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First and foremost, thank you for the invitation to join you for the Tuesday seminar.

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As Kate mentioned, I very recently submitted and to have an opportunity to re-engage with my material as I wait for my brother is sort of welcomed.

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But I think an important point exercise, if nothing else. So it's really exciting to be able to share a piece of my thesis with you.

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It's going into the quite sort of unexciting, but maybe to the point title here of responding sexual violence and conflict space computing DRC.

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But I'm hoping that it will be sort of one of the first papers that comes out of the thesis that be looking at

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delineations of perpetrator hood in responses to sexual violence and conflicts in policy and in practice in Congo.

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So thanks for being here. I welcome your your feedback and thoughts.

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Hopefully again will help prepare for some questions that might come up the impending buyback.

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So for the next 45 minutes or so well for the first few minutes, I'll spend some time setting the scene in some way, sort of situating the material.

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And then I'll say a few words about the water project and the methodology behind the thesis, and then this particular piece of it too.

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Before turning to the events and reporting that led up to the adoption of the first U.N.

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Security Council resolution to address sexual violence in conflict Resolution 1820,

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with a particular eye on how sexual violence and conflict was defined for the institutional purposes of the Council at the time,

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and thus the way that we shaped the fight against impunity at the international policy level.

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Given that we have some time,

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I'm also going to show a short video that was produced by the FCO in the run up to the global summit to end such financing conflict.

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And some of you may have heard that that happened in a couple of a few months, a couple of years before, four years ago, now in June 2014.

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And then from there, we'll go from this kind of international policy space into practice in eastern DRC,

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looking first at a high profile trial that took place in the town of Minova in May 2014.

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And then looking at the less high profile side of everyday justice in local courts,

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that sort of on which I suppose this national spotlight is is less bright and then offers some sort of brief conclusions.

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So as many of you or some of you may have seen responding to such events in conflicts, including in particular in DRC,

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was back under the international spotlight earlier this month when Dr. Denis Mukwege and Nadia morad were jointly

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awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and on conflict.

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That stems from Quakers, a famous gynaecologist who is the founder and director of a hospital just outside of Bukavu in South Kivu,

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and very well-known for his work as itself on the status of repairing women in the region.

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Now,

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this prestigious recognition of their work came in the 10th year since the adoption of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1820 was adopted in June 2008,

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which was, as I mentioned, the first to establish sexual violence in conflict as a threat to international peace and security.

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As part of its still evolving agenda on women, peace and security.

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And let's talk a fair bit more about that in a little bit.

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But as you'll see from the side, this is taken from its first operative paragraph.

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The importance of it is that it recognises such violence as a possible tactic of war

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that can impede the restoration of international peace and security and can thus,

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under certain circumstances, trigger action from the Security Council.

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So in the decades since, we've seen a remarkable surge in attention to sexual violence across scholarship policy and in practice.

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And I won't go into as much detail as I'd love to now,

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but it's important to note that the mounting evidence and numbers of testimonies that were emerging of sexual

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violence experienced by women and girls experienced in DRC in the sort of late nineties to early to mid 2000,

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were an important focus of and actually a really important impetus for the adoption of the resolution and the advocacy efforts that led to it.

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As you'll note from, I suppose, the following slide that the focus on DRC has been sustained in the aftermath of the resolution.

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So in 2008 the country was since labelled quite controversially a seen by some

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as the rape capital of the world and the worst place on earth to be a woman. And as you'll see from this graph,

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it was the highest level recipient of international donor funding on subsection GENDER-BASED violence projects significantly higher than the second,

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which was the second country. Country recipient was Uganda.

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So all that to show that this this focus on sexual violence has been sustained

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and has had very clear implications and levels of funding and in practice.

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Grant. So as as a result of that centrality, really, the documents, the documented experience, history,

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which notably emphasised the large scale of the violence committed against women and girls in the conflicts,

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as well as their extraordinary, brutal nature,

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became somewhat defining of the perceived nature of the homosexual violence and conflict, its victims and perpetrators.

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And I used to come here sort of that became quintessentially this sort of a carefully curated and sacred centralised definition.

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Our understanding of such violence was encoded in the resolution and in broader operational structures,

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notably delineating who international actors believe they are protecting from what kinds of harms,

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and crucially, for our purposes now committed by who.

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In effect, given the myriad sexual harm that are committed in context of conflicts as in any context,

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and by a myriad of myriad actors who the perpetrators of sexual violence in DRC are is in fact, far from inevitable.

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But I imagine that thinking about and maybe even coming to this presentation to think about fighting impunity for such mines in DRC,

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you possibly have a fairly clear image and mind of who it is we'd be talking about

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when we're talking about perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict in Congo.

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And I imagine that this image may be of a sort of an African black armed man in uniform.

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So through this presentation,

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we're going to talk about constructions of perpetrator hoods that are defined in discourses and responses to such violence and conflict,

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so specifically relative to eastern DRC.

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So really what I hope that we'll do through this is to unpack who we have in mind when we talk about sexual violence in DRC.

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And I want to show that the dominant constructions embedded in policy and advocacy are not accidental.

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And I do this with a particular eye to Security Council Resolution 1820 and the deliberations leading up to it.

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Having established this international policy landscape, as I mentioned,

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I seek to show that these this dominant construction is more challenging to pin down in response efforts in practice,

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and specifically in efforts to fight impunity. So as a quick clarifying note, sorry, I focus on 1820 for the reasons that I mentioned.

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It represented a significant juncture in international responses to such events and conflict.

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And so really establishing the issue is an issue of international importance on policy agendas.

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And then why the focus on the fight against impunity?

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Efforts to promote judicial accountability continues to be a very central pillar

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of internationally driven multisectoral responses to sexual violence in DRC,

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and that driven it's driven by three core and interrelated aims.

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The first is to deliver a sense of justice to survivors of sexual violence.

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The second is to restore a sense of faith in the rule of law as parts of peacebuilding and state building initiatives.

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And the third is to sort of signal to send a message that sexual violence will not go unpunished.

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So to deter would be perpetrators from committing some of the crimes by demonstrating, as I mentioned, that sexual violence would go unpunished.

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So what I hope to show, though,

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is that the fight against impunity in practice may actually be functioning in distinct ways than those intended in international policy.

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And induced in doing so is foreground the interplay of institutional mandates and imperatives,

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along with sort of operational and contextual constraints in legal practice, to account for this discordance.

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By way of broader context. As I mentioned, this is situated in my PhD thesis, which, as you may have guessed,

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examines the relationship between theory, policy and practice in responses to sexual violence in eastern DRC.

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And in particular, I'm interested in understanding the gendered assumptions that underpin and are reinforced by response mechanisms,

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and then how these bear upon our wider understandings of the way that gender operates in context of armed conflict.

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So a number of feminist scholars have noted that sexual violence responses are underpinned by the

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assumption that women are inevitably the victims and that men are inevitably the perpetrators.

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And while my research ultimately shows that this underlying binary is reinforced and reified,

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it is so in more complex ways than I certainly initially envisioned.

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So to be clear, I am not challenging the notion that men are the primary perpetrators of sexual violence.

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That would be untenable. I think quite an unhelpful argument to make.

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But what I'm more interested in doing here is to trace which men internationally

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driven policies target and efforts to fight impunity for such crimes in DRC.

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And then, in turn, to consider which men internationally driven efforts to fight impunity for sexual violence in DRC interact with in practice,

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or in other words, which men the policymakers intend to hold to account they believe are holding to account.

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And then which men are being held to account in practice?

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So as a brief note, I suppose, on the methods behind this research and on the in the school approach.

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So I conducted extensive research at the UN headquarters in New York and specifically with the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security.

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I spent 13 months there between 2013 and 2014 and conducted interviews with key policymakers and shapers,

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I suppose behind the resolutions in the broader gender protection platform, peace and security architecture.

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And then I've been working in Congo sort of on and off since 2014 under different institutional guises.

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So importantly, this multifaceted and multi-institutional approach is what's enabled me to sort of to discern and to see the

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different ways in which this idea of sexual violence and conflict is seen under different sets of institutional art,

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notably in relation to the victims and the perpetrators that are engaged with on a sort of everyday, daily basis.

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And doing so, I really sought to better understand the roles and constraints within which differently positioned actors or responders are operating.

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So for this particular piece I'm doing first on the research I conducted in New York and then subsequently

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on data that I sort of generated and gathered in working with the judicial system in North and South Kivu,

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which included interviewing notably sort of clerks and secretaries working in while working in police stations,

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as well as police officers themselves, prosecutors, judges, you name it.

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And one of the most I could talk about that is quite a bit now, one of the most fun, I suppose,

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aspects of sitting the clerks and secretaries going through the the records that they keep to sort of get a sense of,

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as I say, the types of cases that the numbers and types of cases that are being recorded in the institutions in which they were analytically.

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My approaches, I suppose, very much inspired by the works of postcolonial critical feminists,

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of international relations and international law who have long been attentive.

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And I quote Munro here to see the ways in which women have been excluded, marginalised,

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silenced, misrepresented, patronised or victimised by international institutions.

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And they've often used this idea of gendered subjects or figures as a key analytical

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vehicle through which to sort of draw out and communicate politics of representation,

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and that often the centralising effects as a whole.

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However, I find that this body of literature, while I'm very much inspired by it,

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tends to overlook the role of institutional imperatives and the micro politics behind micro macro policies on the one hand,

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and overlooks the role of operational and contextual constraints in practice on the other.

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So foregrounding these last two elements,

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I played a sort of critical feminist approach to think about institutional representations of and interactions with conflict affected men in DRC.

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So that takes us to the. Oh, sorry, I forgot. We fight on methods.

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So this is now into the substance. And reporting on sexual violence.

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Notably, PTSD predominantly centres on acts of sexual violence committed by armed men in uniform, all parties to the conflict.

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And from the onset, this emphasis was made explicit in 2002, as we see the report here,

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Human Rights Watch published a report entitled It's the War Within the War Sexual Violence against Women and Girls in Eastern Congo,

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which effectively sounded the alarm to the issue.

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And in fact, it was the first report to shine a spotlight on sexual violence perpetrated in these conflicts, bringing to bear its scale and brutality,

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which I quote was frequently and sometimes systematically perpetrated by armed men in uniform against civilian women and girls during the war.

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In its introductory summary, the report states that most forces involved in the conflict use sexual violence as a weapon of war,

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at times raping women as part of a more general attack to terrorise communities and

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accepting their control or to punish them for real or supposed aid to opposing forces.

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But the authors also note that sexual violence is increasingly committed by a variety of perpetrators,

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but that nevertheless the focus of the report is on crimes of sexual violence

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committed by soldiers and other combatants against parties to the conflict.

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Now the focus was sustained by feminist and women's rights activists.

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Advocates are here working with and within the UN in the pursuit of a key advocacy goal,

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which was to establish sexual violence and conflict as a self-standing issue on the UN Security Council agenda.

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So if anybody wants to ask about this later, I think it's quite fun story.

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But this is a picture of a documentary that actually played a really key role in generating and effects a lot of the momentum in the party,

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the political will to get Resolution 1820 off the ground.

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It's on. I haven't been able to find the full the full film online,

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but it was once available on Amazon and it mentions that it's credited, in effect, for the resolution.

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So if anybody wants impacts in the policy world, it seems as though documentaries are all the way to go.

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So achieving this goal of establishing sexual violence and conflict as a self-standing issue on the council's agenda requires some

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strategic manoeuvring largely to persuade a resistant council of the importance and even the relevance of sexual violence to its mandate.

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So personally, to this discussion, this meant sort of delimiting when and what types of sexual violence fall within

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the remit of the Council and is quite crudely stated by one of my respondents.

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I don't think Russia's ever going to believe that, you know,

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a husband raping his wife unless he's being held at gunpoint by a military officer should count on the sexual violence and conflict agenda.

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And as we can start to glean from this quote, the profile of the perpetrator was quite an important distinguishing factor and effect.

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Clarifying this point, the respondent explained that some member states don't want to understand the coercive atmosphere that's created.

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That's not to say that every act of sexual violence that happens in countries in conflict is that chance in conflict.

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But I think that lots of member states don't want to understand that beyond the sort of very clear he's in a military uniform.

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So from this perspective, the presence of a military uniform sort of automatically comes to represent the symbol,

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quoting from another interview, the symbol of being a sexual predator.

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And it's clear that just viewing it in this way, it glosses over a host of sexual harms that are committed in conflict contexts,

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including intimate partner violence committed by civilians,

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as well as violence against sexual gender minorities, for example, against women in civilian spaces.

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But what also became clear over the course of my research was that not all military

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uniforms are treated equally under the Security Council's institutional eyes.

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Not all acts of sexual violence committed by an individual in a military uniform constitute sexual violence in conflict under the women,

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peace and security agenda. Nor do they therefore trigger the same institutional response mechanisms.

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Notably, while it's widespread across peacekeeping missions,

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sexual violence perpetrated by U.N. peacekeepers falls under the separate policy category of sexual exploitation and abuse,

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or SGA, and is addressed under the remit of conduct and discipline,

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which is just a completely different part of the House, again, as it was described by a respondent.

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So this policy and in effect, operational distinction is no coincidence.

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According to a UN women's rights advocate who again was quite prominent in getting 1820 off the ground,

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the conflation between conflict relates to sexual violence and sexual exploitation, and abuse creates a number of closed doors.

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This is particularly challenging in relation to troop contributing countries or ticks on the council who were concerned that, she recounted.

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We were just there to point the finger at them for incidents.

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As she explained in our interview, she and her colleagues thus pushed to formalise the distinction between conflict related sexual

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violence perpetrated by our two parties to the conflict and perpetrated by peacekeepers,

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another intervening actors to keep these political jaws ajar.

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So when I asked if this was the reason why there exist is clear delineation in no uncertain terms, she responded.

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Yeah, yeah. That's the reason why it's a tactical and strategic decision that we made very deliberately.

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And I can tell you honestly that had we not done that, we'd be nowhere to compete with sexual violence.

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So as a result, perpetrators of conflict related sexual violence became defined as armed men in uniform,

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crucially, who do not sport a blue U.N. peacekeeping helmet.

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So sexual violence committed by this category of perpetrators that response efforts intend to target,

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including in efforts to promote accountability and fight impunity.

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Yet, as Judy stated by the authors of the Independent Review of SCA in the Central African Republic for victims of sexual violence,

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it's immaterial whether the perpetrator was wearing a blue helmet or not.

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So I want to turn to a video. But this focus as I try to find it.

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So see from the quote, this focus was on armed men in uniform and not peacekeepers.

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It's very clear. And so that statement context there from the former excuse me,

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when I play around with technology for the representative of the Secretary-General to sexual violence and conflict to very clearly how do I.

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Yeah, I was. I removed. So very clear references to two military uniforms and badges.

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And in this video, as I mentioned, was produced by the FCO in the run up to the global summit.

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To find such a complex, the same kind of the same emphasis is, is quite evident.

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And I thought I'd give you a break from my voice and let you know we disagree with you or there's a weapon that doesn't just in physical.

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Any violation over. A lot of power buyers.

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I'll catch up.

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A weapon that is just as scary as bombs and bullets, but invisible when rape and sexual violence is used against women, girls, men and boys.

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Victims are sometimes abandoned by their families and the armed have communities of colour like wars massacre,

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especially when the monsters who did it are allowed to get away with even the murder victims.

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But it doesn't have to be this way. Rape and sexual violence are the worst crimes we can imagine, but they are not an inevitable part of war.

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It's time to act. And sexual violence. Time to act, to bring those responsible to justice.

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Time to act to let governments know that enough is enough.

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Time to act so that those who live in fear of sexual violence have a chance to fill some time.

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To act. To make your voice heard. Okay.

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Back to the presentation. Yeah.

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Is it, Gene? Yeah. As movies become more and more reliant on computer effects.

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This is not what we want. Okay, let's just get. Sorry, everyone.

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Technology rally on my side. So as we can see from the video, there is a clear idea.

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I mean, I think if the nature of the harm of sexual conflict and notably of who the

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perpetrators of such violence and conflict are and the redress that's thus warranted,

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which is fighting impunity for judicial accountability.

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So with this in mind, who is the fight against impunity reaching in practice in DRC?

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So to explore this question, I'll first barely walk through the outcomes of the high profile trial,

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which took place, as I mentioned, the town of Minova in May 2014.

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And then I'll walk through cases that we see making it to and through courts on a more sort of quotidian,

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everyday basis in these less exceptional trials.

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So to explain why, I suppose to explain this picture,

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it's it was one of the most iconic pictures that came out of the of the trial that was spread around media.

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It's also the cover of a militia group. I don't know if you've come across her work.

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I highly recommend it. Interested in this in this area and more generally.

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But these were the protective clothing that were given to victims who testified

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at the trials and the microphone sort of concealed their voices and signature,

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but sort of backtracking. So a handful of incidents of mass rape have become particularly notorious in eastern DRC.

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And one such event took place in November 2012 when following the defeat of the M23 armed group, hundreds of soldiers from the national army,

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the FARC, retreated to Minova, which is a town on the shores of beautiful Lake Kivu, bordering between the north and South Kivu provinces.

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What ensued was a ten day frenzy of destruction, as it was sort of described by Human Rights Watch,

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which included widespread looting and sexual violence,

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with some reports estimating that more than a thousand women, children and men were raped in this town alone.

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Most reports estimated the numbers of instance to be around 230, but some such descriptions of the attack, importantly,

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seem to align quite closely with the policy definitions or the ideas that we just talked about above,

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including in terms of the perpetrators of the harm as the national army, as well as the nature of the harms to.

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Now, because of the scale of the attack and the outcry that followed,

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Congolese authorities came under quite significant pressure to hold those responsible to account,

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which led to this sort of high profile, highly media time trial. Some six charges were brought were brought against 39 defendants.

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33 of the charges were for rape as a war crime, and one was for a rape of a minor under domestic legislation,

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76 civil parties or victims testified at the trial,

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which included 50 testimonies for rape and 26 testimonies for crimes of pillage,

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although most of the parties testifying for rape also victims of pillaging.

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However, only two convictions were secured for sexual violence and only one of which was for rape as a war crime.

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The other was for the rape of a minor under ordinary as an ordinary crime that I just mentioned.

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So all defendants accused of rape as a war crime, but one were acquitted, although some were charged with lesser crime.

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This verdict was widely viewed as a disappointment, as a failure to deliver justice and as a new insult to the victims of sexual violence in DRC.

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And it was seems to confirm this idea of a dysfunctional state, the dysfunctional state of the Congolese justice system.

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Now I don't have the time and probably wouldn't want to bore you with going through

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the legal reasoning behind the acquittals because you don't really have the time.

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But I do have a more extensive discussion that I'd be happy to share with anybody if you're interested.

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But ultimately, a combination of sort of political military dynamics,

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evidentiary constraints and resource limitations contributed to the acquittals, as far as I can see.

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It seemed to be I mean, it was legally reasoned. What is more relevant for our purposes, though,

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is to think about that one soldier who was convicted for sexual violence and for rape specifically as a war crime.

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And, you know. So this indictment as if this was not a command responsibility indictment, but one of individual criminal responsibility,

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which meant that it required both evidence of this individual criminal responsibility and contextual elements linking to the crime of the conflict.

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Our focus on the form as it's most relevant to our conversation now.

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So proving individual criminal responsibility and beyond reasonable doubt can be especially challenging in conflict contexts,

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as explained by the verdict at the court.

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Generally, with respect to sexual violence, perpetrators take measures to not be identified by their victims.

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They favour acting when it's dark, blinding their victims with the light of their torches,

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intimidating them with threats to stop them from staring at them,

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warding off potential witnesses so the victim becomes the only witness to the aggression.

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Herein lies the importance of a statement so the judge can appreciate her credibility.

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So the officer who was convicted on the charge of rape as a war crime was recognisable by virtue of an exceptional physical feature.

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You can see on the picture a missing thumb.

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According to the verdict, the victim recognised the suspect, whom she previously seen fetching water from the fountain,

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who had a missing finger on his on his hand, a feature she easily remembered.

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I'm quoting from the verdict again. So central was this feature to the proceedings.

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The suspect's defence argued that the victim had only noticed the missing thumb during preliminary investigations,

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a claim that was later proven unfounded because, in effect,

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in the aftermath of the attack, she had gone to a local cleric and in her seeking support from him,

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had given some had mentioned this distinctive sign on his body of his thumb.

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So what does this mean? It suggests that even when or maybe especially when circumstances of such violence

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and conflict align closely with those associated with the sort of consensus,

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this narrative, and therefore what is quintessentially the perpetrator.

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The outcome of Minova indicates the necessity of an exceptional physical feature to prove individual criminal responsibility.

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So every day justice coming to the end, I promise.

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This is probably the most dense part, though, so bear with me. You come to the end.

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So, as I mentioned, Minova was exceptional in several regards,

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not least the resources that were invested in that one particular trial, as well as the high level media attention.

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But on an everyday basis that, you know, similar important insights to be going to and doing my research, including with the Human Rights Centre,

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the sexual violence program at the Bexley School of Law, and certainly in the early phases of it with local judicial actors.

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We saw me and my colleague Suzanne Oldham were surprised to find that judicial systems were, in effect, functioning.

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Almost everything I had read or knew about in the Times pointed to their deplorable or dysfunctional states,

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both of the civilian and military justice systems.

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We were all the more surprised to find that the justice system was, in fact functioning, to investigate and prosecute sexual violence crimes.

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So we're talking about it's different to the Minova space, which was an operational military court,

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but these were functioning to investigate and prosecute sexual violence crimes.

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And in fact, this would be prioritised conviction rates once cases reach the courts.

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So to the point of judgement, conviction rates are actually high, in some cases up to 80%, which is much higher than you see in the UK.

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I think in London this year it was about 7% conviction rate conviction rates for sexual violence.

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However, it also became clear the more we sort of dug into the cases that the types of such ones

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cases that local judicial actors were prosecuting were not of the kinds that we imagined.

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In other words, they were a far cry from those depicted in the sort of quintessentially narrative.

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So my thesis, I show that this has implications for both female victims as well as for the male perpetrator or

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men and boys who have been suspected or accused of having committed an act of sexual violence.

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But in line with a sort of general focus on perpetrators, I won't talk about it to say about happy to sort of merit the analysis of mirrors.

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They marry each of them. So it's important to give a little bit of legislative context with domestic legislative context.

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In 2006 and new sexual violence law was passed in DRC,

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which has been widely heralded nationally and internationally for its expansive and progressive nature, as well as its strong punitive measures.

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What is less frequently noted, though, is that it increased the age of legal marriage and sexual consent from 15 as it was in the Family Code to 18,

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which effectively created a whole new category of legal, statutory,

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statutory victims under the law for whom the notion of consent is, in effect, legally void.

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You don't need to prove consent if you can prove that the young girl is under 18 while the devil really is in the detail here,

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I'm going to try and not get too lost in the numbers, but we'll try and pull out some of the some of the key trends on this.

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In the next slide, I include a couple of tables with cases recorded by the peer, this,

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which is the specialised sexual violence unit set up specifically to receive and investigate cases of sexual violence.

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And the officers in that have received extensive training,

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extensive and specialised training by including some of the European and European police as well as as well as others.

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So they don't represent the whole justice system by any means, but they're intended to be the first stop or point of entry to the judicial system for

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survivors to report to their also needs specific to the military or civilian justice systems,

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meaning that we can expect to see or we could expect to see cases perpetrated by the civilians or parties to the conflict,

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a uniformed personnel, members of armed groups. So they offer a good starting point for this discussion.

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So as you'll see from the numbers here, this is in Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu.

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There were 477 total cases reported to the unit between 2013 and 14.

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But of these, only three of the suspected perpetrators were identified as being from the ongoing armed group in Bukavu.

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We see that nine of the 236 this was just for 2014 were identified as being uniformed personnel.

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So in effect, 96% were identified as being civilians.

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Now, what I'm not depicted in the table data from Bukavu, which is the provincial capital of South Kivu sorry.

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They're also in the records that give insights into the suspects ages, their professions,

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sort of allowing me to have a more nuanced analysis and more nuanced and textured analysis of the profiles of perpetrators.

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The age of the suspected perpetrators was specified in 107 of the cases 3040 and is varied between from 12 and one case as the youngest to 67,

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which was the highest. The average age of the suspected perpetrators of this hundred and seven was 25, with 82% being between 15 and 30.

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And this actually equates exactly with numbers found in previous years by UNDP.

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And it's also worth noting here that the average age of victims recorded for 2014 was was 16 years.

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So with regards to professions, when recorded or known on the civilian side,

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there was some variation ranging from sort of students and pupils to unemployed cultivators, motorbike drivers, construction workers, among others.

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But the most highly represented were students and those unemployed.

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And when asked about the trends in perpetrator profiles reported,

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the officer from the commanding officer from the unit in Goma emphasised their young age and low socioeconomic status.

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Perpetrators are usually young, usually between 1745. They usually have an education level that's not surpassed the average and they are unemployed.

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Similar patterns were identified across magistrates courts and tribunals further along the judicial chain.

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Echoing this, the police officer above, the general prosecutor, also in Goma, stated that very often,

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very often the idle young men, they're generally people of the same generation.

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The girl is 14, the perpetrator is 21 when they're both minors.

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What about in the justice, the military justice system?

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So here several trends were notable to the numbers of reported cases were significantly lower than in the civilian justice system.

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For example, the magistrate's office in Goma.

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On the civilian side, we saw 857 cases reported between 2013 2014, but there were only 122 on the equivalent military side in the same period.

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And the higher up the military judicial chain and therefore the higher the jurisdiction of the higher ranking officers,

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the numbers just got lower and lower, like in the civilian justice system.

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Military officers, often reported, tended to to be known or identifiable to the victim,

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which is quite in contrast to what we heard in terms of being over and concealing identity.

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And I only am one of the 122 cases reported in Goma that I mentioned.

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Was the suspect not identified or known to the victim?

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They also tended to be lower military grades, and that is of lower socioeconomic class military stature,

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which also aligns with the findings of the civilian justice system. And echoing the civilian prosecutor that I mentioned,

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the secretary of the military magistrate office in Goma stated that the 2006 law came in with a lot of vigour.

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We arrest boys who are 19 or 20 here in the garrison who rape young girls and who are minors.

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So what was made clear across the military in civilian jurisdictions is that the vast majority

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of cases of sexual violence reported to and addressed by formal judicial systems in the region,

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including in the specialised units, the magistrate's offices, the courts and tribunals for statutory rape that is involving and goes under 18.

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So this doesn't tell us much about the dynamics behind the cases in each of the cases,

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but there was a to the terms are used colloquially to refer to these cases of statutory rape that involved

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a female minor who in most cases is engaging for an intensive purposes in consensual sexual relationships.

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And that time is, of course, finished. So these cases are often reported by a family member who either doesn't approve of their

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daughter's relationship or to pressure their daughter's boyfriend in delivering a bride price.

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Now, I do want to be clear in saying that I'm not stating that every case of sexual violence

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reported to the justice system in eastern DRC constitutes coming out in this way.

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But during our research, we heard story upon story of young girls visiting either their legally prescribed perpetrator in jail,

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bringing their children to visits in jail, and even threatening to kill themselves if their boyfriend was convicted or imprisoned.

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So such cases, as we heard them, don't seem to be delivering justice for sexual violence in the way that it's intended,

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nor is it reaching those it seems to be intending to.

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Rather, it seems to signal the often overlooked and disproportionate effect of socio economic class and indeed of age in the operation of the law.

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The law in this way seems to be operating more as a means of sexual regulation rather than one of delivering justice or redress to the survivors.

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So to conclude, I want to highlight three points. And before doing so I want to emphasise that responding to sexual violence in

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conflict as in any context is important and should be appropriately resourced.

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But in doing so, we need to keep in mind how response structures are operating,

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how they perceive you operating in policy, and how to operate in your practice.

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So I've showed through this presentation notions of perpetrator heard of such violence and conflict and

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injustice specifically were carefully and strategically delineated for international peace and security policy.

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As armed men in uniform,

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all parties to the conflict producing this sort of centralising narrative of sexual violence and in turn producing potentials perpetrator.

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And this highlighted the importance, though,

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of accounting for institutional imperatives and political dynamics in defining a policy issue in any given political moment.

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But through the second and third parts of the presentation,

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it was clear that this quintessentially spoke is less easily discernable in domestic legal practice.

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And so it's important to account for contextual realities and the often overlooked influence of class and age and the operation of the law.

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And with that,

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if we return to the fact that the fight against impunity is deemed to be important for its effects and signalling certain messages to the population,

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notably the crimes of sexual violence and conflict will not go unpunished. And the current functioning,

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it seems as though efforts to fight impunity seem to say as much about who is punished and

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punishable under the law as it does about what is punished and punishable under the law.

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So with that, I'll leave it there and open two questions and thank you for bearing with the presentation.

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Thank you.