UN Sanctions seek to stop rape as a weapon of war

With 2013 already being dubbed as the year to end rape, or at least bring violence against women to the forefront of media attention, this week brings promising news from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where sexual violence is commonly used as a weapon of war.

On Tuesday, (Jan 8) the UN’s Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict gave her reaction to the decision which has seen two of the DRC’s most infamous militias placed under Security Council sanctions.

Ms Zainab Hawa Bangura said: “The Security Council’s sanctions committee for the DRC has led the way in focusing on crimes of sexual violence,”

On 31st December 2012, the Sanctions Committee Concerning Democratic Republic of Congo added two Entities to the Sanctions List: The Forces Democratiques De Liberation Du Rwanda (FDLR) and The Mouvement Du 23 Mars (M23).

The FDLR was formed in 2000 and is is one of the largest foreign armed groups operating in the territory of the DRC. It has become known for its continued violation of international law in their violence against women and children throughout the conflict in the DRC.

A 2010 Amnesty International report on human rights detailed the findings of an NGO medical centre in DRC which listed around 60 women and girls a month, who had been raped by armed groups including the FDLR.

The Mouvement Du 23 Mars (M23) is another armed group operating in the DRC which has also been found guilty of all the above crimes. M23 has been responsible for mass civilian killings and and rapes carried out by fighters on women and girls as young as 8-years-old. Both groups are notorious for their forced recruitment of children.

Numerous reports listing killings, rapes and other violent attacks by the FDLR and M23 have contributed to them being added to the Sanctions List. The repercussions of this include arms embargoes, travel bans and freezing of assets.

‘Women Under Siege’ (an independent initiative documenting how sexualized violence is used as tools in genocide and conflict) offers a shocking glimpse into the horrors of the reality of conflict. According to them, four women are raped every five minutes in the DRC. Rape has almost become normalised. Thousands of rape victims are treated at the hospitals every year, many for vaginal reconstruction.

One witness statement reads: “Four men took me. They all raped me. At that time, I was nine months’ pregnant,” she says. “They gang-raped me and pushed sticks up my vagina—that’s when my baby died—they said it was better than killing me.”

It is now hoped that the DRC’s prime-minister will implement strategies already in place to prosecute those who committed crimes reported at the end of 2012. Ms Bangura said: “These recent sanctions by the Security Council serve as a reminder and signal of intent that they will be held accountable for all acts of sexual violence committed in these zones.”

Laura S Lea

Sources:
http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/conflicts/profile/democratic-republic-of-congo
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=43890&Cr=sexual+violence&Cr1=#.UPBXqoXhg7B

Rape: Not just a woman’s problem

This weekend it was announced that the 23-year-old victim of a brutal gang rape in Delhi, has died of her injuries. The news of the attack has attracted horror and shock on a global scale, and turned the spotlight to India’s government as well as bringing violence against women to the forefront of the news.

The attack happened on December 16, as the victim and her male companion traveled home from the cinema on a private bus. Both were beaten with iron poles and the female student was raped for almost an hour by six men, before both were stripped and thrown off the moving bus. These horrifying details have been shared around the world’s media and attracted days of demonstrations in Delhi. Protests calling for the death penalty and castration, turned violent with the deployment of tear gas and water cannons and left one police officer dead.

The victim, who hasn’t been officially named, died in a Singapore hospital of severe organ failure and brain damage in the early hours of Saturday morning. Six men have since been charged with manslaughter.

Following the protests, the Indian government were quick to announce a series of new measures to improve the safety of women which included shaming convicted rapists, police night patrols and checks on bus drivers. A committee was also configured to speed up the trials of sexual assault cases against women. This comes the same week as an 18-year-old woman in the Punjab area committed suicide, after police had done nothing about a rape she had reported a month earlier.

Unfortunately these cases are far too common in India. Like so many other societies, rape carries with it such stigma and shame that it is often not reported or of it is, not dealt with appropriately and legally. But attitude is hard to change and when it runs through the highest strands of democracy, it becomes even harder. The president’s son, Abuhijit Mukherjee (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20852513) has already had to make a public apology for calling the Delhi protesters “dented and painted” women on a regional news channel.

But this comment reflects the serious flaws and corruption within the country’s government and police. As Jason Overdorf rightly states on the global post: “By choosing candidates facing rape charges, India’s political parties have implicitly sanctioned the crime.” He is referring to the fact that according to National Election Watch data, 2 members of parliament and 6 of state assemblies are facing rape charges with 36 more facing charges for lesser crimes against women.

A journalist writing for ‘India Today’ warned that this all could be just a “flash in the pan”. The problems run deep, as guidelines regarding rape already laid out by the Indian High Court are ignored by police and hospitals. The pressure now being applied to the Indian government needs to last longer than this week’s newsreel to ensure that real change can begin. A number of organisations including Human Rights Watch and V-Day’s, ‘1 billion rising’ campaign have already harnessed the attention being given to the case and urged people to take action against the Indian authorities and violence against women globally.

It is important that here in the West we remember that this isn’t just an Indian issue, or even a women’s rights issue. These are human rights, which are being violated everywhere.

Laura S. Lea

Sources:

www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/121226/india-gang-rape-protests

http://www.hrw.org/

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/

Implementation of the Law on Elimination of violence against women in Afghanistan.

Laura S. Lea

This week, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, (UNAMA) released a report on the implementation of the 2009 law on the elimination of violence against women, (EVAW) tellingly entitled ‘Still a long way to go’. This follows a 2011 report on the EVAW law called, ‘A long way to go’.

The EVAW law, brought in 3 years ago, criminalized a range of abuse and violence against women including rape, forced and child marriage, physical abuse, the selling and buying of women within the terms of marriage and ba’ad, (the offering of women as a form of restitution).The 42-page report looks at information from 22 of 34 provinces admitting that authorities in many areas were reserved in sharing information on violence against women, mainly due to the lack of registration of such cases.

The report finds progress with courts and prosecutors increasingly applying the law, although the overall use of the law remains low. There are still huge restraints in terms of social attitude, stigma, taboo and religion, which are prohibiting incidents of violence from being reported.The report recalls emotive accounts such as the following:

I got married to a man in Sawa village of Anjil district five months ago. My husband and my father-in-law had beaten me without any reason several times. The repeated mistreatment had forced me to complain, but all in vain as the prosecutor overlooked my petition and warned me to either withdraw the complaint or face imprisonment.

— Married 15-year old girl who experienced battery and laceration and who later died by forced self-immolation, Herat province, August 2012.

Among the violations criminalized under the EVAW law, UNAMA found that battery and laceration was the highest among cases reported. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission recorded 60 reported incidents of honour killings across the country, between March and August 2012. This report comes in the same week as it is announced that women’s activist, Najia Seddiqi has been shot dead. Seddiqi was head of the Women Affairs Department for the Laghman province and was killed on her way to work by two gunmen on Monday. (link: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-10/world/35721808_1_taliban-suicide-bomber-afghan-government-nimruz)

It’s worth noting that this barely made the news in the UK. This only emphasizes the point made by UNAMA director, Georgette Gagnon, at a press conference in Kabul this week, who said that application of the law was hampered by “dramatic under reporting” of violence against Afghan women. (link: http://unama.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=12254&ctl=Details&mid=15756&ItemID=36086&language=en-US)

The report concluded with a series of recommendations. It asked the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to develop referral mechanisms to ensure that victims have access to legal aid, psycho-social support and healthcare and called to International Donors to increase support for centers and organisations that support female victims. It encouraged the Afghan government to publicly emphasize that women’s rights be a “central pillar of the country’s political, economic, and security strategies.”

Amnesty International UK is currently running a campaign to promote and protect Afghan women’s rights as the international community prepares to leave. To find out more visit http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10220.