Attachments
Wednesday 15 – Friday 17 March 2023 | WP3108
In association with the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
From Wednesday 15 – Friday 17 March 2023, Wilton Park together with the FCDO’s CRSV Accountability Team hosted a dialogue on the UN’s draft Articles on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity, or draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention (CAHC). The dialogue sought to bring together diverse voices from survivors, states, legal experts, civil society groups and academics, and focussed on how the international legal architecture around conflict related sexual violence (CRSV), and gender equality more broadly could be strengthened through the draft convention.
The UK has publicly set out an ambitious approach to tackling CRSV, including through the recently launched Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) strategy.
One of the key objectives of the strategy is to strengthen the global response to CRSV, and as part of this the UK Government set out its intention to pursue further concerted action on the CAHC, as a means of strengthening the international legal architecture including on some forms of CRSV. This intention was reiterated by the Foreign Secretary at the PSVI conference in November and the UK Government continues to take an ambitious approach to the CAHC.
The dialogue took place over three days, and focused on the background to the convention, the opportunity that the CAHC presents in strengthening the international legal architecture on gender equality and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) including CRSV, and the opportunity to ensure that survivor voices are kept front and centre throughout the process, and that their needs are adequately represented within the final convention.