trying to save education, especially education for girls. Local women have opened their houses and transformed their own houses to become local schools. Female teachers continue to teach without receiving their salaries for over two years now. Some local groups are going around local schools distributing breakfast for children because children faint in schools because they don’t have their morning meal. But also I want to highlight the efforts of local women in trying to build peace and trying to open dialogues, which is something that the world does not expect from women who are mostly illiterate. But they have done a great work trying to keep politics aside, trying to open dialogue, and they succeeded in mediation between local conflicting parties in opening safe corridors in releasing detainees, because those women, they’re trusted more by the communities. Their political intentions are not very—not suspicious. And therefore they were able to do this. But in the same time, these local initiatives are still small scale. They are still not supported, and they still are not well documented and modeled, because there isn’t enough attention to this level of initiatives. BIGIO: What’s the work that you’re seeing going on every day in Yemen to try to overcome the situation and to build something better in the future? AL-NAJAR: Yemeni women work on the ground. Women direct the society towards peace in villages, in cities. They contribute to the transport of food and medicine, humanitarian aid. Women are fighters, and not many people know about this fact. Women are joining the fight. They have opened corridors for detainees. They participate in the education of children, because many schools are shut. They bring relief and humanitarian aid and assistance. Let me give you an example of a woman called Fikreya Khaled. This woman has been very active. She’s an activist at the local level. She helped settle disputes between families in over 30 areas in the villages. And she’s been a defender of human rights, and she worked for peace and security, awareness. She provides humanitarian aid to all who need it in the village. There is another example of a woman called Amata Salamehad. And she works hard on the social level to rescue raped girls and to give them assistance. She also works to find disappeared persons—men, women, children. And there are lots of disappearances, as you probably know. She works as a volunteer. She’s a very strong woman. And she spares no effort to bring assistance locally to the people. BIGIO: You’re both part of a network, the Yemeni Women Pact for Peace and Security. And you have advised previous U.N. envoys, and you will soon have a formal role advising the current U.N. envoy, Martin Griffiths, on his attempts to foster a political solution. So what are your recommendations? What do you think will help to restart the process that’s faltered to date? And what do you want to ensure is part of that process? What do you recommend to him? AL-REFAEI: So the Yemen Pact is a group of sixty women coming from different backgrounds. They work in different sectors, and most of them represent grassroots NGOs, academia, and also women affiliated with political parties. We came together to advocate for one goal, which is better and meaningful representation of women, but not just that; also to transfer and make the women’s agenda present during any peace process. So we have provided consultations to U.N. envoys under our capacity of Track II initiative. Currently the Yemen Pact is doing a lot of advocacy with all our development partners, with the U.N. envoy office, but also with the parties to the peace process, for meaningful participation and inclusion of women. During this time, the Yemen Pact has three members in the Technical Advisory Group, which was formed by the U.N. envoy. They traveled with him to Geneva, and they provided consultation on several important aspects that were going to be discussed during the talks or the consultations in Geneva, like the economic solutions, like the security sector. They were not pigeonholed into only the women issues. But unfortunately the consultations did not proceed in Geneva. And we are hoping that the formation or establishment of the Technical Advisory Group would be a good first step towards more upscaled representation of women. We are recommending to increase the number of women from the Yemen Pact and other women that are active in the field. We are recommending that maybe a more defined role is given beyond just consultation, but also more empowered position to influence the agenda of the peace talks. We also recommend more frequent activities that are done and not waiting for talks to happen to engage women, because women have a lot to offer. They have a lot of experience, and not to just focus at the Track I level, which is very complicated—it’s very complex—but to start with the local-level initiatives of peacebuilding and trying to link them to Track II and Track III. We also recommend that women’s inclusion does not remain an adjunct component, and for all the actors—not just the U.N. envoy office, but all the stakeholders—to have a broader look at the women peace-and-security agenda, and trying to address not just the inclusion of women at the table of the talks but also to have them contribute and be voicing their women’s needs, and also the women’s contributions outside the room of negotiations. And, of course, we would like to recommend a very structured and meaningful plan for women’s issues to remain in the public rhetoric of the U.N. envoy. We don’t want it to remain seasonal. We want it to be something that is addressed every single time the issue of women is raised. BIGIO: Najiba, what do you recommend— AL-NAJAR: We recommend a resumption of the peace negotiations and a political settlement with the collaboration of the U.N. envoy. We are aiming for a greater contribution of women in the peace process. Quite unfortunately, men have ignored Resolution 2216, which calls for the participation of women. And we are keen that women participate and bring their insight in the settlement of the war. So we support the U.N. envoy or his efforts; however, the fact that women contribute to the consultative or the advisory group is not enough. Women should be at the negotiating table. They should participate, they should be present in the negotiations process. And we call on the international community to help solve the problem of the shipping and transport in the Red Sea, and to invite all parties concerned to participate in the negotiations, too, for a peaceful settlement of the crisis. BIGIO: What are the challenges that you both face in doing the work that you are doing? Sawsan, why are you in Amman and not in Yemen now doing this work? AL-REFAEI: I traveled to Amman in March 2015, and I was there as part of a regional funding committee, and from there I stayed one day. And then I went to Beirut for work with ILO regional office, and it was a one-day trip. So in the evening of that last day, I packed and I was ready to leave, but unfortunately in the morning we gathered that there was—that the airport is closed, and so basically I was outside when the war happened, and there was the closure of the main airport of the capital city, Sana’a. And then my family was in Sana’a. There were my kids, and my husband, and my parents, and they were heavily bombarded. So it was not possible to return, but I was able to get my two children out. But since then it was very difficult to return because of several security issues as a human rights activist, and for the security of my children. I was very lucky to obtain a position in Amman working for the Arab Campaign for Education. It was my passion, and I was already a founding member in Yemen, and I felt that if I was in Yemen in the first place when the war happened, I wouldn’t have been able to go out, or possibly it would have been, you know, like a psychological burden for me to leave my country. But being outside, I think I was able to contribute a lot to not only the education sector, but the humanitarian sector outside, trying to get funding, trying to voice the needs of the women, and because of that, I always say that we have to support women—not just those women inside, but women in the diaspora. I was one of the very few lucky ones who were able to—you know, who had the connections, who had the job, who had the English language that enabled me to do things for me and my family, but also to voice the needs of women. But there are lots of women in diaspora, not by choice like me, but that are in the diaspora because they are either threatened personally or they are wives, or daughters, or mothers of people who have direct threats, and therefore, they are not as privileged as I am. And we have to look at these women—not just support them, but also use them as a resource because I was able to travel around speaking about things that Yemeni women cannot speak about to the media inside Yemen. There is no neutral media any more in Yemen. Women are harassed, and threatened, and defamed. Even our delegation to the technical advisory group, which is associated with the U.N. envoy—we should be a delegation that is prestigious. It was defamed on certain social media, they are receiving continuous threats. People view them as traitors, as women following a foreign agenda, and they are under huge scrutiny. So women like us who have the luxury to speak, we’re using every single opportunity to transfer the voices until hopefully one day they will be able to speak more freely. BIGIO: And in fact, one of your colleagues, who was meant to travel with you, was not granted a visa in the end, and one of the speakers that we had intended to join us was not granted a visa to travel here. And she requested the opportunity to share a brief word with you, and so here is a very short video clip of her, and then we will open for the question and answers. (Video presentation begins.) BIGIO: It’s a challenge for women from countries that are under the travel ban to attend meetings of the United Nations here in New York. There are exceptions, obviously. Najiba has made it to us from Yemen, but there are many whose visas aren’t approved and whose recommendations and voices aren’t heard. I’d now like to open to question and answer from the audience, so if you could please raise your placard, we will take as many questions as we can. Elizabeth. Q: Thank you so much, and I think we all want to make sure you know that we are very angry and frustrated as well, and that we will all go away from this room and talk about what you have shared with us, both to people that we hope can make a difference, but also just to other people in our lives so more Americans become aware. I’m from the Department of Peacekeeping at the U.N. We agree with everything you said about women being part of Track 1, that being observers is not good enough. It would be helpful for me if you could share any additional specifics on what the special envoy could do, what the Security Council could do to help you. I’m also very interested in any changes you may have seen about women’s groups being involved by the newish humanitarian coordinator. We’ve had a change on the humanitarian coordinator side. The country teams are supposed to be involving women’s groups in their work; it doesn’t happen. I’d like to hear from you if that is happening or not. Thank you. AL-REFAEI: Thank you for your question, and thank you for your support. There is definitely a huge muffling effect for anything that is relevant to Yemen. It’s very painful, it’s very devastating, and any effort to speak out—what we mentioned today is highly appreciated. For the special envoy, we are cautious about not being caught in the very small details of how women can be involved, and the reason behind that is it is always—these arguments and discussions are healthy, but sometimes they are used as an excuse to delay the inclusion of women. And this is something we don’t want to happen, so we always say that we are calling for an upscaled membership for women, a wider scope of involvement, and definitely a more empowered position to influence the agenda. But I am concerned that maybe if we try to suggest particular numbers, or figures, or mechanisms, then this would be used as to, you know, impact the outcome, which is more women sitting around the table. We know that there are several women groups—the Yemen pact has been the consultative body for the U.N. envoy, but there are so many other women who can be a part of this. Well, we know that the process cannot be transparent a hundred percent, cannot be like accountable a hundred percent. We are sixty women from different sectors, but we are not representative hundred percent of all women. But we shouldn’t be, and we think that this should not be an obstacle to a full and meaningful inclusion of women. The U.N. envoy could have, under his discretion, the decision to involve like, say, from eight to fifteen women, and who will be the members. This is not our issue. We just want a mechanism that is workable, that is formed by consensus and not driven by one party alone, or one institution alone, and we want a very clear and well-defined role for the women. So it’s not enough for women to go, and observe, and come back, or provide consultation papers and come back; there is room for a lot of activities that will allow women not necessarily sitting on the table because that’s really—nobody is sitting on the table yet—but to influence the peace agenda and to say what could be done now until peace talks can happen. As for the humanitarian sector, there are some good steps in terms of the new plans and the new approaches. However, the humanitarian operation in Yemen being the largest in the world now, quite disappointed about how it is handling protection issues. Protection is a huge challenge for Yemeni women, especially those in displacement. Protection is still looked at as a pure humanitarian issue, and it’s disempowering, the way that the OCHA, for example, is handling gender in its programs. Women have a lot to offer; they are not just there and the IDB comes to receive food baskets and blankets. Me and my colleague, we already gave examples on how women are able to lead, they are able to decide, they are able to localize policies—humanitarian policies and programs, and we feel that the approach is still very passive towards women, and we need more empowerment. Thank you. BIGIO: Yes. Q: Gareth Sweeney, Crisis Action. And thank you both sincerely for sharing your experiences. You mentioned that the pact engages not only with the Griffiths process but also with the key actors. So a two-part question if I may—firstly whether you think the consultations so far are sufficiently inclusive of key actors within Yemen, including southern groups, and whether all of those that are part of the consultation, whether their delegations have any women representatives as part of the consultation. And secondly, I’m curious to know if you engage with—you mentioned that you engage with key actors bilaterally. How receptive are those actors—for example, the Saudis or the Houthis to the pact? AL-NAJAR: So with regards to the Yemeni women pact for peace and security, the special envoy has chosen three women from the pact and five from outside this pact, and all these women are asked to do it to provide papers at each step. So, for example, at the Geneva part, they were asked to produce three papers: one on the economy, one on politics, and one on building trust. But as far as having any role with the parties, the advisory group does not talk directly with the parties because they are outside of the table of negotiation. So with regards to talking directly with Ansar Allah and Saudi Arabia, as I mentioned the pact, there are people from different political persuasions, and there are women from Ansar Allah, and they did have conversations with those people. But as I talked about earlier, people have been using the Resolution 2216 to actually sideline women and say this specific moment does not call for the participation of women. That being said, the Hadi government did have a delegation with a seat for one woman in Geneva. With regards to Saudi Arabia, we have not talked to them, but we hope to be able to talk to the Saudi delegation and talk to them about the importance of the inclusion of women, and the inclusion of women for any of the negotiations, but there were no direct talks up to now, but we hope it will be so in the future. AL-REFAEI: Yeah, I just want to add on the representation in the delegations, again, from a practical point of view, you can never be a hundred percent inclusive. We are concerned that whenever the issue of women inclusion is raised then we are faced by the argument that if we include women, we will have to have another quota for civil society, and another quota for southern people, and another—which is a very bizarre argument because women are inherent to the process, and of course, the parties’ delegations are expected to be inclusive of all the groups. But we don’t want to fragment our fight or struggles. We are for an inclusive process, but we are holding our government specifically accountable to the National Dialogue Conference outcomes, which is the basis for the legitimacy of the government, and where thirty percent quota is already approved and adopted, and at least we expect from our own government to have that quota in the delegations. We expect it less from the Houthis, and that’s what we’re pushing for right now. BIGIO: This is such an important point that the National Dialogue process was an incredibly inclusive process. There is a model of how this can be done in a way where all voices are at the table and where women had a very influential role at the table, and as you’ve said, managed to negotiate that the outcomes have an agreement for a 30 percent quota. So that’s already there and should be followed through in the next process, both by the U.N., as well as by the parties themselves. Q: You’ve mentioned the contacts with groups in Saudi Arabia. Have you gone further in the Arab world? And I have in mind particularly Tunisia and Cairo. Now politically their governments are all over the place as far as Yemen goes and who they support, but in those countries there are some very active women’s associations, a source of counsel, perhaps, a source of support and of pressure on their own governments. AL-REFAEI: So the Yemen pact is working to be as inclusive as possible, so we’re trying to work with other women groups in Yemen that have been formed. But in the same time, we are approaching Yemen groups—sorry—women groups that are in other countries, but more of the countries that are facing the same challenges we are facing, so we are in close proximity to their advisory bodies. And the groups are formed in Syria, and Libya, in Iraq, and we try always to get lessons from Kurdistan, for example. So these efforts take place. The political process influences our work, although we are a(n) apolitical body, and we feel that maybe countries like Tunisia and Egypt—the political dynamics are quite different than Yemen. We definitely read a lot about that. But we feel that the dynamics and the challenges are shared with the countries I’ve mentioned. We are trying, in our recommendations to try to, you know, like address ourselves and also the U.N. envoy office, and partners, to learn lessons from what happened in Syria, for example, in terms of inclusion of women, what happened in Libya and Kurdistan. And we’re trying also to give them—countries that are about to start a transition process to give them the lessons we learned from the National Dialogue that happened in Yemen in 2011. So, yeah, we’re trying our best to work with other countries. BIGIO: And it’s a great point, as you look at the regional politics and the regional process around an attempt to restart the political settlement, as you said, can women’s groups in those countries be allies in pressuring their own governments and their own—and informing their own governments’ policies when it comes to their engagement around a political settlement; that there is this incredible network of very active women’s groups across the region who are looking to—who share common priorities around highlighting how women are affected differently and their contributions to the process, so thank you. Q: Thank you. Patricia Rosenfield. First of all, I want to thank both of you and Jamille for this powerful and upsetting, but at the same time, very exciting discussion because what I think is very important and perhaps somewhat distinctive, although reminiscent of other situations in—at a phase perhaps not quite as egregious, but very difficult situations, is the role of women locally organizing without outside support to really try to build the basis for peace and development, and positive outcomes. What I wanted to ask—and it relates to the points about connections with other groups, and I think it’s extremely important to connect with groups facing comparable situations—but I’m wondering, and I think it was Sawsan who said that the critique from within is when you work with others outside the country, particularly from the West, that you are succumbing to the Western agenda. So I wanted to ask you both about what is the role of the outside, non-governmental actors, whether it’s the foundation, the philanthropy community, the—around the world, not just the American philanthropy community, but others—in sustaining or encouraging the connections of women in and outside of Yemen, the diaspora activities, and the connections of networks of women. Would this be positive? Could this be negative? Is it better to rely on the U.N. however disempowering the humanitarian—official humanitarian assistance can be, but trying to improve that. I’m just curious what would be the—what your take is on the positive or negative aspects of outside assistance and connections from the international—perhaps Western—financial support community. AL-REFAEI: For the humanitarian sector, I can answer you because this is the sector I have been working in in the past three years. And I think that, first of all, we have to acknowledge—like Najiba introduced this morning—there are huge, tremendous humanitarian challenges and needs. And in such a context, sometimes when we criticize, you know, we really look like—cruel and insensitive. But what we are aiming for—we appreciate all the humanitarian actors in Yemen, whether it’s the U.N., whether it’s the international NGOs coming in with their different types. However, we feel that also learning lessons from Syria and Iraq, that in protracted crises, you have to be very strategic. You have to provide direct aid, but in the same time, you have to be very strategic. Because the conflict of Yemen has, you know—is prolonged—it’s the third now and we’re going to the fourth, and fifth, I hope not—but the short-sighted approach to humanitarian aid is not only causing depletion of resilience of communities, but on the other hand, it is leaving a lot of room for corruption, for warlords to make advantage of the situation, and in different areas of Yemen so across areas in Yemen. I'm not speaking of a specific area. And for this I think that there is a divorce between the humanitarian sector and the political and security sector, and this should not continue. The humanitarian sector is politicized, and the political agenda is also influenced by the humanitarian challenges. But these sectors should speak to each other. There are huge economic challenges, and if we continue dealing with a humanitarian crisis as if it is going to end tomorrow, then we are—we are deteriorating; we are not helping. There is a huge call from the people of Yemen for sustainable economic interventions. The urgent need now is to help the deterioration of the Yemeni rial. It’s an urgent thing that should be done. It’s to save what is left. We can continue giving food, and water, and shelter—these are important, but if we do not do something about the limitation of imports, the problems with the central bank, all these economic huge issues that are solved by political will more than anything else, then we will be meeting three years from now saying the same things. So I call for reform in the humanitarian sector, and I also call for more connection and coordination between the peace process and the humanitarian process. BIGIO: And as you raise funding, another data point just to share is that a review—globally only around 0.4 percent of total funding given to fragile states makes it to women’s groups. So the groups that are doing the work that we’ve heard, of opening corridors, of releasing detainees, of responding to the daily needs, and of negotiating for improved situations received just a drop of the total aid that is given, so it’s certainly an issue that we have to highlight. Q: Very quickly. I’m Marta Colburn from U.N. Women Yemen, and we are the technical support for the Tawafaq, the Yemeni women’s pact. And we worked on their visas since February basically, so long process, a lot of networking. But I did want to mention just briefly, recently U.N. Women Yemen finished a film on Yemeni women peacemakers, so it profiles four Yemeni women from different parts of the country, one of them who Najiba mentioned, and it’s on the U.N. Women Yemen’s website. So it’s called something like Yemeni Women Building Peace in Times of War. BIGIO: Thank you. And I just want to thank Sawsan and Najiba so much for joining us today, and for sharing their insights, and for the incredible work that they are doing. (Applause.) (END)