HRC41 - NB8 statement - SR on VAW and trafficking
United Nations Human Rights Council
41st SESSION
Interactive dialogue with the SR on VAW and trafficking
NORDIC-BALTIC STATEMENT
Delivered by Finland
27th June 2019
Mr. President,
This statement is made on behalf of the Nordic and Baltic countries: Denmark, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden and my own country Finland.
We thank the Special Rapporteur for her efforts and the report presented to the Council focusing on the 20th anniversary of the mandate of the SR. We fully support the mandate of the Special Rapporteur.
Through the me-too movement, civil society activists lifted sexual harassment into the core of discussions on women’s rights as a form of violence against women, which is a human rights violation. For effective elimination of violence against women and girls, we should focus on prevention, accountability, awareness raising, and multi-professional protection of victims of all forms of violence against women and girls. Victims should be at the center of activities and perpetrators should be held accountable.
Many countries, also the Nordic and Baltic countries, are currently reviewing legislation and practices to ensure a solid legal framework in place to adequately prevent, investigate and sanction actors of sexual harassment. Furthermore, international agencies are reviewing their practices and taking various measures to tackle sexual harassment, which seem to be rooted in structural inequalities and power dynamics.
At the global level, some still question why sexual harassment should be consistently considered and dealt with as a form of violence against women and a human rights violation. In our view, the Beijing Declaration and Plan of Action, which celebrates its 25th anniversary next year, already established this link clearly. Attempts to depict sexual harassment as anything other than a human rights violation is a way of belittling the seriousness of these acts, and the detrimental impact they have on lives and wellbeing of women and girls worldwide. In this way, the current debate on sexual harassment can be compared to similar debates held on the criminalization of rape last century.
Madam Special Rapporteur,
What best practices have you observed in eliminating sexual harassment in an effective way through legislation and what can we learn from these?
Thank you