Mr A, a refugee from Afghanistan: It's really not just the tabloids. That's the point. There really isn't much positive about us in the so-called mainstream press either. And this makes refugees and those seeking asylum think: "OK - we'll give up. We can't change people's minds."

We have from our refugee community some very successful people. But there is no story about them. But if someone has done good things, that should be mentioned as well. If someone has done something wrong - OK, they need to report that. But how will they report it. So you will read in a paper - "Arab rapist" - why not "Ahmed" or "Steve rapist" - why "Arab"?

But I'll give you a positive example of what can be done. I was living in Newcastle. Close by there is a little town called Sunderland, a nice place, but the problem is that they have more extreme views about refugees and asylum-seekers than you find in most other places. They don't like them. And there aren't many refugees there at all. The Home Office sent a few asylum seekers up there and police had to move them after a few days. In 2003, an Iranian asylum seeker was stabbed to death.

In a very timely piece published on openDemocracy today, Charlie Beckett offers some useful insights on "networked journalism" that I think are worth bringing in to this debate. Beckett, of the Polis journalism and society centre at LSE has a book out Supermedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World and argues that new tools of communication and forms of journalism can have a huge impact on the public sphere and democracy itself.

‘Then cherish pity; lest you drive an angel from your door.’
From ‘Holy Thursday’, Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

The last line of Blake’s poem, with its echo of the Biblical injunction - ‘Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Unawares!’ (Hebrew, 13:2) – reminds us that giving sanctuary or refuge to strangers who need it is part of a longstanding and venerable tradition in Britain. Indeed, by some accounts, we pride ourselves on a liberal asylum tradition that dates right back to the welcome that we gave Huguenots from France and the Protestants expelled by Phillip III of Spain in the late sixteenth century.

For Amir, who wants women to be his equals

I know many men who consider women small; men who enjoy degrading women and view them only as tools for satisfying their urges; men who sum up their virility in stoning women. I know men who consider their vicious treatment of women a trait of champions and heroes; men who proudly describe their abuse of women to their friends. I know men who present themselves as open-minded types in public, but beat their wives in private.

In the third of four reports from a UN conference on women targeted by armed conflict, Rosemary Bechler speaks to Nicky Dahrendorf, who as UN Action coordinator in the Congo holds "possibly one of the most challenging jobs ever devised".

Click here for parts one and two

3. A sobering reality

In that 'can do' atmosphere, I was very pleased to meet up briefly with Nicky Dahrendorf, who we last heard from on openDemocracy in late 2005. We repaired to a comfortable corner so that I could hear about what must be one of the most challenging jobs ever devised. On International Women's Day in 2007, twelve United Nations agencies came together to form the joint initiative, UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations

Population Fund (UNFPA), and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) joined forces to improve the quality of programming to address sexual violence, to increase the coordination of efforts for comprehensive prevention and response services, and to improve accountability. The new Secretary General is keen to work on gender issues and has picked up on the challenge of sexual violence, and there is a new sense of momentum in the air. Nicky has just returned to the UN after two years away, to be appointed UN Action coordinator in the Congo.

'Prevention' in the field of sexual violence in conflict tends to be seen as a long-term challenge, involving a combination of judicial processes to demonstrate that there is no impunity for rape, and socio-cultural interventions aimed at changing attitudes in the long run and building women's capacity to expose and protest this violence. However, this is a long term process and everyone at the Wilton Park conference knows that women in eastern DRC or Darfur cannot wait the decades it might take for these efforts to work. The disruption of communities, of society as a whole, for example in the Congo can be measured not only in death, disease and trauma, but in women being kicked out on to the streets with their children and no income, prostitution, criminality and abuse of the kids – there are thousands of street children in Kinshasa, and the problem is growing.

But however tangible the sense of urgency in the people I am talking to, there are real problems in translating this into action. Nicky is currently wrestling to establish the parameters of her huge new remit; on the one hand, helping the DRC Government to develop a strategy on sexual violence, and on the other responding to the UN's new-found commitment to an over-arching approach. "Sexual violence is not just a gender issue," she explains, "It goes right across the board - it is about human rights, security sector reform - it's political. It's strategic. I don't mean to be politically incorrect, but if you are going to deal with this properly you have to integrate it into security sector and law reform. There are two immediate priorities for me - rule of law and impunity. This is tangible. If we can bring both civilians and military people to justice, it will have been a good start." UN Resolution 1325 will be a useful mechanism for communicating what has been achieved on the ground, but first the work has to be done. And this is where the problems start.

Already, a raft of political obstacles have been strewn across Nicky's path. It is not just enormous challenges, such as the glaring lacunae in the relevant data that concerns her, "Anecdotal evidence is all we have and much of it is incorrect. We can't develop our peacekeeping programmes without understanding the perpetrators and victims better. We need dedicated sex crimes investigators who go straight out to talk to these people. But after all these years - nothing has been done to pull the crucial data together. We need a proper stocktaking so that we can find out who is doing what where, so that we can begin to predict trends."

But the biggest problem is the UN machine itself. Already, her new post is beginning to feel to Dahrendorf like a sticking plaster over a gaping wound:

"Everything in the UN is a very gradual awakening - we know that. It needs a lot of lobbying and a lot of criticism. But I am very concerned about my job - put there in a senior position, but with absolutely no support. I have to scramble to get a computer: it's the same old UN story. The whole sexual violence issue does not lack funds. There is too much money around in my view. But the resources are really badly allocated. Important governments are duplicating their efforts in their haste to contribute. This project-oriented approach is not helpful, when what we need and what the Congolese Government needs, is strategy.

It's very late in the day. I think, to be truthful, it's too little too late. A lot of donors have got upset with the fact that the money that they have put into DRC and sexual violence has not seen results. It is a fact that certain lead agencies haven't delivered. Some of the international NGOs - IRC, Oxfam and others - have quite rightly asked why, with all the guys we have on the ground, we haven't been able to focus more on sexual violence as a priority. I've got about a year, but so far the work has been tedious and demoralising."

I come away from that conversation with a challenge of my own. Nicky has been thinking about her advocacy and communication strategy - radio, theatre, whatever it takes: "At the moment we are doing something with posters, and I can't help asking myself what some Interahamwe soldier sitting in the jungle in East Kivu is going to make of a little poster saying, 'Don't rape'." She wants to know if we have any good ideas...

The realities as Nicky describes them are sobering from every point of view: "We are nowhere near understanding the complexity of the problem. The way we are programming at the moment certainly does not address the complexity of the problem. This is not just about armed men in uniform: there are a whole host of other issues. Some are related to the conflict: some existed before the conflict, in belief systems such as fetishism, and whole cultures where notions prevail such as that raping a young girl cures HIV/Aids, or that raping an old woman strengthens the spirit. It is the human rights issue, I think. I might change my mind totally after a few more weeks in the job, but that is what I think now - and it has never been addressed that way."

Women targeted by armed conflict

Read the four reports from the conference

The changing face of war

Protecting women and girls in conflict

Sexual Violence not just a gender issue

Pray the devil back to hell

Also on openDemocracy: Anne-Marie Goetz, "War and sexual violence: an issue of security" plus an interview with John Holmes, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs

Stop rape now: UN action against sexual violence in conflict

In the second of four reports from the UN conference on women targeted by armed conflict, Rosemary Bechler talks to military peacekeeper Patrick Commaert about the responsibility to protect, and learning from Rwanda, Somalia and Srebrenica.

Click here for the first report

2. "The good news"

I caught up with Patrick Commaert once he had delivered his speech on how to meet the protection needs of women in armed conflicts. After serving in Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Major General spent eight years with the DPKO both in the field and at HQ, and the last years of his career in the DRC, as the General Officer of the Eastern Division of the UN mission, MONUC, commanding some 15,000 men and women from 53 different nations 'with robust armament'. His paper drew its examples largely from the DRC, where the unchallenged use of sexual violence especially in the eastern part of the country was "probably among the worst things I have been directly confronted with during my entire military career". I asked him why this conference was being held now? He was ready to acknowledge that when he first encountered this disturbing problem in 1992 in Cambodia, it had not been obvious where to turn. Now, over fifteen years later, thanks to global communications, there was a wide enough understanding of the epidemic scale of the damage to make it impossible for the international community to ignore. The DPKO, especially in the wake of the landmark 'Brahimi Report' that recommended sweeping changes in the way that UN peacekeeping and associated post-conflict peacebuilding were conceived, planned, and executed, had 'advanced enormously' in that time. To be sure, it now had to deal with 21 missions all over the world, and up to 125,000 people in uniform deployed in the field at any one time, on a budget of only seven billion dollars. But the climate now was very different.

Commaert's main message was a simple one: despite decades of neglect and the absence of state authority in these countries, "provided with a robust mandate, peacekeepers can play an important role in protecting civilians from sexual violence during armed conflict." In the aftermath of the failure of the UN Missions in Rwanda, Somalia and Srebrenica, the United Nations Security Council mandated new UN missions to "protect civilians under imminent threat of violence within their capabilities and deployment" under Chapter VII of the UN Charter; i.e. using all necessary means, including the pre-emptive use of deadly force. This phrase, as the Major General sees it, gives force commanders in the field all the tools they need to act. In his opinion it is not a stronger mandate that is needed, but that troops, and in particular, their commanders, fully understand this mandate and their rules of engagement. The willingness of UN Commanders to take swift decisions when the presence of armed groups is reported is key to the effective protection of civilians: 'If they fail to act because they give scant regard to sexual violence, perhaps because their society or culture does not pay this much attention - then they have failed in the implementation of the mandate. That is the job. Commanders of all sorts of levels of command must understand this. They need to be taught this in their staff colleges, think tanks and preparation for missions by people who know the business. Preventing and dealing with sexual violence is part of that protection."

If it was amongst military peacekeepers that the analytical gap in identifying this type of threat seemed most glaring, it is also amongst military actors that innovative ad hoc responses could be found, thanks to the individual commitment of certain commanders in the field and the empathy of some of their troops. To the firewood patrols, night patrols in camps for internally displaced persons, and efforts to protect women collecting water, Commaert added the suggestion that donor countries should invest in the training of military prosecutors and judges and the establishment of Mobile Military Courts of Justice. After three years of lobbying, the Congolese Army Chief of Staff had issued a call for the setting up of Follow-Up Committees to monitor proceedings on human rights violations perpetrated by his soldiers and ensure a follow-up. This was a start. As for the UN, Commaert had found that a visible UN presence on the ground could inspire a sense of security among populations and encourage them to continue their daily lives. Of course they had to take action if needed, and limited troops often found themselves saddled with an enormous area of responsibility: the DRC is the size of Western Europe.

Here, Mobile Operating Bases were invaluable. Temporary camps set up in areas dominated by illegal armed groups could lay on intensive day and night patrolling for a few days, before moving to another site, only to return shortly afterwards. This effectively deterred illegal armed groups from settling in the vicinity of villages and committing atrocities. Quick Reaction Forces were able to identify hot-spots through close collaboration with the local chiefs of villages and humanitarian actors on the ground to set up alarm systems that could alert UN forces, using church bells, beating drums or mobile phones. Further measures Commaert was after included supporting the International Criminal Court; strengthening national judicial systems; effective investigation and documentation of alleged sexual violence; and strengthening medical services in places where health infrastructure is often entirely absent. Lastly, "a critical mass of women in peacekeeping missions can enhance confidence-building with the host community by presenting an organisation that looks more like a civilian society than a military occupation force. Military and police components should include female community police, liaison officers and military observers, female medical doctors, and language assistants."

Of course, it wasn't all unalloyed progress. This March, Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations had complained bitterly at the decision of the United Nations Human Rights Council not to renew the mandate of its independent expert on human rights for the DRC, calling this "a betrayal of its responsibilities toward the Congolese people." Patrick Commaert had to agree. It was contrary to the UN Secretary General's commitment to intensify actions to end violence against women and children. But, "it shows yet again that any UN mandate is only as strong as member states want it to be."

Commaert's final message however, he directed once again to the commanders of UN military peacekeeping troops:

It doesn't specify in the mandate against whom they have to act: it can be militias, gangs, it can be criminals, and it can be government security forces who may arrest and threaten their own populations. So that means that if you are faithful to your mandate, the force must look into and act in all those eventualities. And that, as you can imagine, has political consequences - because that means that you may find yourself saying to your host nation, 'Hey listen - your forces are misbehaving! Do something about it because otherwise I have to do something about it - I will have to arrest the perpetrators of that violence.' If you want to preserve the credibility of the United Nations in general and your mission in particular, and if you want to keep the confidence of the local populations, then you should act. Otherwise those people will say, 'Why are you here? You are not defending us. You are not protecting us.' Now, of course, you can argue that, 'In my division I had 15,000 troops in an area twice the size of France.' But you have been told to do, 'everything within your capacity and where you are deployed' and you cannot turn a blind eye to what is happening where you are deployed. Don't give me Rwanda, Somalia and Srebrenica. Yes a lot of things went wrong then. But since then, we have made good progress and we can and must do more."

Women targeted by armed conflict

Read the four reports from the conference

The changing face of war

Protecting women and girls in conflict

Sexual Violence not just a gender issue

Pray the devil back to hell

Stop rape now: UN action against sexual violence in conflict

"When you see the Iceland store, you will be able to find Brook Road. Walk to the end of that road, the garment factory is on the second floor. You can't miss it. The building looks very run-down." Chun's voice at the other end of the mobile phone is anxious. To "argue reason" with an employer on a wage-claiming mission is always a tense occasion, but this particular boss has the kind of reputation that leads two Chinese workers to volunteer to accompany me.

Women's rights activists in Iran have been hit by a fresh crackdown that threatens a vital campaigning tool

A few days ago we hit a new low in systematic filtering of women's rights websites in Iran. Along with the website Change for Equality, 11 other sites and blogs belonging to local branches of the One Million Signatures Campaign in several cities or regions in Iran (Arak, Rasht, Mashhad, Esfahan, Shiraz, Zahedan) were blocked simultaneously. The list of blocked blogs included Men for Equality, set up by male activists in the campaign and those of a few Iranian immigrant populations in other countries (Kuwait, Cyprus, Germany, and the US). Campaign websites in Kurdestan and Azarbaijan had been blocked in April 2008.

The attention of the international media to the Tibetan issue is set to continue for some time. But a part of the Chinese media and internet community has been sidetracked by a 21-year-old philosophy student in Hong Kong whom they have christened “Tibet Independence Girl”. Tibet Independence Girl (aka Christina Han Chau-man) was one of nine protestors arrested in China for wrapping a Tibetan flag around herself during the Olympic torch relay and has now sprung to internet fame – for all the wrong reasons.