Metro - A tribute in their honour

War's overlooked victims

Rape is horrifyingly widespread in conflicts all around the world

SHORTLY after the birth of her sixth child, Mathilde went with her baby into the fields to collect the harvest. She saw two men approaching, wearing what she says was the uniform of the FDLR, a Rwandan militia. Fleeing them she ran into another man, who beat her head with a metal bar. She fell to the ground with her baby and lay still. Perhaps thinking he had murdered her, the man went away. The other two came and raped her, then they left her for dead.
Mathilde’s story is all too common. Rape in war is as old as war itself. After the sack of Rome 16 centuries ago Saint Augustine called rape in wartime an “ancient and customary evil”. For soldiers, it has long been considered one of the spoils of war. Antony Beevor, a historian who has written about rape during the Soviet conquest of Germany in 1945, says that rape has occurred in war since ancient times, often perpetrated by indisciplined soldiers. But he argues that there are also examples in history of rape being used strategically, to humiliate and to terrorise, such as the Moroccan regulares in Spain’s civil war.

As the reporting of rape has improved, the scale of the crime has become more horrifyingly apparent (see table). And with the Bosnian war of the 1990s came the widespread recognition that rape has been used systematically as a weapon of war and that it must be punished as an egregious crime. In 2008 the UN Security Council officially acknowledged that rape has been used as a tool of war. With these kinds of resolutions and global campaigns against rape in war, the world has become more sensitive. At least in theory, the Geneva Conventions, governing the treatment of civilians in war, are respected by politicians and generals in most decent states. Generals from rich countries know that their treatment of civilians in the theatre of war comes under ever closer scrutiny. The laws and customs of war are clear. But in many parts of the world, in the Hobbesian anarchy of irregular war, with ill-disciplined private armies or militias, these norms carry little weight.
Take Congo; it highlights both how horribly common rape is, and how hard it is to document and measure, let alone stop. The eastern part of the country has been a seething mess since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. In 2008 the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a humanitarian group, estimated that 5.4m people had died in “Africa’s world war”. Despite peace deals in 2003 and 2008, the tempest of violence has yet fully to subside. As Congo’s army and myriad militias do battle, the civilians suffer most. Rape has become an ugly and defining feature of the conflict.
Plenty of figures on how many women have been raped are available but none is conclusive. In October Roger Meece, the head of the United Nations in Congo, told the UN Security Council that 15,000 women had been raped throughout the country in 2009 (men suffer too, but most victims are female). The UN Population Fund estimated 17,500 victims for the same period. The IRC says it treated 40,000 survivors in the eastern province of South Kivu alone between 2003 and 2008.
“The data only tell you so much,” says Hillary Margolis, who runs the IRC’s sexual-violence programme in North Kivu. These numbers are the bare minimum; the true figures may be much higher. Sofia Candeias, who co-ordinates the UN Development Programme’s Access to Justice project in Congo, points out that more rapes are reported in places with health services. In the areas where fighting is fiercest, women may have to walk hundreds of miles to find anyone to tell that they have been attacked. Even if they can do so, it may be months or years after the assault. Many victims are killed by their assailants. Others die of injuries. Many do not report rape because of the stigma.
Congo’s horrors are mind-boggling. A recent study by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Oxfam examined rape survivors at the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, a town in North Kivu province. Their ages ranged from three to 80. Some were single, some married, some widows. They came from all ethnicities. They were raped in homes, fields and forests. They were raped in front of husbands and children. Almost 60% were gang-raped. Sons were forced to rape mothers, and killed if they refused.
The attention paid to Congo reflects growing concern about rape in war. Historically the taboo surrounding rape has been so strong that few cases were reported; evidence of wartime rape before the 20th century is scarce. With better reporting, the world has woken up to the scale of the crime. The range of sexual violence in war has become apparent: the abduction of women as sex slaves, sexualised torture and mutilation, rape in public or private.

In some wars all parties engage in it. In others it is inflicted mainly by one side. Rape in wars in Africa has had a lot of attention in recent years, but it is not just an African problem. Conflicts with high levels of rape between 1980 and 2009 were most numerous in sub-Saharan Africa, according to Dara Kay Cohen of the University of Minnesota (see chart). But only a third of sub-Saharan Africa’s 28 civil wars saw the worst levels of rape—compared with half of Eastern Europe’s nine. And no part of the world has escaped the scourge.
The anarchy and impunity of war goes some way to explaining the violence. The conditions of war are often conducive to rape. Young, ill-trained men, fighting far from home, are freed from social and religious constraints. The costs of rape are lower, the potential rewards higher. And for ill-fed, underpaid combatants, rape can be a kind of payment.
Widespread, but not inevitable
Then consider the type of wars fought today. Many recent conflicts have involved not organised armies but scrappy militias fighting amid civilians. As wars have moved from battlefields to villages, women and girls have become more vulnerable. For many, the home front no longer exists; every house is now on the front line.
But rape in war is not inevitable. In El Salvador’s civil war, it was rare. When it did occur it was almost always carried out by state forces. The left-wing militias fighting against the government for years relied on civilians for information. You can rape to terrorise people or force them to leave an area, says Elisabeth Wood, a professor at Yale University and the Santa Fe Institute, but rape is not effective when you want long-term, reliable intelligence from them or to rule them in the future.
Some groups commit all kinds of other atrocities, but abhor rape. The absence of sexual violence in the Tamil Tigers’ forced displacement of tens of thousands of Muslims from the Jaffna peninsula in 1990 is a case in point. Rape is often part of ethnic cleansing but it was strikingly absent here. Tamil mores prohibit sex between people who are not married and sex across castes (though they are less bothered about marital rape). What is more, Ms Wood explains, the organisation’s strict internal discipline meant commanders could enforce these judgments.
Some leaders, such as Jean-Pierre Bemba, a Congolese militia boss who is now on trial for war-crimes in The Hague, say they lack full control over their troops. But a commander with enough control to direct soldiers in military operations can probably stop them raping, says Ms Wood. A decision to turn a blind eye may have less to do with lack of control, and more with a chilling assessment of rape’s use as a terror tactic.
Rape is a means of subduing foes and civilians without having to engage in the risky business of battle. Faced with rape, civilians flee, leaving their land and property to their attackers. In August rebel militias raped around 240 people over four days in the Walikale district of eastern Congo. The motives for the attack are unclear. The violence may have been to intimidate the population into providing the militia with gold and tin from nearby mines. Or maybe one bit of the army was colluding with the rebels to avoid being replaced by another bit and losing control of the area and its resources. In Walikale, at least, rape seems to have been a deliberate tactic, not a random one, says Ms Margolis.
At worst, rape is a tool of ethnic cleansing and genocide, as in Bosnia, Darfur and Rwanda. Rape was first properly recognised as a weapon of war after the conflict in Bosnia. Though all sides were guilty, most victims were Bosnian Muslims assaulted by Serbs. Muslim women were herded into “rape camps” where they were raped repeatedly, usually by groups of men. The full horrors of these camps emerged in hearings at the war-crimes tribunal on ex-Yugoslavia in The Hague; victims gave evidence in writing or anonymously. After the war some perpetrators said that they had been ordered to rape—either to ensure that non-Serbs would flee certain areas, or to impregnate women so that they bore Serb children. In 1995, when Croatian forces over-ran Serb-held areas, there were well-attested cases of sexual violence against both women and men.
In the Sudanese region of Darfur, rape and other forms of sexual violence have also been a brutally effective way to terrorise and control civilians. Women are raped in and around the refugee camps that litter the region, mostly when they leave the camps to collect firewood, water and food. Those of the same ethnicity as the two main rebel groups have been targeted most as part of the campaign of ethnic cleansing. According to Human Rights Watch, rape is chronically underreported, partially because in the mostly Muslim region sexual violence is a sensitive subject. Between October 2004 and February 2005 Médecins Sans Frontières, a French charity, treated almost 500 women and girls in South Darfur. The actual number of victims is likely to be much higher.
Tacit approval
In the Rwandan genocide rape was “the rule and its absence the exception”, in the words of the UN. In the weeks before the killings began, Hutu-controlled newspapers ran cartoons showing Tutsi women having sex with Belgian peacekeepers, who were seen as allies of Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front. Inger Skjelsbæk, deputy director of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, argues that Hutu propaganda may not have openly called for rape, but it certainly suggested that the Hutu cause would be well served by the sexual violation of Tutsi women. Jens Meierhenrich, a Rwanda-watcher at the London School of Economics, says that even if high-level commanders did not tell men to rape, they gave tacit approval. Lower-ranking officers may have openly encouraged the crime.
Out of Rwanda’s horror came the first legal verdict that acknowledged rape as part of a genocidal campaign. After the conviction of Jean Paul Akayesu, a local politician, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda said systematic sexual violence, perpetrated against Tutsi women and them alone, had been an integral part of the effort to wipe out the Tutsis.
For combatants who know little about each other, complicity in rape can serve as a bond. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone, most of whose members say they were kidnapped into its ranks and then raped thousands during the civil war, is a case in point. Ms Cohen argues that armed groups that are not socially cohesive, particularly those whose fighters have been forcibly recruited, are more likely to commit rape, especially gang rape, so as to build internal ties.
For the victims and their families, rape does the opposite. The shame and degradation of rape rip apart social bonds. In societies where a family’s honour rests on the sexual purity of its women, the blame for the loss of that honour often falls not upon the rapist, but the raped. In Bangladesh, where most of the victims were Muslim, the use of rape was not only humiliating for them as individuals but for their families and communities. The then prime minister, Mujibur Rahman, tried to counter this by calling them heroines who needed protection and reintegration. Some men agreed but most did not; they demanded sweeteners in the form of extra dowry payments from the authorities.
In Congo, despite the efforts of activists, rape still brings shame to the victim, says Ms Margolis: “People can sit around and talk about the importance of removing the stigma in the abstract, but when it comes to their own wives or daughters or sisters, it is a different story.” Many are rejected by their family and stigmatised by their community after being raped.
There is little prospect of justice for the victims of rape. Mr Akayesu is one of the few people brought to book for rape in war. Though wartime rape is prohibited under the Geneva rules, sexual violence has often been prosecuted less fiercely than other war crimes. But the Balkan war-crimes court broke new ground by issuing verdicts treating rape as a crime against humanity. The convictions of three men for the rape, torture and sexual enslavement of women in the Bosnian town of Foca was a big landmark.
But in Congo the court system is in pieces. There have been fewer than 20 prosecutions of rape as either a war crime or a crime against humanity. The American Bar Association, which helps victims bring their cases to court in eastern Congo, has processed around 145 cases in the past two years. This has resulted in about 45 trials and 36 convictions based on domestic legislation, including a law introduced in 2006 to try and address the problem of sexual violence. Those who work with the survivors of rape in Congo have mixed feelings about the 2006 law. It has pricked consciences and made people more aware of their rights, concedes Ms Margolis. It creates a theoretical accountability that could help punish perpetrators. But for women seeking justice, it has yet to have much impact. “There is still a glimmer of hope in people’s eyes when they talk about the law. But the judicial and security systems need to be improved so that it can be applied better, or people may lose confidence in it,” Ms Margolis says.
Huge practical problems beset the legal system in Congo, says Richard Malengule, head of the Gender and Justice programme at HEAL Africa, a hospital in Goma. People have to walk 300km to get to a court. There is no money and no training for the police. Even if people are arrested, they are often released within a few days, in many cases by making a deal with the victim’s family or the court. Those that go to jail often escape within days. Many prisons have no door—or corrupt guards.
Enduring effects
Given the parlous state of Congo’s judiciary, raising the number of prosecutions may not help. Some want more international involvement. Justine Masika, who runs an organisation in Goma seeking justice for the victims of sex crimes, says Congolese courts must work with international ones in prosecuting rape. But “hybrid” courts require some commitment from the local government; Congo’s rulers do not show much commitment to tackling rape. The International Criminal Court is investigating crimes, including rape, in Congo but gathering necessary evidence is hard.
Raising global awareness is another avenue; it helps lessen the stigma. Various UN resolutions over the past ten years have highlighted and condemned sexual violence against women and girls and called on countries to do more to combat it. But worthy language will not be enough.
Worse, the UN has faced criticism for failing to protect Congolese civilians from rape. In the Walikale attack, one UN official worries that the body is not meeting its obligations to protect civilians. He accepts that in remote places it is hard for peacekeepers to reach civilians, but insists that this does not justify the UN’s failure in Walikale. He is dubious, too, about the investigations into the incident. “All these interviews, these investigations, what have they achieved? The survivors are interviewed again and again and again? Where does that get them?”
Without the presence of the UN, atrocities would be even more widespread, says Mr Malengule. But in the long term, he says, more pressure must be put on Congo’s government to tackle rape. At present, one aid worker laments, it just gets a lot of lip-service. The government would rather Congo were not known as the world’s rape capital, but it shows little interest in real change.

Even when wars end, rape continues. Humanitarian agencies in Congo report high levels of rape in areas that are quite peaceful now. Again, it is hard to assess numbers. Figures for rape before the war do not exist. A greater willingness to report rape may account for the apparent increase. But years of fighting have resulted in a culture of rape and violence, says Mr Malengule. Efforts to reintegrate ex-combatants into society have been short and unsuccessful, with little follow-up to assess results. Add to that the dismal judicial system, and the outlook is grim.
It is bleaker still when you see how long rape’s effects endure. Rebels seized Angelique’s village in 1994. They slit her husband’s throat. Then they bound her between two trees, arms and legs tied apart. Seven men raped her before she fainted. She does not know how many raped her after that. Then they shoved sticks in her vagina. Tissue between her vagina and rectum was ripped, and she developed a fistula. For 16 years she leaked urine and faeces. Now she is getting medical treatment, but justice is a distant dream.

http://www.economist.com/node/17900482?story_id=17900482?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/ar/rape#footnote1

Battery in Private

Russia Has No Legal Mechanism for Prosecuting Domestic Abuse.

The government considers violence against women in their homes as a strictly private matter, unless the victim sustains medium to severe injuries.

 

Yekaterina Vinogorova, a 39-year-old mother of three, finally fled her 15-year-long marriage after her husband broke her nose and ribs and covered her in bruises. “He would have these periodic outbursts of jealousy. The last time he beat me up so badly I simply walked out, but he carried on following me. Once he slashed the tires on my car. He was stalking me everywhere,” she said.

For three months Vinogorova and her children were given refuge at Moscow’s shelter for victims of domestic violence until she could move in with her parents, where she remains almost two years on. The paycheck she gets at a Moscow beauty salon is just about enough to support herself and her children, but the situation with her husband is far from resolved.

Vinogorova is prosecuting him in court for the assault. Still, Russia has no legal mechanism for imposing restraining orders even though persuasive research shows that women are most at risk when leaving their partners. She always gives police statements when she is harassed by him, but with little success. Since she left him, he has attacked her father to convince her to return, vandalized her car by tearing out the battery and wires under the hood and finally burnt down their country home. “The trouble is none of this can be proven and the police aren’t interested,” she said, adding that he refuses to hand over her and her children’s passports.

“People like this get some kind of gratification from all this. He’s actually living with another woman now, but apparently this doesn’t make him want to leave us alone. And it all continues unpunished. I just don’t know how this is going to end. When I go out, I make sure I keep checking around me. Who knows what’s on his mind and no one’s there to protect me. The police do nothing.”

Yekaterina’s case is not entirely typical—she was, at least, fortunate enough to make it to a shelter. “They helped me a lot. I lived there with my children for three months. They had lawyers and psychiatrists, and it was all free,” she said. Russia has just 23 of these local government-funded shelters, clearly too few for a largely ignored social issue which claims a staggering 14,000 women’s lives a year, according to government statistics cited by this year’s UN report titled “End the Silence.”

The capital, with its real population way in excess of ten million, has only one shelter, the “Hope Center,” which has 35 beds, said Elena Korsakova, its director. NGO workers consider the 14,000 deaths a year a conservative estimate even though it equates to the number of soldiers the Soviet Union lost in its decade-long abortive campaign in Afghanistan. Put otherwise, one woman is killed by her partner every 40 minutes, meaning that Russian women are three times more likely to be abused within the walls of their own home by their partners than they are even on the streets, a report by ANNA, Russia’s leading domestic violence NGO working trying to curb violence against women, found this year.

What’s more, in Russia domestic violence is as likely within the walls of the elite Rublyovka mansions as it is in the apartments of its bleak single-industry cities. “This problem transcends any social strata or social group,” said Marina Pisklakova-Parker, the director of ANNA. “It doesn’t depend on education, income or other forms of social status. It happens in every type of family. It’s everywhere. But still it is not discussed.”

Suffering in silence

Russian pop diva Valeria brought domestic violence into Russia’s headlines when in 2005 she documented ten years of quietly suffering beatings from her husband, the man who managed her superstar music career. But this was a rare public glimpse into domestic violence, and the anguish of its victims more often goes unheard in a matter that is socially perceived as a private affair. “In society, domestic violence is not considered bad behavior,” said Pisklakova-Parker. “When nobody says you cannot beat your wife, then everybody who does it assumes they have a right to do it. There is only silence. Society says ‘it’s okay, it’s not a crime’.” In his State of the Nation address this year, President Dmitry Medvedev delivered a wide-ranging plan to protect women and children to halt the population crisis because of the forecasted drop in women of child-bearing age, but he made no mention of the violence at home killing 14,000 women a year.

Out of Russia’s three mainstream pollsters, the Public Opinion Fund, VTsIOM, and Levada, only the latter could provide any statistics on domestic violence, and even that poll dated back to 2006. That year, 26 percent of Russians said that domestic violence is “very widespread” in Russia, 45 percent said “quite widespread” and 19 percent said “not widespread,” according to Levada. The rest were “not sure.”

Muddled numbers

Moreover, statistics are unreliable because of the backwardness of the government’s approach to domestic violence. No distinction is drawn between crimes against different genders, meaning that Interior Ministry statistics on domestic violence are inaccurate. There are also a raft of ambiguities in the Interior Ministry data issued to the public. Speaking at an event organized to prevent future domestic violence in 2008, the police said that there were over 200,000 domestic violence crimes committed by people when drunk, but also said that there are over 250,000 people suffering from alcoholism. “Are these alcoholics among the domestic violence offenders, or are these two different categories?” asked this year’s ANNA report that tried to make sense of the data to pinpoint problematic areas.

In post-Soviet Ukraine, NGO workers say that as many as 70 percent of women are victims of domestic violence. But accurate country-comparisons are tricky. What sets Russia apart is the shocking death toll, which stems from deficient government measures to nip cases in the bud before they escalate. “We have only criminal articles, meaning that intervention can be carried out only when the injuries are medium or severe or in the case of murder,” said Pisklakova-Parker. “Because of the nature of domestic violence, by the time women are suffering medium injuries it is too late. The level of danger is already very high.”

“It’s difficult to assess how Russia compares with other countries, but in Russia there are more frequent cases of domestic violence ending in death because there is no state-level system for helping women, said Larissa Ponarina, the deputy director of ANNA.

Alexei Parshin, a lawyer who does pro bono work for the victims, said that one of the main legal challenges is the lack of a legal mechanism to impose restraining orders. “If a lover, civil partner, or husband continues following a woman, there is no legal mechanism to limit his interaction with that woman,” he said. “We have a witness protection program, but this law is not used for crimes of this gravity.” Significantly, there is no specific article in the criminal code against domestic violence, meaning that acts of domestic violence are seen in the same light as simple assault.

Punishments usually amount to little more than fines and do not take into account the relationship between the assailant and the victim (sometimes as straightforward as one of economic dependence), and the psychological trauma thereby caused. “In some situations, criminals are due a jail sentence but we can’t get it because jail sentences aren’t stipulated for fighting. I think sentences need to be made tougher,” said Parshin. “If there was a law on domestic violence, then we could give more serious terms, or at least suitable terms which, in the case of a repeated offense, would be made appropriately serious.”

Pisklakova-Parker agreed. “We don’t have legislation that says ‘no,’ you cannot do it. Even when cases get to court, sentences are very light. The first time a person gets sentenced, it counts in their favor because they are seen as a responsible person.” Domestic violence falls awkwardly between cracks in legislation: it should qualify as “torment” under Article 117 of the Russian Criminal Code because of its repeated and systematic nature, and should therefore be punishable by three years in prison, argues this year’s shadow report by ANNA. But in Russian law, battery inflicted during an argument and arising from personal hostility cannot qualify as “torment.”

Not a crime

Against this backdrop of silence, backward legislation and the statistical vacuum, some contend the problem is evolving. In November The Moscow Times cited “women’s rights advocates” who claimed that more children are being beaten and killed by fathers taking revenge against their mothers. The ANNA report recounted a brutal murder in Tatarstan of a five-year-old boy by his father, who stabbed him to death to “settle a score” with his wife, whom he suspected of infidelity.

Ponarina was reluctant to confirm a possible pattern. “We haven’t had to deal with any of these kinds of cases. There probably are cases like this, but I can’t say for sure that this is a trend. Of course, children are manipulated in order to somehow manipulate women and victims of domestic violence. As for the trend of murder, I just can’t say.”

Vinogorova is currently in court with her husband over rights to see the children. “He’s demanding in court that we allow him to see the children. I explain that I cannot just sit back and allow a person like him to see them. I have to protect my children. They themselves are scared after all this,” she said.

An army of one

Even if women do manage to escape dependence on their partners, pressing charges is a complex process, which lawyers and NGO workers agree favors the defendant. Under Russian law domestic violence cases are not handled by the state, and victims must act as the prosecutors themselves because violence at home is seen as a private affair that the state should not encroach on. “Just imagine for a moment how few women have a legal education and know what to do or even how to write statements. If it’s a trial, it is the woman who has to prosecute. If you then bear in mind that this woman has been living with the defendant for several years or even many years, or that they have children together, it’s clear that it’s going to be really difficult. On top of that, she has to prosecute someone she is scared of,” said Parshin.

After negotiating with the Federation Council in spring of this year, NGO workers thought that they had won a breakthrough when the government appeared to have agreed to draft a better approach to deal with domestic violence. Pisklakova-Parker said the government was still working on it, but there are still major disagreements between the government and the NGO sector. “The Russian government’s position was that we do have legislation that covers domestic violence. They referred to the Criminal Code, where articles cover physical abuse regardless of where it takes place (either at home or in public). They don’t really understand what domestic violence is,” she said.

Perhaps stuttering political will on this subject will gain momentum after president Medvedev launched his campaign to protect women and children to halt the population drop in his State of the Nation address. Parshin said that over his five years of working personally in the field, there were noticeable steps being made in the right direction, and held out optimism. “Ten years ago, no one even admitted there was a problem,” he said. “Now, years later, there is more awareness thanks to the work of rights workers—people like Pisklakova-Parker. They’ve done a lot for this problem to be heard and recognized. Domestic violence is a problem everywhere in the world, but elsewhere they got onto it earlier so more has been done about it. We recognized it only recently and the approach to this question is already changing.”  

By Tom Balmforth

http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=Culture+%26+Living&articleid=a1293034376

Almost 70% of women suffer from domestic violence in Ukraine

According to the Kyiv Health Center, 35-50% of women get to hospitals with physical injuries as victims of domestic tyranny.68% of Ukrainian women are subject to bullying in the family. They suffer from domestic violence more often than from robberies, rapes and car accidents. combined.

According to the City State Administration, over nine months of the year, 5,123 women, victims of domestic violence, approached various bodies and establishments of Kyiv for help. At the same time, a part of the affected women does not apply to the police due to the fear of publicity and revenge. 

See http://www.nrcu.gov.ua/index.php?id=148&listid=134198 for more information. 

16-day campaign against gender violence kicks off in Ukraine

The annual All-Ukrainian Campaign ‘16 Days against Gender Violence’ kicks off today to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

 

A press release from the EU Delegation to Ukraine said the campaign would continue for the next ten days until December 10, following a yearly tradition.  

 

As part of the campaign, the EU-funded ‘Equal Opportunities and Women’s Rights in Ukraine Programme’ is organising a number of activities in the Ukrainian media, including a wide-scale information campaign with day TV shows series Easy To Be A Woman.

A press conference with the Minister of Family, Youth and Sports earlier this week highlighted the joint activity of the Government of Ukraineand international organizations, including the EU Delegation and the UN Office in Ukraine,on the elimination of this problem, as well as about specific activities of the Campaign in 2010.

 

A series of TV shows on domestic violence and its elimination have been organised jointly with the National TV Company of Ukraine and are being aired between 22 and 26 November on the First National Channel, the press release said, including a programme list for the shows.

 

The EU is at the forefront of the struggle to end violence against women, supporting third countries in their efforts to counter what is “probably the most widespread human rights violation of our time”, High Representative Catherine Ashton said today in a statement marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

 

Promotion and protection of women’s rights figures highly in EU external policy, an EC press release said. It is systematically discussed between the EU and its partner countries, in particular in the context of EU human rights dialogues and consultations, and dedicated Sub-Committees on democracy and human rights. EU Guidelines prioritise women's rights in EU human rights policy in third countries and provide guidance on the way the EU reacts to specific individual cases of human rights violations. (ENPI Info Centre)

 

see http://enpi-info.eu/maineast.php?id=23310&id_type=1&lang_id=450 for more information.

United Nations Elects Executive Board of New Agency for Women’s Empowerment

Member States today took the next step in enabling the newly-created United Nations agency on gender equality and women’s empowerment to begin its work by electing countries to serve on its Executive Board.

The elections, held in the 54-member Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), will enable the new Board to come together prior to the official establishment on 1 January 2011 of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).

The 41 board members were selected on the following basis: 10 from Africa, 10 from Asia, 4 from Eastern Europe, 6 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 5 from Western Europe and 6 from contributing countries.

Elected from the African Group were Angola, Cape Verde, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Lesotho, Libya, Nigeria and Tanzania.

Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Republic of Korea and Timor-Leste were elected from among the Asian States.

Estonia, Hungary, Russia and Ukraine were elected from among the Eastern European States, while Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg and Sweden were elected from the Western European and Other States.

In addition, the Council elected Argentina, Brazil, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada and Peru from the group of Latin American and Caribbean States.

The Council also elected Mexico, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Spain, United Kingdom and United States from among the “contributing countries,” for three-year terms beginning today.

The 35 members elected from the regional groups will serve two-year and three-years, beginning today, as determined by the drawing of lots.

Chosen to serve two-year terms were Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, El Salvador, Estonia, France, India, Italy, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Tanzania and Timor-Leste.

Angola, Cape Verde, China, Congo, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Grenada, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Nigeria, Peru, Republic of Korea, Sweden and Ukraine were selected to serve three-year terms.

Headed by former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, UN Women is the merger of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues (OSAGI), and the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW).

The new agency was established on 2 July by a unanimous vote of the General Assembly to oversee all of the world body’s programmes aimed at promoting women’s rights and their full participation in global affairs. One of its goals will be to support the Commission on the Status of Women and other inter-governmental bodies in devising policies.

It will also aim to help Member States implement standards, provide technical and financial support to countries which request it, and forge partnerships with civil society. Within the UN, it will hold the world body accountable for its own commitments on gender equality.

In carrying out its functions, UN Women will be working with an annual budget of at least $500 million — double the current combined resources of the four agencies it comprises.

Reprinted from UN News.

The Women’s Perspective: Breaking the Silence on International Crimes Against Women - Pembroke, MA - Pembroke Mariner & Reporter

The Women’s Perspective: Breaking the Silence on International Crimes Against Women - Pembroke, MA - Pembroke Mariner & Reporter

Some readers may find the following facts and information disturbing and difficult to read, and for that I apologize. However, it is crucial that we acknowledge the realities of what is happening to millions of women all over our world on a daily basis. The torture, suffering, shame, and hopelessness that women endure at the hands of oppression must end.

At least 1 in every 3 women globally has been beaten, forced into sex, slavery, trafficking and multiple forms of abuse. That means that as you sit safely in your own environment reading this article, women are being tortured all over the world. They are being stripped of their humanity. Their souls and spirits are being violently stripped away through physical, sexual, emotional, psychological and financial abuse at the hands of monsters. These monsters view women as being subservient, worthless whores who are disposable commodities. These monsters derive from all different cultures and backgrounds. They are living within our global communities in epidemic proportions, including the United States.

My mission is to never stay silent on such issues. It is an ugly subject to discuss, one that many shy away from. However, that is exactly why it must be discussed. We must remove the stigmas, shame and secrecy that are attached to violence against women. The more we talk about it, the more exposed the subject becomes.

Violence against women is not a gender issue; it is a human right issue. Women deserve the same opportunity to achieve equal economic, social, cultural and political rights. They deserve to live without fear. Living free from violence is a human right. Women should be able to live safely in their communities without becoming victims of violent crimes.

It should be every women's human right to achieve free will, receive an education, obtain financial stability, marry, bear children, have control over their own bodies, become politically involved, and enjoy religious and culture freedom as every human being should. Women should be creating and thriving throughout our world not surviving and recovery from inhumane atrocities forced upon them.

In an effort to acknowledge the "elephant in the room", I have decided to outline some of the most abhorrent crimes against women on a global level.

While there is no doubt that we are all aware at least on some level that there are terrible things happening to women, I am quite sure that it is not possible to grasp the true horror of this subject without examining it fully. Some examples of the torturous practices worldwide include bride kidnapping, honor killing, bride burning, acid attacks, female genital mutilation, human trafficking, and ritual servitude. While most of these atrocities occur in other parts of the world, our own United Stated has experienced them as well.

Bride kidnapping is a common practice in countries like Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. What happens is that when the time comes for a man to be married in Kyrgyzstan, a man or his family will pick a woman and she will be kidnapped. The prospective husband and his male relatives or friends abduct the girl and take her to the man’s family home, where the older women of the family try to convince the victim to accept the marriage. Some families will keep the girl hostage to break her will; while others will let her go if she remains defiant.

The kidnapped woman’s family may also become involved in the process, either urging the woman to stay if the marriage is believed to be socially acceptable or advantageous for the prospective bride and her family, or opposing the marriage on various grounds and helping liberate the woman.

In countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda, the act of bride kidnapping is quite brutal, where the man kidnaps the woman and proceeds to rape her. The family of the woman either then feels obliged to consent to the union, or is forced to do so when the kidnapper impregnates her, as no one else would marry a pregnant woman.

An honor killing is defined by Amnesty International as “a punitive murder, committed by members of a family against a female member of their family whom the family and/or wider community believes to have brought dishonor upon the family.” Honor killings may occur when a woman refuses an arranged marriage, being the VICTIM of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce even from an abusive husband, or committing adultery. Any behavior that is deemed “dishonorable” to the family is therefore justified whereas the act would otherwise be deemed murder. UNICEF has reported that in India, more than 5,000 brides are killed annually because their marriage dowries are considered insufficient. As of 2004, honor killings have occurred within parts of various countries, such as Albania, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, Germany, India, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Uganda, United Kingdom and the United States.

Another practice that is seen is known as bride burning. This act is a form of domestic violence practiced in parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries located on or around the Indian subcontinent. In these cases, a man or his family douses the wife with some type of flammable liquid, usually gasoline or kerosene. She is then set on fire, eventually leading to her death.

Acid attacks are a violent phenomena that primarily occur in Afghanistan. Perpetrators of these attacks throw acid at their victims (usually at their faces), burning them. The consequences include permanent scarring of the face and body as well as potential blindness.

Perhaps the most recognizable facet of these crimes is that of human trafficking.

Since the fall of the iron curtain, the impoverished former Eastern bloc countries such as Albania, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine have been identified as major trafficking source countries for women and children. Young women and girls are lured by the promise of money and work and then reduced to sexual slavery, sent to other countries never to be heard from again.

It is estimated that 2/3 of women trafficked for prostitution annually come from Eastern European countries; three-quarters have never worked as prostitutes before. The major destinations are Western Europe (Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, UK and Greece), the Middle East (Turkey, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates), Asia, Russia and the United States. An estimated 500,000 women from Central and Eastern Europe are working in prostitution in the EU alone.

Ritual servitude occurs mainly in parts of Ghana where traditional religious shrines take human beings, usually young virgin girls, as payment for services, or in religious atonement for alleged misdeeds of a family member—almost always a female.

These shrine slaves serve the priests, elders and owners of a traditional religious shrine without remuneration and without their consent, although the consent of the family or clan may be involved. Those who practice ritual servitude feel that the girl is serving the god or gods of the shrine and is married to the gods of the shrine.

If a girl runs away or dies, she must be replaced by another girl from the family. Some girls in ritual servitude are the third or fourth girl in their family suffering for the same crime, sometimes for something as small as the loss of trivial property.

As disturbing as these facts are, there is still hope for change around the world. Currently there is a piece of legislature in the U.S. aimed at making violence against women and girls around the world an unexceptable crime. The biparitsan International Violence Against Women Act will enhance our government's ability to respond to victims of international crimes against women as previously mentioned.. In addition, it would provide aid and resources to women groups around the world working to end such horrific violence providing; prevention programs, building women and childrens educational, financial, political and social realities into a thriving future filled with possibilities.

Please never stay silent about such social issues. Silence is the killer. Just by informing friends and family members about these crimes against women throughtout our world (including the U.S.) is being part of the solution. Let's help turn millions of women and children's pain into power! For more information please refer to Amnesty International.

By Gretchen Jones

GateHouse News Service

Posted Oct 11, 2010

Sources: Amnesty International, listverse.com, V-day, Human Trafficking.org

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