All horrors perpetuated as late as July last year in South Sudan and all within reach of UN Peacekeepers who according to a damning report commissioned by the organisation itself, sat by and did nothing.
And so prevalent, President Salva Kiir gave the order for the shooting of soldiers who rape.
“Of course one can blame a soldier who’s in command (as it happened),” Baroness Anelay told Capital FM News in an exclusive interview. “It’s not necessarily that particular soldier who is at fault. We’ve got to make sure that the troops are trained in a way that they know how to deal with Sexual and Gender Based Violence. They know how to respond to that and they know how to protect civilians.”
READ: Kenyan troops due back from S.Sudan today
In this effort, the Baroness Anelay led Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) is in the process of fine-tuning a protocol to guide how evidence of such crimes should be collected both for preservation purposes and in a manner as to avoid further inflicting harm on the abused.
“It is literally a guide in different languages and it assists people who are meeting survivors of sexual violence; helps them to get the evidence, collect it in a way that doesn’t make the victim have to tell the story again and again and suffer all that terrible violence over again and could be used in court when it’s possible to have a judicial process.”
When she spoke at the training session, Baroness Anelay was also keen to make the point that not only women or girls fall victim to these crimes and gave the example of a South East Asian government official who spoke out about having undergone just such an ordeal.
It however was not the only order of Business for the Baroness who met with among others, the Attorney General Githu Muigai, the Minister of Defence Raychelle Omamo and the Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Monica Juma, on her visit.
With them, she among other things, discussed a resolution passed during the 28th African Union Summit held three weeks ago on a collective withdrawal strategy from the International Criminal Court.
“I’ve been discussing this with colleagues here across the Kenyan government today and I was very much aware after the African Union Summit, that some of that had been misreported because what Kenya was doing, was not saying that everybody must leave, it was saying everybody must look very carefully at how the ICC works.
Is it really functioning in the way that we all expected? Now for me, that’s not counter-productive… and I’m very happy to work with Kenya to look at how we can change the processes if need be because clearly over the last year, it’s improved its processes. Let’s reflect on that but I’m in listening mode.”
Back to the war front, Baroness Anelay also gave the reassurance that even after Britain exits the European Union, it will continue to support the African Union Mission in Somalia.
“With regard to the cuts made by the EU, we fought against that, we didn’t agree with that but it went through despite our opposition. But for us, leaving the European Union as an organisation won’t change our view, this area matters. Its security matters. It may be a few thousand kilometers from the UK but we know how important it is to keep security here.”
A commitment, she said, that extended to the restoration of peace to South Sudan despite a move by the US to cut the UN Peacekeeping budget with a bulls eye on the UN Mission in South Sudan.
“I know the Trump administration is looking very carefully at value for money. Well, don’t we all? I’m sure Kenya looks for value for money as well. We look at having really good value for money as well. So, cutting a budget isn’t necessarily going to be damaging. It’s how you do it and for me the most critical matter is to ensure that those who wear the blue helmets are maintained in a way that gives them the security they need to do their job well – that’s value for money to me.”
READ: Why Trump’s plans for the UN are no laughing matter for Kenya’s peace and security
And while we’re on the subject of US President Donald Trump’s administrative actions, the former History Teacher and Magistrate expressed hope that he would see reason on the subject of Climate Change given the incontrovertible proof.
“My hope that when he looks very closely at the briefing about Climate Change that he’ll realise that by working together whether it was at the Paris Summit, whether it was more recently at Marrakech last year, that we really do have a duty to be able to provide ways in which small island developing states can have a hope that they won’t be inundated by increasing weather events in the future, that they won’t lose their economies.”
Trump has after all shown himself to be a man concerned with security and the link between Climate Change and Security, Baroness Anley reasoned, was simply undeniable.
“That we look carefully at countries like Kenya where desertification is increasing, where we see the impact of Climate Change and where herdsmen find that they want to move further south… Northern Nigeria where the Hausa there, for centuries, have driven their cattle to areas (where) now they can’t, they’re moving down; it causes instability. And therefore I hope that he will see that Climate Change is so real because security is real and it matters and it’s threatened by Climate Change.”
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