For a decade, Angelina Jolie was the Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. In 2012, her title was upgraded to Special Envoy for the UNHCR, likely as a way to reflect and reward her work with the agency on behalf of refugees around the world. Angelina has always known that her work doesn’t begin and end with the UNHCR, and over the past decade especially, she’s branched out by founding her own charities, foundations and organizations to do on-the-ground work in certain countries and to highlight certain causes which needed more attention and energy. One of those causes was preventing sexual violence in conflict. Jolie created a initiative, launched a summit in London on the subject, and she’s been doing a ton of work outside of the UNHCR on the initiative, and now she’s got someone pretty powerful on her side: the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg and Jolie coauthored a Guardian op-ed on the subject of preventing sexual violence in conflict – go here to read the full piece.
All violence against women betrays the fundamental promise in the UN Charter of equal rights and dignity for women. It is one of the prime reasons why women remain in a subordinate position in relation to men in most parts of the world. When this violence is committed as an act of war it tears apart families, creates mass displacement, and makes peace and reconciliation far harder to achieve. In fact, it is often designed expressly to achieve those goals as part of a military strategy.
Despite being prohibited by international law, sexual violence continues to be employed as a tactic of war in numerous conflicts from Myanmar to Ukraine and Syria to Somalia. It includes mass rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, and rape as a form of torture, ethnic cleansing and terrorism. It accounts in large part for why it is often more dangerous to be a woman in a warzone today than it is to be a soldier.
In our different roles we have seen how conflicts in which women’s bodies and rights are systematically abused last longer, cause deeper wounds and are much harder to resolve and overcome. Ending gender-based violence is therefore a vital issue of peace and security as well as of social justice. The Nato Alliance was founded to safeguard not just the security but also the freedom of its peoples: in the words of President Harry Truman, as “a shield against aggression and the fear of aggression”.
For nearly 70 years Nato has stood for collective defence against military threats. But also for the defence of democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law and the UN Charter. We believe that Nato has the responsibility and opportunity to be a leading protector of women’s rights. In particular, we believe Nato can become the global military leader in how to prevent and respond to sexual violence in conflict, drawing on the strengths and capabilities of its member states and working with its many partner countries.
Over the coming months we will be working together and with others to identify ways in which Nato can strengthen its contribution to women’s protection and participation in all aspects of conflict-prevention and resolution.
The piece then goes on to list the ways NATO can and will target the issue of sexual violence in conflict. NATO plans to “integrate gender issues into its strategic thinking as part of its values and reinforcing a culture of the integration of women throughout the organization including in leadership positions.” Meaning, they plan to hire more women. They plan to raise the standards of how Allied countries’ militaries are trained, and how they help train militaries around the world. They have developed new standard operating procedures for soldiers in the field, which will be taught in pre-deployment training. NATO will be adding more “gender advisers” in the field, in conflict zones, to ensure that women can come forward and speak about what is happening to them. NATO also plans to collect data on all of this, which might sound like a weird thing to include, but data makes the world go ‘round. Can I just say? Angelina is so big-league.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I’m just waiting for The Orange Emperor, First of His Name, to denounce this as some sort of treason. After all, we know what he thinks of women.
He will just tweet what he perceives to be the ultimate put-down comeback to a woman, a repeat of his rating of Angelina’s physical looks to Howard Stern. “She’s a seven out of a ten.” After he tweets that, he will think to himself, “Winning!”
He’s such an idiot.
It’s about women and uses big words. You know he didn’t read it.
The other day, Trump called Jens Stoltenberg his “number one fan in the whole world” and took all credit for the increased spending on Nato and the military among states with Nato membership. He actually said Stoltenberg had accomplished none of it! The increased military spending probably has more to do with people getting nervous about Russia again, than with Trump’s powers of persuasion…
Also, Stoltenberg is a kind, intelligent man who used to lead the Norwegian Labour Party. Definitely left leaning and feminist. The IDEA that he would admire Trump…
She’s amazing.
Would perhaps be better for NATO to stop inciting wars and such?
I understand that her capacity as a Special Envoy to the UN means that she can’t dissociate with NATO completely, but would be better if she just go with her PSVI initiative instead.
Politics aside, good headway has been reached to put some protocols in place for recording incidents of rape and evidence preserving and fact checking, to be used when perpetrators are brought to justice.
I got forwarded a pdf text of the field handbook that they wrote (remember the one where Amal Clooney nee Alamuddin contributed something to it). It has some things that are actually useful for peacetime situations as well, especially for law enforcements and clinics receiving reports from victims.
A lot of our peacetime rules have evolved from more rudimentary martial laws… I think her PSVI in conflict may also help to benefit, however small, efforts to bring better justice to victims of violence and abuse in non-war situations.
So yes, what I meant to say it although there are much to criticize her about (her approach to casting, and her decision to do or back certain films), there are some good things that she has helped nurture as well, and I can’t much fault her for that.
Not going to watch FTKMF (both because of her poor casting methods and Netflix’s messyness), though I’ll read the book.
NATO cannot incite wars since it is a common defense military organization. The rationale is that if one of its members is attacked, the other members will defend it. It was created during the CW. The most visible example of NATO involvement is in Afghanistan after 9:11. NATO and the UN are two very, very different organizations. Their engagement is specified in their respective charters. There is a lot of criticism against both, and for good reason.
Wrong. They attacked Serbia in ’99.
I know what happened in Serbia in 1999. It was a military intervention (aerial bombing) which according to their mandate should not have happened. However, NATO did not incite the war, the war started way before the intervention between Serbia and its separatist province. NATO intervened because the UN could not take action – veto.
Do you think they actually helped write this piece? I always want to know who’s actually writing and who’s simply reviewing and adding their name to the piece. It’s like when celebrities have books. I always want to know if and to what extent a ghostwriter was used.
Well Angelina has written two screenplays and two op-eds in the NYT so I think she’s very capable of writing a piece for The Guardian about an issue she has worked on for well over a decade.
Hi She writes them herself. Hugs
Sure Jan.
She really, really shows up and does the work. Has done for so many years now. I’m so impressed by her and wish more people would use their platform and privilege in constructive ways.
I think it looks good on paper for NATO to say things like this. But Abu Ghraib was not so long ago. Waterboarding probably still happens. Half of the conflicts are fought using “contractors” aka mercenaries these days and not military troops. And the military themselves, internally, have a poor record regarding sexual assault of women in their forces and the lack of consequences for those to commit those assaults.
The issue at it’s base is that women are seen as “possessions” and become part of the “plunder”. The vainquer “stealing the wombs” of these women and leaving behind the children they have spawned as some sort of living trophy of conquest. The shame associated with rape that stigmatizes these women as “sullied” in societies that view women as the possession of their fathers or their husbands.
I’m sure her heart is in the right place here, and her intentions are good. But I also think she’s being used by these people to “whitewash” their own failings. I wish she had better chosen her co-author.
It’s not just about women. It’s about children too. Unfortunately the topic did not get extensive coverage – iicr this happened in 2013 or 2014, military troops from a prominent European country were deployed to a country at war in Africa. Some of them, ok, “thank you”, did not rape women, but they subjected starving children to sexual abuse – oral and “another act” in exchange for candy. I can also imagine the “jokes” they were making.
Angelina is truly on another level!!
Im so happy 😊 that her movie… “First they killed my father”, got nominated for a Golden globe award!!
NATO can’t be defence of democracy tbh since some of it members are not democratic at all. See Turkey for example.
I don’t disagree, but that’s also why they are well-positioned to enact change. Because they can influence countries where these issues fall low on the priority scale.
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So far they couldn’t enact changes in Turkey or influence it. On the contrary, things are getting only worse and it’s country with second biggest army in NATO I think.
What changes would you have them enact in Turkey? I’m strongly opposed to Erdogan, but Turkey is still a modern democracy compared to other predominantly muslim countries in the region.
A modern democracy? Crack down on opposition, media, Internet; legalized murder of Kurds, transfer of powers into Erdogan’s hands which essentially created sultanate. There has been a total deterioration of democracy in recent years. When European countries tried to influence situation in Turkey it showed them a middle finger. Turkey is a loose cannon now.
Power wasn’t transferred to Erdogan, he was elected democratically. He’s Trump-esque in his approach to the country’s constitution, yes. I’m not denying that there are major human rights violations going on, particularly against journalists. But this is about sexual violence in conflict. Turkey has had a far more open and welcoming attitude toward Syrian refugees than its European counterparts at NATO. The West has completely turned their backs on these refugees. And who originated these conflicts? Turkey has been quite tolerant of our hawkish approach, meanwhile they are left to clean up the mess in the region as one of the only stable regional powers, hence the need for continuity (and Obama refusing to condone the coup). Let’s say your neighbor’s dog constantly poops on your lawn, and you clean it up. But then your neighbor starts telling you how to clean it up, you might flip him the bird too.
@HoustonGirl: The last election was probably stolen actually. True story… a Turkish friend who lives outside of Turkey and is registered with the Embassy in the country they live in. They happened to be in Turkey at the time of the last election and went to vote. Imagine their surprise when, after showing their ID, they were told that the system was showing they had already voted in their country of residence at the Embassy 6 hours earlier, and for Erdogan. They’d been in Turkey for about 2 weeks at that point.
So imagine a country like Germany which has a large population of Turks. If the Embassy had already “voted” on their behalfs, do you think the Embassy is going to tell them that when they show up to vote there?
Digital voting machines are crap. I would support that people would actually get a paper voting slip with an included tracing paper which tells how they voted and if you question the official result then people can send in their tracing papers and prove their point.
Bravo!!
so much love for her! also, the silver dress is stunning!
Stoltenberg is the very same guy who supports a militarisation of the EU and a stronger military approach in the Nato and who surely ain’t got no problems with making more enemies instead of trying to negotiate peace.
Jolie doesn’t keep good company. When she was running around with William Hague I had started wondering about Jolie’s company.
Guys like Stoltenberg and Hague support policies which cause more people to become refugees. And caring for refugees is Jolie’s cup of tea. So she is taking care of the supply for her business. *beingVeryCynicalHere*
I have never seen Jolie meet some politicians who want peace.