POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
The UN’s Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) should expedite the recruitment for South Sudan Women Protection Advisors, especially the senior management position, ensuring that previous experience in gender-based violence response is prioritized in the recruitment process.
UN Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict (UN Action) should formalize training and modes of operation for the WPAs by finalizing, endorsing, and implementing training modules and a handbook. UN Action should create a Strategic Advisory Group (SAG) to ensure adherence to international guidelines for safe and ethical data collection through periodic reviews of WPA performance.
UN Action should carry out an external evaluation of the South Sudan WPAs and ensure that lessons learned are reflected in subsequent deployment of WPAs in other peacekeeping and political missions. Strict guidelines formalizing the relationship between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and WPAs, including information sharing protocols, must be developed by the Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Sub-Cluster and UNMISS, and agreed upon by all parties.
WPAs must not investigate cases of conflict-related sexual violence without the survivor’s consent and without ensuring that there are medical care and psychosocial support services available, in accordance with international ethical and safety guidelines.
In 2009/10, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolutions 1888 and 1960 establishing Women’s Protection Advisors (WPAs). These officials are tasked with building capacity to address conflict-related sexual violence UN within peacekeeping missions and reporting incidents for the monitoring and reporting arrangements as a basis for Security Council action against perpetrators. Today, six WPAs are assigned to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. The rollout of WPAs in that country has been marked by recruitment delays and training gaps which have ultimately led to poor practice in data collection, endangering sexual violence survivors. While Refugees International welcomes the initiative to address conflict-related sexual violence within peacekeeping missions, im- mediate measures must be taken to ensure that WPAs use an approach centered on the wellbeing of the survivor, following internationally recognized guidelines on safe and ethical researching, documenting, and monitoring of sexual violence in emergencies.