From The Outset, I Propose that AVfM at the Detroit conference take a vote of no confidence in The United Nations due to the Institutionalised Gender Bias and Institutional Sexism that has been known for many years and which The United Nations have failed to address. In parallel, AVfM should call for censure of Ban Ki-moon as Secretary General for the failures since appointed 01 Jan 2007.
The failures of national governments, other governments (USA, UK, Europe, The Whole Of Africa) and transnational organisations such as The United Nations is simply yet another example of Institutional Misandry and the politicisation of male disposability.
The United Nations has made boys and men vanish in their internal paperwork – just as they did for decades over sexual assault (See AVfM Wiki – Misandry In International Law). When you look at the latests publications from the UN Security Council dated 22 May 2014 the invisibility of male victims is clear.
SECURITY COUNCIL AL-QAIDA SANCTIONS COMMITTEE ADDS BOKO HARAM TO ITS SANCTIONS LIST
Boko Haram is responsible for a series of major terrorist attacks, including a wave of bombings in Kano, Nigeria in January 2012 that killed more than 180 people in a single day. Another major attack was the August 26, 2011 bomb attack on the United Nations headquarters in Abuja that killed at least 21 people and wounded scores more. The group was also responsible for the December 25, 2011 attack on the Saint Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, Nigeria, that killed at least 37 and wounded approximately 50
Since summer 2012 Boko Haram has undertaken a campaign of violence against Nigerian schools and students. In June 2013, the group attacked schools in Maiduguri and Damaturu, Nigeria, killing at least 22* children; in July, an attack on a school in the village of Mamudo, Nigeria killed at least 42* people, most of them students. On September 29, 2013 Boko Haram attacked an agricultural school in Yobe, Nigeria, shooting dead 50* students in their dormitory as they slept.
On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram abducted approximately 300 girls from a school in northern Nigeria. Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the attack in a video released by Boko Haram and threatened to sell the girls into slavery. Boko Haram militants subsequently attacked a staging base for rescuers on May 5, 2014, killing an additional 310 people.
Security Council – SC/11410
* indicates exclusively male victim – Gender-based Violence .
Gendercide is gender-selective mass killing. The term was first used by Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection. Gendercide, the ultimate for of gender-related violence.
There has been the social meme and idiom of long standing that rape should be viewed as “A fate worse than death”. It is possible to recover from rape and many other traumas, but from death there is no recovery and likening rape to death on gendered lines is sexism and manifest gendered bias.
Boko Haram have been an emergent issue in Nigeria since 1995 – with media attention occurring in 2002. The United Nations Itself have been targeted by Boko Haram – 2011 Abuja United Nations bombing, in which 21 died and over 60 were injured. One would expect the United Nations to have been interested in the safety of their own employees and agents and interested in fully grasping the nature of such a threat. Ban Ki-moon described the attack as an “assault on those who devote themselves to helping others”.
The gendered nature of the violence and deaths is ignored and the fact that the dead victims were male is simply brushed over. Gendercide is tacitly accepted as the price of doing business, provided the dead are all male.
The UN is clear – men and boys are less valuable than girls and women – male are less noteworthy and gendered violence against males is not to be treated as significant.
This shows that the UN fails to meet its own mandates under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which reads:
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
The abject, deliberate and institutional failures of the United Nations from Ban Ki-moon as Secretary General through the Security Council (China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Argentina, Australia, Chad, Chile, Jordan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Nigeria, Republic of Korea, Rwanda) to even address the gendered nature of the Boko Haram Violence brings the whole United Nations into disrepute.
If you search Google and other search providers for references to Gender-based Violence and the United Nations every returned result is for violence against women. There is a complete negation of even the possibility that men can be subjected to violence along gendered lines and simply because they are male.
Of most concern is the following UN Policy Document is Ignored and not addressed:
WORKING WITH MEN AND BOY SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL AND GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN FORCED DISPLACEMENT
(2012) United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – Source
The document commits The UN and all partners to addressing Gender-Based Violence against boys and men, and yet it seems that someone forget to send out the memo from UNHCR Geneva to the rest of The United Nations.
Gender-based violence (GBV) is a term used to describe any harmful act that is perpetrated against a person’s will, and that is based on socially ascribed differences between males and females. The Violence of murder based upon being solely male is the most extreme form of Gender-based violence and yet this extreme violence is unrecognised and un-commented upon.
However the United Nations have rejected the term Gender-based violence (GBV) and use The term Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), saying:
“Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV)1is a particularly disturbing phenomenon which exists in all regions of the world. The term refers to any harmfulact that is perpetratedagainst one person’s will and that is based on socially ascribed(gender) differences between males and females.It includes acts that inflict physical, mental, or sexual harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivations of liberty,whether occurring in public or in private life.”
Action against Sexual and Gender-Based Violence. 2011
The constant linking of gender-based violence to sexual violence causes perception to be skewed in only seeing the female victim and never the male, even when he has suffered sexual violence and rape
It is most odd that internally the United Nations should create and maintain this link when Authorities advising globally do the opposite:
What is gender violence?
Gender violence is violence that is targeted at women or men because of their sex and/or their socially constructed gender roles. Gender violence disproportionately affects the members of one sex more than another. The recent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda have seen many examples of gender violence. Examples include: the forcible recruitment of young boys into the army who are put through violent indoctrination, and then made to perform suicidal missions in order to prove their masculinity; and the killing of pregnant women by the slashing of their wombs and removal of their fetuses.
What is the difference between gender violence and sexual violence?
Sexual violence is violence which includes a sexual element, such as rape, enforced prostitution, sexual slavery, or sexual mutilation. Gender violence is usually manifested in a form of sexual violence, but can also include non-sexual physical or psychological attacks on women, men or children, as in the examples above.
The Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice – the International Criminal Court (ICC)
It has to be asked why the United Nations in its practices, policies and publications still fails to work with the rest of the world, with academics and institutions set up by the UN – such as The International Criminal Court – why is the UN out of step with international Human Rights and ignoring gendercide, the ultimate gender-based violence when the victims are boys and men?
This is the same pattern of Institutional Fail articulated by Lara Stemple in her 2009 paper “Male Rape and Human Rights” in which she observes:
I show that numerous instruments in the human rights canon, including U.N. treaties, resolutions, consensus documents, and general comments address sexual violence while explicitly excluding male victims. I argue that the female-specific approach is best understood in the political context in which these instruments were developed:
Source
That same negation is all too evident in SC/11410, May 2014.
The negation of the male is Political and not simply institutional failure – it is a product of decades of promoting gender bias within the United Nations, and the results have now become embedded in society, media and mainstream politics – The Disposable Male is here and global, and it’s time for boys and men to be recognised as victims and named as such when gender-based violence, especially gendercide occurs.
All institutions and governments which fail to address the reality of this gendered violence should be called out as in disrepute and where possible also called to account under the internal laws of each country and under any treaties or legal instruments that exist.
A vote of no confidence in The United Nations and public censure of secretary Ban Ki-moon should be recorded, and on each occasion that The UN again ignores gendercide and gender-related violence it should be brought back for public consideration, attention and calls for action.
Authors Note: as of time of writing (08 June 2014) the only news coverage located by search engine which featured “Boko Haram” and the term Gendercide was from Live Action News (MAY 30, 2014) – NIGERIAN LEADERS PLAN ABORTIONS FOR BOKO HARAM VICTIMS; NO OTHER ALTERNATIVES DISCUSSED. The article makes the following claim;
“The Boko Haram tragedy has drawn attention to the plight of women on a global level. Human trafficking, sex slavery, gendercide, female infanticide and abandonment — they are all real and thriving occurrences on an international level. The need for real feminist voices (like Malala Yousafzai‘s) is as imminent today as it was during suffrage and the misogynistic antics of yesteryear.”
This incorrectly co-opts the term gendercide implying that it relates to the kidnapped girls and removes focus from the actual victims who are all male. Co-opting language and denying of reality has growing recognition as The Misandric Antics Of Today.
Image Credit: “UN security council 2006” by Hu Totya – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
