Her father helped her escape. He knew if she stayed in Ivory Coast, she’d be married against her will as a teenager, her genitals ritualistically cut, raped by her husband, and forced to bear his children. Her life as she knew it would end. She left for New York, where her father thought she would be safe. Now the U.S. immigration system wants to send her back. She is 16 years old.

Emma Sulkowicz, a senior visual arts major at Columbia University, has been the frontwoman for the school’s mishandling of sexual assault on campus ever since she released her name to the press last spring.

On January 25, I moderated a panel on the media and sexualized violence as part of our symposium, “Global sexualized violence: From epidemiology to action,” with Columbia University. The panel, with journalists Helen Benedict, Maria Hinojosa, and Jenny Nordberg, was lively, to say the least, with hot debate between the audience and speakers as to what the media is doing badly and needs to do better when it comes to covering rape.

Imagine living every day with the terror that, at any moment, you might be ripped apart from your family, your home, your job, your livelihood, your friends. Imagine feeling as though you have no choice but to risk all of this to report a case of rape or domestic violence. Such is the dilemma for countless immigrant women in the United States: Either suffer silently—often at the hands of husbands or family members—or go to the police and risk deportation.

Silence: A symptom that plagues all scenarios of sexualized violence, rape, and abuse, no matter what communities we’re addressing. In the Sudan conflict, rape was used to silence women. When a woman named Safiya Ishaq unashamedly spoke about her rape, she was forced to flee the country for fear of retribution. The potential of being stigmatized has prevented women in the Democratic Republic of Congo from seeking medical treatment for rape.

Guatemala City—There’s a heavy green to this place, layered. Clouds weigh on the hills and seep into the trees and grass and leaves and bushes. Every clearing we pass turns to depths, and in those reaches lie the dead.

After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, stories of the disaster dominated international news media. Journalists rushed to report on the wreckage. Photographers scrambled for shots of the rubble. Aid agencies struggled to overcome obstacles to sending humanitarian aid.

More than 100,000 women were raped in the 36-years Guatemalan genocide—at least 200,000 people died. In this video, photojournalists Ofelia de Pablo and Javier Zurita interview survivors and document the ongoing forensic and legal investigation that recently indicted former Guatemalan President Efraín Ríos Montt.

Femicidio. Femicide. The female counterpart to homicide. It is a concept our country has been less exposed to than, for example, Mexico, Honduras or Guatemala, where the word femicidio is seen on the front pages of newspapers much too often.

GUATEMALA CITY — A man in a mask opens a door. The smell of rot hovers in the air and everywhere there are piles of paper -- pink, yellow, white, all a bit aged and possibly very important. When searching through the 80 million documents dumped in the archives of the Guatemalan National Police, it's never clear what will turn up.