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After the London summit

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Global summit, end sexual violence in Conflict, what next?The Summit represented a unique moment in our collective efforts to end the use of rape and sexual violence in conflict. What now?

Government representatives from over 120 countries, over 1,000 experts, faith leaders, youth organisations and representatives of civil society and international organisations came together at a Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict held in London from 10-13 June 2014.

And they agreed to break the taboo around wartime rape, take action to put an end to it, and to break up the culture of impunity surrounding it.

The International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict was then launched, setting out international standards on how to collect the strongest possible information and evidence, while at the same time nonetheless protecting witnesses, in order to increase convictions and deter future perpetrators.

Sexual violence in conflict is prohibited under international law: under specific provisions of the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, and under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It is also grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.

And, when used as a method of warfare, it is – and has been – unlawful, and states are – and have been – responsible for any breaches of international law committed by their armed forces.

But although has until now been a feature of most conflicts, it has only recently been discussed openly in international conflict-prevention discourse.

Following the Summit, the aim now is to instil efforts to prevent sexual violence in conflict into standard discourse and practice on all aspects of international conflict prevention, stabilisation, peace-building, security and justice, humanitarian and human rights work.

To do this, the UK government will pursue a programme of political and practical activity that includes:

(i) Implementing the International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict through advocacy, capacity-building and national application.

It will promote the International Protocol as the key resource for the international justice and human rights profession with responsibility for investigating and documenting sexual violence in conflict and support training in the International Protocol for practitioners from the international justice community as well as local practitioners working in conflict and post-conflict countries.

It will push for the International Protocol to become widely used and recognised as best practice for practitioners and first responders.

(ii) Further lobbying of governments to implement fully in domestic legislation the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and encouraging more states to accede to the Rome Statute and to implement fully its provisions in domestic law.

(iii) Pressing governments to do more to support Human Rights Defenders and building further the capacity of local civil society and grassroots organisations to document and respond to acts of sexual violence and to provide support to survivors.

(iv) Encouraging governments to do more to include sexual violence issues in their doctrine and training and to enforce initiatives on military conduct and discipline.

It will also work with and encourage those governments who announced new plans or commitments at the Summit to implement them as fully and as quickly as possible.

This country activity will be complemented by ongoing UK support to the full range of multilateral bodies to ensure that the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) and the outcomes from the Summit are fully integrated into their daily activity as well as future international events, such as the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016.

The Summit represented a unique moment in our collective efforts to end the use of rape and sexual violence in conflict.

All of us must now build on the momentum of the meeting and encourage even greater international co-ordination and collaboration.

In the months to come we must see clear evidence that those who participated at the Summit are delivering on the commitments they made — by putting in place measures to bring more perpetrators to justice, by providing better support to survivors and by ensuring that this issue remains at the very heart of the international policy agenda.

The launch of the Protocol is just the first step.

The next step is to implement the Protocol in a way that keeps it relevant, promotes its advocacy, ensures its accessibility and dissemination, adapts it to national contexts and monitors its progress.

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