The report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolutions 1820 (2008) and 1888 (2009) (document A/65/592-S/2010/604) provides an analytical framework of conflict-related sexual violence to inform practice, and updates situations on the Council's agenda, progress made by the Organization in implementing the resolutions, and recommendations.

Resolution 1820 (2008) addresses acts of sexual violence against civilians and opens the possibility of imposing targeted sanctions against warring factions that commit rape and other forms of violence against women and girls. Resolution 1888 (2009) builds on resolution 1820 (2008), calling on the Secretary-General, among other things, to rapidly deploy a team of experts to situations of particular concern.

The new Security Council Resolution 1960(2010) creates a listing system whereby parties who have engaged in patterns of sexual violence in situations of armed conflict that are on the Council's agenda will be listed in a new annex to the Secretary-General's annual reports (SCR 1960 OP3; see Report pg 17, Recommendation 46 c).

This will be similar to the listing mechanism for Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC), except without the working group mechanism attached and limited to countries on the Council's agenda (for now). The CAAC mechanism and Resolution 1882 already require the UN System to gather information on and publish a list of perpetrators of sexual violence where the victims are children. By endorsing a similar system for sexual violence perpetrated against adult women, the Council can easily eliminate an artificial divide between concern for victims of sexual violence under and over 18 years of age.

Additionally, it establishes a monitoring, analysis, reporting arrangement on sexual violence in war (SCR 1960, OP 8; Report recommendation 46 e).

The resolution calls specifically upon parties to armed conflict to make and implement specific and time-bound commitments to combat sexual violence (SCR 1960 OP5).

The last operative paragraph details the very specific requests for next years report, which give a strong mandate to the Secretariat to provide detailed implementation strategies and list specific parties to conflict that are committing patterns of sexual violence in an annex to the report.

For further details, refer to the content of the resolution and the summary of the debate and the resolution on our SCM page.