(United Nations) ‘My rape matters, my body matters’: Rape victims take their message to the UN on Friday, where the General Assembly adopted a ‘historic’ resolution on access to justice for survivors of sexual violence.
Posted at 6:12 p.m.
In a text adopted by consensus, the General Assembly “urges States to take effective measures, within the framework of their national legal systems and in accordance with international law, to enable victims and survivors of sexual and kind of access to justice, remedies and assistance”.
The resolution, greeted with cries of joy and applause, stresses in particular the importance for the victims of “rapid and unhindered access” to justice, the need to “strengthen” international cooperation and the importance of the protection women’s rights in general.
“The General Assembly has never passed an autonomous resolution which recognizes rape in peacetime, it is a historic day”, commented to AFP Amanda Nguyen, founder of the NGO Rise, which fights for this text for years to make the voices of the “1.3 billion survivors of sexual assault heard around the world”.
“I wanted to be an astronaut, I didn’t want to be an activist, but here I am. And the clothes I wore when I was raped are on display here, ”continues the 30-year-old activist.
Pants, shorts, more or less covering dresses, and even a little girl’s swimsuit: since mid-July and until Friday, 103 models were on display in the lobby of the UN headquarters in New York.
An exhibition called “What were you wearing? (“What were you wearing?”) to denounce the guilt too often thrown on the victims of sexual assault.
And even if the vote on the UN resolution can be seen only as “symbolic”, it already represents progress, believes Amanda Nguyen. “Because we are there, we are shouting. We say our rape matters and you need to recognize that.”
Many defenders of the text hoped that it would be adopted without the shadow of a reservation by all the Member States. But Nigeria, supported by several other countries, including Egypt, Malaysia and Iran, tried to modify the text.
All his amendments removing references to sexual violence within the couple, gender-based violence, or even access to contraception, were however largely rejected.