New Global Fund for Survivors of sexual violence was launched

According to Patten, there has been a historic silence around sexual violence crimes, which has served in her own words “to shield the perpetrators and isolate the victims, from support systems, and even from each other.”

As read on The Guardian, this fund aims to provide support to the victims to help them recover from the physical and emotional trauma that comes with this kind of violence. The fund is also encouraging governments from all over the world to create their own reparation schemes.

“A critical aspect of my mandate is, therefore, bridging the perspectives of survivors to policy-making bodies, and providing them with a platform to be heard, including by the donor and diplomatic community”; said Ms. Patten. 

“It means giving voice and choice to survivors, restoring their agency, building their resilience, and enshrining their experience on the historical record”, she continued. 

Also read: Women less likely to receive Canadian federal research funding

Nobel peace winners join the cause

Last year, the gynecologist Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad won the Nobel Peace Prize for their fight in favor of females victims of sexual assault. 

As read on RTVE, through the Panzi hospital, Dr. Denis Mukwege helped to transform the way in which these women, destroyed by the war, are treated in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Meanwhile, Nadia Murad toured the world denouncing the genocide of her people at the hands of the Daesh terrorists in Iraq. 

Now both of them spoke in support of the Global Fund: Mr. Mukwege recognized “the importance of establishing this fund for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence cannot be overstated. We have been advocating such an initiative for many years. Seeing it come to fruition is a huge step forward for humanity”, as read on The Guardian.

Murad said that “reparations are a step toward restoring dignity to survivors who often do not have any means to seek justice for the pain and suffering they have endured. A global fund is an innovative solution to providing survivors with a path towards healing, and it signals that our collective conscience acts in the name of humanity.”

To close her speech, Ms. Patten called for a new decade of decisive actions that help remove sexual violence from our daily headlines and relegate it to the history. 

“Let us live up to the founding promise of the UN Charter to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, including from its most intimate, ancient and enduring atrocity, the scourge of wartime rape”, she said.