Ministers Robles and Baerbock denounce that “Putin uses rape as a war crime in Ukraine” | International
The German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, the Spanish Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and the special representative of the NATO Secretary General for Women, Peace and Security, Irene Fellin, denounced this Thursday in Madrid that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin “is using the rape of women as a weapon of war” in Ukraine. “Spain hopes that Putin will be brought before international courts and that these sexual assaults receive the punishment they deserve,” Robles said.
The head of German diplomacy has stressed that rapes, used as an instrument of ethnic cleansing, were already denounced during the Balkan war, at the end of the 20th century, but then they were not taken into account. “Now we are in another phase. It is a war crime and Putin is using it,” Baerbock warned.
The German minister has underlined the importance of including women in the teams of prosecutors sent to Ukraine to collect evidence of these crimes and collect the testimony of the victims, while Robles has highlighted that the presence of women in the Armed Forces instills security in the civilian population of the countries where they are deployed.
The Spanish minister has also denounced the situation of Afghan women and girls, who are prevented from accessing education or employment, after the withdrawal of NATO troops from the Asian country in August last year, and has stressed that the international community “cannot look the other way” in the face of the situation of thousands of women and girls “raped and outraged” in armed conflicts. Neither of the two ministers wanted to comment on the words of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said that if Putin had been a woman, the war in Ukraine would not have taken place, even though his predecessor Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) sent the military British to recapture the Falklands.
Both policies welcomed the fact that the preamble to the new Strategic Concept, approved in Madrid, highlights the importance of NATO incorporating the Women, Peace and Security Agenda to all your tasks. And, in addition, it expressly cites in its articles “sexual violence”, linked to conflicts, as one of the forms of violence against civilians that undermines human security and has a more disproportionate impact on “women, children and minority groups” , fueling forced population displacement and human trafficking.
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