There’s a darkish room, maybe 12 feet by 13 feet, tucked into the back area of the ground floor of a school called Lycée Wima. Seated along walls of peeling paint are more than a dozen women sewing patterned bags, shoes, dresses, and dolls on elegant Singer sewing machines from the time between the last world wars. The work is exacting.

Just like any other population caught up in a war zone, people with disabilities suffer displacement, injury, and trauma. About 6.5 million of the 43.51 million people who have been displaced due to conflict live with a disability. Yet in conflict, when the social fabric is vulnerable and resources are limited, people with disabilities face increased violence while their protection needs often go ignored.

In India, the battle for justice is on many fronts for women who survive acid attacks. They continue, in part, because the government has failed to regulate the sales of acid and police have repeatedly failed to even take reports of attacks. So beyond the punishment of specific perpetrators, activists and survivors are fighting to obtain compensation from the government—and rehabilitation.

Despite the outrage at violence against women that spread through India this past year, thousands of women and children continue to be victims of rape, trafficking, and other forms of sexualized violence. The stories of these women and children go unreported and are largely ignored by global campaigns against violence. But one of the worst and most brutal cases has been that of Soni Sori.

All across the war-torn country, regime soldiers are said to be sexually violating women and men from the opposition, destroying families and, in some cases, claiming lives.

I was sexually abused at the age of 6. I did not know this experience was merely an initiation into sexualized violence that seems, too often, throughout the world to be as inescapable a part of becoming a woman as menstruation. My experience of sexualized violence culminated in being brutally raped while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, West Africa.