New IDEA Board Member Margot Wallström says, “UN resolutions lack teeth”

New IDEA Board Member Margot Wallström
Photo ©: Lisa Hagman/IDEA

International IDEA’s new board member, Margot Wallström, paid a visit to the Institute’s headquarters in Stockholm on 17 February 2010 and spent time getting to know the staff and programmes. Margot Wallström is also the newly-appointed Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Sexual Violence and Conflict. She is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, and has most recently served as a European Commissioner for 10 years. We took the opportunity to interview her for this newsletter.

What are the main challenges in your new job as the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict?

There are many challenges. I would say that we have great UN resolutions - for example Resolution 1325, which is 10 years old now, as well as Resolution 1820 and others more recently - but these resolutions lack ‘teeth’. Their implementation is not good enough, to say the least and, in addition, action by the UN has not been coordinated enough. The main problem is impunity. We now hear that more and more cases are reported - in Democratic Republic of Congo, for example - of women being raped or sexually abused or assaulted. Not being able to help these women represents failure on the part of the whole international community. We must remember that we also face the challenge of showing that women are not only victims, they are also actors for change. And without counting on women to build democracy or peace and security, we cannot be effective. I would say that it’s about moving on this track, while at the same time, ending impunity: protecting women of course, but also empowering women.

How do you see the link between democracy (or democratization) and the empowerment and advancement of women?

Well we can start at home, I can start at home in Europe and say that more than half of Europe’s citizens are women, but they are so badly represented at the political decision making level; they are still not paid the same salary for doing the same jobs as men; they are still exposed to violence - domestic violence, sexual violence, even in Sweden. I think that it’s clear that we cannot build prosperity and we cannot build a society where we all feel secure and safe without involving women and giving them a voice. It is about democracy and it’s not a matter for women only. This is a human rights issue, in Africa as well as in Europe. And I think it comes down to very basic things. From a recent conference between NATO and the European Union, it was clear that women define also security somewhat differently. If we ask women what security is, they say that it’s about having access to education or drinking water or being able to have your village or house lit up at night. So access to electricity too is a security issue to them, while men tend to more generally define security maybe in military terms or in a very traditional way. I think that is very important to understand that if you want to build democracy you have to listen to half of the population – and to remember that very often women also represent the voices of children of the next generation.

As a new Board member of International IDEA, how do you think the organization can best contribute towards the empowerment and advancement of women?

I think that IDEA can assist in reaching this goal through all of its work. By now IDEA has built a solid reputation of being able to provide the expertise, the knowledge, and some very practical tools and methods to assist. In doing so, I think that IDEA can also make a very convincing argument on gender equality and that there should be a gender perspective in everything we, as IDEA, do. Women will play a crucial role in democracy building in the future. This has to come out clearly from the messages that we send and in the methods we use and we will have to force governments if necessary to take that into account in their thinking. These are the most important weapons we have in the search for gender equality. They say in Africa: “what is a village without women?” and this is also clear internationally: “what is a society without women?”. We always have to remember that women carry half the sky!