WMC News & Features
A Human Rights Politician in the ‘Kingdom of Wonder’
Journalist Michelle Tolson took the occasion of President Obama's visit to the Southeast Asian summit last month to speak to a stalwart member of the opposition party in Cambodia, Mu Sochua.
WMC Women Under Siege
Does the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ matter?
You, as a reader, may not care about the behind-the-scenes debates over word choice, grammar, and punctuation that get journalists like me riled up. But readers and reporters alike are caught in an unusually public semantics discussion this week now that The Associated Press’ stylebook editors have announced that they’re dropping certain words.
WMC News & Features
Living in the Path of Drones
Pakistani women and U.S. peace actives agree: U.S. military drone strikes must stop, writes Lys Anzia of WNN - Women News Network.
WMC News & Features
Images of Femicide Displayed to Prompt International Action
A UN exhibit and seminar in Vienna marks a day devoted to ending violence against women. Alice Driver, whose photographs are included among the images, explains.
WMC News & Features
WMC Award Winners Assess Media Progress
Last week's awards ceremony in New York City celebrated women making a difference in the media. Marianne Schnall asked award winners how they achieved personal success and what it would take to improve women's overall status.
WMC Women Under Siege
What the UK can do to stop sexualized violence in Syria
I twisted around in the passenger-side seat in a red compact to Heathrow yesterday to trade ideas with a colleague. In the back of the car was Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, the executive director of the International Civil Society Action Network. We wondered aloud whether our discussion on Syria in the last few days at Wilton Park, a stygian but elegant castle on the English South Downs, might have any real-world impact.
WMC Women Under Siege
History repeats itself in Sudan
Jalila Khamis Koko and Nadia Teia Kafi are just two of the thousands of victims of Sudan’s war against the people of South Kordofan, which has seen starvation used as a method of warfare, the bombing of civilian targets, and the employment of rape as a weapon. Especially startling is how sexualized violence in South Kordofan mirrors the destruction we’ve already seen in Darfur.
WMC Women Under Siege
One man’s struggle to teach UN forces how to stop rape
Patrick Cammaert is often quoted as saying that it is now more dangerous to be a woman than it is to be a soldier in war. But perhaps he should be quoted more widely on another startling fact: that UN peacekeepers the world over turn away when they witness rape.
WMC Women Under Siege
Shocking attitudes point to deep misogyny in Congo
There is little violence on earth more merciless than what is happening to women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “When you talk about rape in New York or Paris, everyone can always say, ‘Yes, we have rape here too,’” Dr. Denis Mukwege, the founder of Congo’s Panzi Hospital, told Jeb Sharp, a producer at PRI’s “The World,” in 2008.
WMC FBomb
Stand With Malala
Malala Yousafzai has spent the last 3 years of her life in the pursuit of education and equality. As a result, she has spent the last 13 days in a hospital bed in Birmingham, England.
At 11 years old...
WMC Women Under Siege
With our campaign partners, we call on DRC to address increased insecurity in eastern Congo
We of the International Campaign to Stop Rape & Gender Violence in Conflict stand with the women and men who are protesting today by organizing a ville morte in Bukavu. Last week, we were shocked to learn about the apparent assassination attempt on world-renowned surgeon, anti-rape activist, and our esteemed colleague: Dr. Denis Mukwege.
WMC News & Features
October 29, 2012 | Marianne Schnall |
Arts and culture,
International,
Politics,
Violence against women
"I Am Neda"—Beyond the Icon
The author, founder of Feminist.com, interviews the first-time filmmaker who is winning awards for her documentary on the woman whose death on the streets of Tehran helped kindle Iran's democracy movement.
WMC Women Under Siege
How the UK rejects refugees fleeing sexualized violence
A native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angelique had already lived through horror. Her father had been a politician. During the civil war, rebel soldiers had come to the family compound, burned their house, and killed Angelique’s parents. She had been taken to prison, where she was made the sex slave of the prison governor. Despite the persecution she’d experienced, she was refused asylum.
WMC Women Under Siege
Abused from Ethiopia to England: My story as a raped refugee
The day my life changed I was 23 years old. I come from Ethiopia. I always loved writing, and as soon as I finished high school I started to work at a newspaper. In 2001, I was reporting a student demonstration. The police came and started shooting people.
WMC Women Under Siege
Beneath the law: When the system inherently favors the rapist
Back in April, I wrote for WMC’s Women Under Siege about the legal gender imbalance female victims of sexualized violence face around the world. But a disturbing recent investigation by the independent Indian weekly newsmagazine Tehelka suggests that the miscarriage of justice in some cases of rape and sexual assault might be linked to prejudice on the part of those delivering justice, rather than bias within the law itself.
WMC News & Features
Mongolian Women’s Hard-Won Victory
A small group of committed legislators in the Mongolian parliament are taking on the challenge of meeting the basic needs of women and children.
WMC News & Features
Australia's Leader Meets Sexist Attacks Head On
Misogynist political talk has become a national issue in Australia after Prime Minister Julia Gillard confronted the Opposition leader for participating in sexist dialogue that this commentary's author had recently helped document.
WMC Women Under Siege
It’s not what women wear, it’s how we treat them: Revisiting the hijab
In September, I wrote a piece for WMC’s Women Under Siege about the hijab, or headscarf, and sexual assault against women in conservative Muslim societies. I chronicled the experiences of my sister Neelo, who experienced sharp harassment as a young girl while wearing a hijab in Pakistan. The premise of the piece was simple enough.
WMC News & Features
The Reality of the GOP Platform on Abortion
The author, who has conducted research in Mexico, offers a reality check on what could happen to U.S. women if the GOP succeeds in criminalizing abortion.
WMC FBomb
Who (Doesn’t) Run The World? Girls.
Only 20% of political leaders in the world are women. Women leaders are under-represented in every country, from Nepal, where my organization works, to the United States, where only 17% of Congress is...
WMC Women Under Siege
Rape in war: Are we getting it wrong?
Good news! We were wrong! Women are not being raped in terrible numbers around the world in conflict! I wish I could really say that. All day I’ve been hearing how a new report out today “upends” conventional wisdom on sexualized violence in war—that we’ve all got it wrong, that the media is misleading the world into thinking all conflicts are laden with rape, that statistics have been badly skewed in ways that make the problem seem worse than it is.
WMC Women Under Siege
No more moments of silence: How do we get from 'Take Back the Night' to 'Taking Down Rape Culture'?
On October 4, I gave the keynote address at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, for “Take Back the Night,” an international yearly march that began in the 1970s to protest violence against women. This is a version of that address.
WMC Women Under Siege
From the ground zero of rape in conflict: An interview with Dr. Denis Mukwege
I’ve found that there are few men who want to sit in a room and talk about how to stop rape. Few show up at panel discussions, few show up in virtual social media spaces to reflect or express outrage. Rape is a woman’s problem, they tell us implicitly.
WMC Women Under Siege
'We do not need any more proof': Leaders tell UN it's time to act on rape in war
In a fluorescent-lit United Nations room full of suited bureaucrats, Nobel Prize Laureate Leymah Gbowee raised a startling point. It had been a morning of declarations condemning sexualized violence in conflict and considerations of how we can better proceed to stop it when Gbowee said: “If I asked everyone in this room to explain to us about their last sexual encounter, they would be turning pink.”
WMC Women Under Siege
‘Too late for me’: Women flee Colombia to escape sexualized violence
A young woman about my age sits across from me at a table in a large house converted into an Ecuadoran church. With tears pouring down her cheeks, she chokes out the words of her story, wiping drops away with the back of her hand. I say I’m sorry for bringing up her pain.
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