"The Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (OSRSG-SVC) serves as the United Nations spokesperson and political advocate on conflict-related sexual violence, and is the chair of the network UN Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict."
Here is the first page of the report that discusses progress, political momentum and other developments.
After Aquiring the UN reports from the Office of the Special Representative for the Secretary General for Sexual Violence in Conflict (OSRSG-SVC) in PDF form (see below), effort was put into creating an .xls file to upload into CartoDB. Thanks to CartoDB this was relatively painless! There was an awful lot of cutting and pasting and arranging columns to create a simple and straight forward table. There are approximately 66 rows of country reports. The reports are available on both the OSRSG-SVC and Security Council websites.
Sexual violence in conflict is not a new phenomenon; in fact it is one of the oldest crimes in the world. One can easily find reference to it in the Bible, Quran, and most other holy books. For decades, sexual violence in conflict was perceived an inevitable and inconsequential by product of war. For instance, during the Second World War, millions of women were raped, but no concrete records exist.
The status quo of sexual violence as a development issue rather than a human rights issue remained until the end of the 20th century. In 2000, the United Nations Security Council adopted Security Council Resolution 1325, which recognized the impact of war on women and their need for participation of women in peace processes, leading to prevention. Resolution 1325 became a landmark resolution that set the foundation of the larger women, peace and security agenda.
The Security Council adopted resolution 1820 in 2008, which declared that “rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide.” This resolution was followed by 1888 (2009), under which the Council asked the Secretary-General to nominate a Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, establish the Office of the Special Representative, and a Team of Experts on rule of law/sexual violence in conflict. Under 1888 the Secretary-General was requested to submit an annual report on sexual violence in conflict.
To further strengthen the mandate of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, the Council adopted resolution 1960 (2010) and 2106 (2013) which provide tools and prevention mechanisms against sexual violence.
For the annual report the Office of the Special Representative of the secretary-general on Sexual Violence in Conflict seeks inputs on progress from UN field offices, including peacekeeping and special political missions for the period 1 January to 31 December of that year. A series of questions are submitted related to trends and developments on sexual violence in conflict in addition to a request for policy recommendations.
