disrupt justice I was invited to come
and talk today with this traumatic that
you know deconstruction and I found it
very interesting given the job that I’m
doing so I’m a lawyer in the
international criminal law and I worked
on war crimes
so since 15 years this is my job so I
apologize for that but this is a mass
grave and I wanted to start with this
because this is the reality of what a
war crime is as a matter of fact here
crime against humanity is a mass grave
we located in open in 2018 Bosnia and
then I wanted to show you these people
and these people are survivors of war
conflict and there are quite specific
survivors and they are the people I’m
going to talk to you about today the
little girl here is called him by she he
is 7 years old and she’s a child born
from rape in Zimbabwe and this women
here are survivors of sexual violence in
conflict rape in DRC trying to get back
actually to their life so why I’m
showing that you for two reason so I’m
this lawyer I’m I’ve started my career
at the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia I continue to
work on war crime and post-conflict
justice I’m working with mostly the UN
and European Union so meaning by that
and I’m very well familiar with the
international organization and
institution and then the tamasic of
deconstruction sounded quite interesting
to me for two reasons the first is that
I’m a little bit older than you and when
I was a student there was the war in
Bosnia
but at the same time there was the
creation of the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and
then right after since we were talking
about African countries in Africa the
creation of the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rhonda and both Susan’s
institution were created upon decision
of the Security Council of the UN and
then at this time I was like 25 and I
was studying law and I was very
interested to I don’t know give a sense
uh-huh what I was doing and I wanted to
work on that and at the time also we
didn’t have this master super
specialized on thematic I was just
studying international criminal law and
it was very the beginning of this
sematic in France so I had the great
opportunity to move to the Hague and
work at the ICTY at the very beginning
why I’m telling you all of this it’s
because I had lots of hope because it
was 50 years after Nuremberg trial and
it was the first time that international
criminal justice was coming back to the
public affair and public place and that
we were starting to say again okay
never this again you know no impunity
etc and we were talking about crime
against humanity and genocide and at the
same time in part of this work we work
on the idea of an International Criminal
Court a permanent one that came into
force if I remember 2002 and that is
existing today as you know now this is
the nice part of the story so all this
time I’ve been developing my career I’ve
been lucky enough I’m doing a job that I
love although it’s very difficult one
but working on justice now the world has
been changing a lot even when I was a
student because we’re talking about that
there was no internet there was not much
of technology I didn’t have a mobile
phone when I was at college all of this
happen which is a good thing
I think depend on how we look at it
at the same time today if you every
morning open your computer your TV your
tablet your phone what you are hearing
about is at the moment conflict in Syria
not too long ago Libya and still is in
chaos all conflict all around the world
meaning that we are still facing
atrocities even though we were all
saying you know never that again freedom
is our saying in French and among all of
this there is an issue that relate to
sexual violence in conflict and for a
very mysterious reason and I found very
interesting the talk and very moving of
course the talk of Lucia before there
are some topics that for reason that I
cannot understand we don’t really want
to talk about or we don’t really want to
make public sure sexual violence in
conflict has always existed and we know
you know in history that sexual violence
and rape has been always an issue
targeting in majority women but not only
so come back to the beginning I am a war
crime lawyer and I spend most of my time
on the field so I spend search I don’t
know 75% of my time still today on
conflict zone so I meet lots of lots of
victims of war of conflict and my first
10 years I spend quite a lot of time in
in the Balkans and then I realized that
all the indictment we were developing
with the ICTY we were not targeting
sexual violence or really on a very
sporadic manner and the reason for that
was that often investigators a
prosecutor was saying well you know it’s
very difficult to prove and the
survivors they don’t talk they don’t
speak because there is a stigma and bla
bla bla
which actually I will tell you after but
it’s not true they speak so all over the
years I also realized that we are in a
kind of
changing area and institutions find
their limits if today I’m asking you
does any one of you wants to work for
the UN you would probably means tell me
yes because it’s very prestigious when
we have good salary and if you put it on
your CV it’s good for your career but I
have to say that I meet more and more
and more students coming to me and
telling me you know I’m not really sure
I want to work for the UN because if we
look at what we are going through today
we see the UN as really powerless and
actually it’s not the fault of the UN
it’s the states because the UN is not
Lumis under the goal the UN are you know
states government and government they
have in a particular interest real
politic so four years ago in 2014 to
come back on sexual violence in conflict
I decided first to create an NGO called
we are not weapons of war it’s actually
started with a campaign international
campaign that was I’m not a weapon of
war and the first objective of that was
really to put sexual violence as a
public debate sexual violence in
conflict sorry and we quite succeeded
well because if you tried to look and
especially in France four years ago
almost nobody was really talking about
sexual violence in conflict today lots
of journalists now covering the subject
documents are documentary star you know
making documentary about this topic
so and it becomes really a subject that
comes to the media and public attention
so this is really good but then I start
to think okay there is a need really to
understand what we are talking about and
what we are talking about on one hand
you have the issue of rape and sexual
violence and you know we talk a lot
about sexual violence recently with the
movement me too and there is war crimes
and I put under war crimes what comes to
international crimes okay this is where
my job is this is where
work me I have no specialty whatsoever
on sexual violence and I have to say I
have no personal interest in that so to
speak I have no personal experience so
really nothing relate me to it but
really I was taken aback to see the
number of survivors on the ground that
were totally ignored and on top of that
people were talking on media and keep
repeating you know survivor they yeah
but because of the stigma they don’t
want to talk and etc so actually at the
end of the day it was also their fault
if we could not you know approach the
subject so we are not weapons of war is
right in between I’m saying this because
we are not an NGO for women rights and
one thing that I realized was very
important to make understand people is
that sexual violence in conflict is not
an issue of women majority of women are
targeted of course it’s a reality but
sexual violence in conflict is a tool
and it’s a strategic tool and it targets
whoever it decides to targets with very
specific objectives if it always had
existed in you know in history the fact
is that as of today in every conflict
that we look at today rape is used
massively and systematically and there’s
a reason for that I put this map because
this map shows the number of country
where rape raping country has been used
as a tool and as I speak to you today
there are the the rape is used massively
in almost 20 country so as I said it has
a very specific objective depending on
the country depending on the culture
depending on the situation it aims at
humiliating it is tool for ethnic
cleansing it was the case in Bosnia it
was an element of genocide
in Ronda its today an element of
possible genocide in Burma with the
Rohingya it’s also a tool to gain
information so it’s a form of torture
it’s a tool to eliminate opponents on
and prevent them to come back on the
political scene that’s the case in Syria
in Libya where you have lots of men that
are raped it’s a tool of terror of
course it’s a to also to control
resources meaning that it’s a way to
terrorize population and then you have
the entire community that moves from
territory that’s the case in DRC for
more than 20 years because you have
company extracting mineral and they want
to populate the population to move and
they do that and why rape in war is a
fantastic tool it’s because you know you
don’t kill people almost all the people
I I see all the survivor I meet at one
point or another the comments say I’d
rather be dead because it puts yourself
in a kind of prison and rape doesn’t
target only the victim meaning the
person you’ve raped but it has an effect
on the family on the community because
of the stigma and etc so it’s a very
efficient food it’s a very cheap one
it’s like a Kalashnikov and this is
something that needs to be very well
understood now the challenge of the
question is that we have no figures in a
number you will hear and you will read
many I see that sometime it pops up
somewhere and some report that there is
an exact number of victims of rape in my
country there are absolutely no scoping
study that has been done on this
question which shows you also and reveal
the fact that this is a secondary a kind
of topic this is where my NGO is going
to engage very soon to conduct the first
global study on sexual violence in
conflict but beside that there is no
adapted services provided to survivors
there is a complete legal impunity for
perpetrator meaning that most of the
time we prosecute people
for other accounts even people who have
been ordering rape because I didn’t say
that but you have the people who rape
and the people who order that’s why I
said it’s a strategy it’s not something
that comes up like that you know the
raping conflicts its massive it’s not
one person who is being raped and it has
been decided at high level it’s not a
soldier that comes up and say oh well
let’s let’s do that today it doesn’t
work like this and there is no
coordination and no adapted response to
conflict situation of today now when we
come back to this d constriction this is
the situation I thought about different
things so one is the issue of sexual
violence in conflict but the other is
that I’m spending lots of time as I told
you in conflict zone and you see today
that the limitation of organization what
I was just talking about before and of
some states today is that it’s more and
more difficult to go on conflict zone
which create a second problem is that we
don’t know what’s going on there or
actually we do because remember we have
internet we have social networks so we
have lots of video today you can almost
see on life what’s going on in Syria in
laguna daniel recently okay but who
tells you that this is true that this is
not propaganda nobody so we have lots of
documentation we have today a
possibility to see what’s going on
through the technology and the device of
people who are there but what do we do
with it not much so we thought that
technology could be an answer for sexual
violence in conflict to respond to the
challenges that I just mentioned before
the fact that there is no number enough
here no scope of the of the of the topic
all around the world we don’t really
know how it works and and to which Scott
and the question of survivors because
most of the time they are in area that
are not reachable most of the
you don’t even know they don’t alert
themselves because they don’t know where
to do to do it and they are in zone
where you cannot locate them I just came
back from Central African Republic as an
example that I could give you many other
where you know a large part of the
territory is still controlled by militia
in a car you have a UN mission ok and
these people they cannot go there
because they get killed and this is what
leads me to this point the construction
is to me
I think a moment we are now with this
new challenge an era we need to think
differently on how to respond to
situation and more adapted to reality so
today lots of UN people get killed
government cannot engage in anything and
you can see Syria there is a blockade at
the UN which actually is not the fault
of the UN is the question of the state
so how technology can be a tool not a
solution because technology is not a
solution and actually I’m making a kind
of thing here because we hear a lot you
know technology is a solution no
technology is not a solution you know
you don’t you don’t solve a problem with
technology it’s a tool it’s a manner to
may be accelerate something or or to act
the you know with a different tool and
means but it doesn’t give you a solution
we need people we need human with this
technology so we created the backup and
the backup will be able to provide
real-time figures of rape in conflict in
real-time it’s a legal tool I will not
go into details here but that allow us
to create files and to authentic I am
and so to make them receivable before a
court so to work on this impunity part
it’s a tool of empowerment why because
I’m going to show you that it’s the
people who gonna
use it the survivor themselves or other
people on the ground its participative
because you work together on that and
it’s also a tool for ability ssin so I’m
showing you quickly super technical but
this is the backup so this is an app
with a phone and we have a back office
where we receive the alert and we
develop criminal analysis on this and
create file and we work with the ICC
aware with courts at national level so
this is I wanted to show you because
it’s the first time we are actually
showing it’s going to be ready in two
weeks it’s actually already ready and
this is how the back office would look
it’s very simple here but it’s a bit
more complicated the way it looks now so
as I said we need to discuss track for
better rebuilding and that’s a way this
tool for survivors and people on the
ground to be actively part themselves of
justice and of their own process of
rehabilitation
concretely it means that you are let’s
talk again central african republic and
you will find a salon who is there and
then an army made an incursion and
attack and she has been with it she can
use this encrypted it is totally
encrypted and invisible on the phone you
see it when you and you push on it but
he disappeared after and then she will
answer some very few question we will
locate her we will talk with her
eventually if she wants to and instead
of having international intervening
going there etc we will put her in
contact with the nearest doctor because
I didn’t tell you but I guess you know
that sexual violence in conflict is very
brutal and the first service they need
is medical so this is a way of inventing
new system to try to respond better to
the needs of people and to make them
actor of it and I took this quote
because I really liked it
this is just us it’s like maybe you can
think that conflicts are far away from
you probably you can think that rape in
conflict is really far from you and that
this will never happen in here well
first of all during the Second World War
here in France
it happened so don’t forget that second
these are also consequences because
today and you was talking about that we
have lots of migrant and refugees and
people are fleeing the country because
of conflict so this is a situation that
we need to face now and that is of
concern for us though actually me I
think migrants coming refugees coming to
our country is actually a good thing but
that’s another topic so to dis contract
yes we need to invent we need to share
together we need to create and we need
to innovate and I wanted to talk to you
today about that not specifically about
raping in conflict because I wanted to
show you that on a subject like that
that is extremely dramatic and complex
because we talk about international
prosecution we can do so with technology
and with a new way of thinking and
that’s way you can buy pie bypass
institution and you can push tomorrow
the ICC the court government to act on
it because you will have initiated
something that create this incentive that we do need thank you very much
and talk today with this traumatic that
you know deconstruction and I found it
very interesting given the job that I’m
doing so I’m a lawyer in the
international criminal law and I worked
on war crimes
so since 15 years this is my job so I
apologize for that but this is a mass
grave and I wanted to start with this
because this is the reality of what a
war crime is as a matter of fact here
crime against humanity is a mass grave
we located in open in 2018 Bosnia and
then I wanted to show you these people
and these people are survivors of war
conflict and there are quite specific
survivors and they are the people I’m
going to talk to you about today the
little girl here is called him by she he
is 7 years old and she’s a child born
from rape in Zimbabwe and this women
here are survivors of sexual violence in
conflict rape in DRC trying to get back
actually to their life so why I’m
showing that you for two reason so I’m
this lawyer I’m I’ve started my career
at the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia I continue to
work on war crime and post-conflict
justice I’m working with mostly the UN
and European Union so meaning by that
and I’m very well familiar with the
international organization and
institution and then the tamasic of
deconstruction sounded quite interesting
to me for two reasons the first is that
I’m a little bit older than you and when
I was a student there was the war in
Bosnia
but at the same time there was the
creation of the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and
then right after since we were talking
about African countries in Africa the
creation of the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rhonda and both Susan’s
institution were created upon decision
of the Security Council of the UN and
then at this time I was like 25 and I
was studying law and I was very
interested to I don’t know give a sense
uh-huh what I was doing and I wanted to
work on that and at the time also we
didn’t have this master super
specialized on thematic I was just
studying international criminal law and
it was very the beginning of this
sematic in France so I had the great
opportunity to move to the Hague and
work at the ICTY at the very beginning
why I’m telling you all of this it’s
because I had lots of hope because it
was 50 years after Nuremberg trial and
it was the first time that international
criminal justice was coming back to the
public affair and public place and that
we were starting to say again okay
never this again you know no impunity
etc and we were talking about crime
against humanity and genocide and at the
same time in part of this work we work
on the idea of an International Criminal
Court a permanent one that came into
force if I remember 2002 and that is
existing today as you know now this is
the nice part of the story so all this
time I’ve been developing my career I’ve
been lucky enough I’m doing a job that I
love although it’s very difficult one
but working on justice now the world has
been changing a lot even when I was a
student because we’re talking about that
there was no internet there was not much
of technology I didn’t have a mobile
phone when I was at college all of this
happen which is a good thing
I think depend on how we look at it
at the same time today if you every
morning open your computer your TV your
tablet your phone what you are hearing
about is at the moment conflict in Syria
not too long ago Libya and still is in
chaos all conflict all around the world
meaning that we are still facing
atrocities even though we were all
saying you know never that again freedom
is our saying in French and among all of
this there is an issue that relate to
sexual violence in conflict and for a
very mysterious reason and I found very
interesting the talk and very moving of
course the talk of Lucia before there
are some topics that for reason that I
cannot understand we don’t really want
to talk about or we don’t really want to
make public sure sexual violence in
conflict has always existed and we know
you know in history that sexual violence
and rape has been always an issue
targeting in majority women but not only
so come back to the beginning I am a war
crime lawyer and I spend most of my time
on the field so I spend search I don’t
know 75% of my time still today on
conflict zone so I meet lots of lots of
victims of war of conflict and my first
10 years I spend quite a lot of time in
in the Balkans and then I realized that
all the indictment we were developing
with the ICTY we were not targeting
sexual violence or really on a very
sporadic manner and the reason for that
was that often investigators a
prosecutor was saying well you know it’s
very difficult to prove and the
survivors they don’t talk they don’t
speak because there is a stigma and bla
bla bla
which actually I will tell you after but
it’s not true they speak so all over the
years I also realized that we are in a
kind of
changing area and institutions find
their limits if today I’m asking you
does any one of you wants to work for
the UN you would probably means tell me
yes because it’s very prestigious when
we have good salary and if you put it on
your CV it’s good for your career but I
have to say that I meet more and more
and more students coming to me and
telling me you know I’m not really sure
I want to work for the UN because if we
look at what we are going through today
we see the UN as really powerless and
actually it’s not the fault of the UN
it’s the states because the UN is not
Lumis under the goal the UN are you know
states government and government they
have in a particular interest real
politic so four years ago in 2014 to
come back on sexual violence in conflict
I decided first to create an NGO called
we are not weapons of war it’s actually
started with a campaign international
campaign that was I’m not a weapon of
war and the first objective of that was
really to put sexual violence as a
public debate sexual violence in
conflict sorry and we quite succeeded
well because if you tried to look and
especially in France four years ago
almost nobody was really talking about
sexual violence in conflict today lots
of journalists now covering the subject
documents are documentary star you know
making documentary about this topic
so and it becomes really a subject that
comes to the media and public attention
so this is really good but then I start
to think okay there is a need really to
understand what we are talking about and
what we are talking about on one hand
you have the issue of rape and sexual
violence and you know we talk a lot
about sexual violence recently with the
movement me too and there is war crimes
and I put under war crimes what comes to
international crimes okay this is where
my job is this is where
work me I have no specialty whatsoever
on sexual violence and I have to say I
have no personal interest in that so to
speak I have no personal experience so
really nothing relate me to it but
really I was taken aback to see the
number of survivors on the ground that
were totally ignored and on top of that
people were talking on media and keep
repeating you know survivor they yeah
but because of the stigma they don’t
want to talk and etc so actually at the
end of the day it was also their fault
if we could not you know approach the
subject so we are not weapons of war is
right in between I’m saying this because
we are not an NGO for women rights and
one thing that I realized was very
important to make understand people is
that sexual violence in conflict is not
an issue of women majority of women are
targeted of course it’s a reality but
sexual violence in conflict is a tool
and it’s a strategic tool and it targets
whoever it decides to targets with very
specific objectives if it always had
existed in you know in history the fact
is that as of today in every conflict
that we look at today rape is used
massively and systematically and there’s
a reason for that I put this map because
this map shows the number of country
where rape raping country has been used
as a tool and as I speak to you today
there are the the rape is used massively
in almost 20 country so as I said it has
a very specific objective depending on
the country depending on the culture
depending on the situation it aims at
humiliating it is tool for ethnic
cleansing it was the case in Bosnia it
was an element of genocide
in Ronda its today an element of
possible genocide in Burma with the
Rohingya it’s also a tool to gain
information so it’s a form of torture
it’s a tool to eliminate opponents on
and prevent them to come back on the
political scene that’s the case in Syria
in Libya where you have lots of men that
are raped it’s a tool of terror of
course it’s a to also to control
resources meaning that it’s a way to
terrorize population and then you have
the entire community that moves from
territory that’s the case in DRC for
more than 20 years because you have
company extracting mineral and they want
to populate the population to move and
they do that and why rape in war is a
fantastic tool it’s because you know you
don’t kill people almost all the people
I I see all the survivor I meet at one
point or another the comments say I’d
rather be dead because it puts yourself
in a kind of prison and rape doesn’t
target only the victim meaning the
person you’ve raped but it has an effect
on the family on the community because
of the stigma and etc so it’s a very
efficient food it’s a very cheap one
it’s like a Kalashnikov and this is
something that needs to be very well
understood now the challenge of the
question is that we have no figures in a
number you will hear and you will read
many I see that sometime it pops up
somewhere and some report that there is
an exact number of victims of rape in my
country there are absolutely no scoping
study that has been done on this
question which shows you also and reveal
the fact that this is a secondary a kind
of topic this is where my NGO is going
to engage very soon to conduct the first
global study on sexual violence in
conflict but beside that there is no
adapted services provided to survivors
there is a complete legal impunity for
perpetrator meaning that most of the
time we prosecute people
for other accounts even people who have
been ordering rape because I didn’t say
that but you have the people who rape
and the people who order that’s why I
said it’s a strategy it’s not something
that comes up like that you know the
raping conflicts its massive it’s not
one person who is being raped and it has
been decided at high level it’s not a
soldier that comes up and say oh well
let’s let’s do that today it doesn’t
work like this and there is no
coordination and no adapted response to
conflict situation of today now when we
come back to this d constriction this is
the situation I thought about different
things so one is the issue of sexual
violence in conflict but the other is
that I’m spending lots of time as I told
you in conflict zone and you see today
that the limitation of organization what
I was just talking about before and of
some states today is that it’s more and
more difficult to go on conflict zone
which create a second problem is that we
don’t know what’s going on there or
actually we do because remember we have
internet we have social networks so we
have lots of video today you can almost
see on life what’s going on in Syria in
laguna daniel recently okay but who
tells you that this is true that this is
not propaganda nobody so we have lots of
documentation we have today a
possibility to see what’s going on
through the technology and the device of
people who are there but what do we do
with it not much so we thought that
technology could be an answer for sexual
violence in conflict to respond to the
challenges that I just mentioned before
the fact that there is no number enough
here no scope of the of the of the topic
all around the world we don’t really
know how it works and and to which Scott
and the question of survivors because
most of the time they are in area that
are not reachable most of the
you don’t even know they don’t alert
themselves because they don’t know where
to do to do it and they are in zone
where you cannot locate them I just came
back from Central African Republic as an
example that I could give you many other
where you know a large part of the
territory is still controlled by militia
in a car you have a UN mission ok and
these people they cannot go there
because they get killed and this is what
leads me to this point the construction
is to me
I think a moment we are now with this
new challenge an era we need to think
differently on how to respond to
situation and more adapted to reality so
today lots of UN people get killed
government cannot engage in anything and
you can see Syria there is a blockade at
the UN which actually is not the fault
of the UN is the question of the state
so how technology can be a tool not a
solution because technology is not a
solution and actually I’m making a kind
of thing here because we hear a lot you
know technology is a solution no
technology is not a solution you know
you don’t you don’t solve a problem with
technology it’s a tool it’s a manner to
may be accelerate something or or to act
the you know with a different tool and
means but it doesn’t give you a solution
we need people we need human with this
technology so we created the backup and
the backup will be able to provide
real-time figures of rape in conflict in
real-time it’s a legal tool I will not
go into details here but that allow us
to create files and to authentic I am
and so to make them receivable before a
court so to work on this impunity part
it’s a tool of empowerment why because
I’m going to show you that it’s the
people who gonna
use it the survivor themselves or other
people on the ground its participative
because you work together on that and
it’s also a tool for ability ssin so I’m
showing you quickly super technical but
this is the backup so this is an app
with a phone and we have a back office
where we receive the alert and we
develop criminal analysis on this and
create file and we work with the ICC
aware with courts at national level so
this is I wanted to show you because
it’s the first time we are actually
showing it’s going to be ready in two
weeks it’s actually already ready and
this is how the back office would look
it’s very simple here but it’s a bit
more complicated the way it looks now so
as I said we need to discuss track for
better rebuilding and that’s a way this
tool for survivors and people on the
ground to be actively part themselves of
justice and of their own process of
rehabilitation
concretely it means that you are let’s
talk again central african republic and
you will find a salon who is there and
then an army made an incursion and
attack and she has been with it she can
use this encrypted it is totally
encrypted and invisible on the phone you
see it when you and you push on it but
he disappeared after and then she will
answer some very few question we will
locate her we will talk with her
eventually if she wants to and instead
of having international intervening
going there etc we will put her in
contact with the nearest doctor because
I didn’t tell you but I guess you know
that sexual violence in conflict is very
brutal and the first service they need
is medical so this is a way of inventing
new system to try to respond better to
the needs of people and to make them
actor of it and I took this quote
because I really liked it
this is just us it’s like maybe you can
think that conflicts are far away from
you probably you can think that rape in
conflict is really far from you and that
this will never happen in here well
first of all during the Second World War
here in France
it happened so don’t forget that second
these are also consequences because
today and you was talking about that we
have lots of migrant and refugees and
people are fleeing the country because
of conflict so this is a situation that
we need to face now and that is of
concern for us though actually me I
think migrants coming refugees coming to
our country is actually a good thing but
that’s another topic so to dis contract
yes we need to invent we need to share
together we need to create and we need
to innovate and I wanted to talk to you
today about that not specifically about
raping in conflict because I wanted to
show you that on a subject like that
that is extremely dramatic and complex
because we talk about international
prosecution we can do so with technology
and with a new way of thinking and
that’s way you can buy pie bypass
institution and you can push tomorrow
the ICC the court government to act on
it because you will have initiated
something that create this incentive that we do need thank you very much
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