WMC Women Under Siege
May 13, 2013 | Lauren Wolfe | International, Violence against women
The legacy of silence: Why we ignore the rape of women from Guatemala to Syria
Just before 2 a.m. and nearly half a world away, I watched a guilty verdict from Guatemala scroll by tweet by tweet on my phone. Former President Efrain Rios Montt was convicted on May 10 of genocide and crimes against humanity and given 80 years in prison. As the news came through, I felt a satisfied chill—17 years after the murder of 200,000 Guatemalans and the rape of 100,000 women, mostly Mayans, justice has actually come in our lifetime.
WMC Women Under Siege
March 20, 2013 | Michele Lent Hirsch | International, Politics, Violence against women
Reports surface of rape and torture in Iraq
It has been 10 years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and stories of torture and sexualized violence are still coming to light. As Al-Jazeera reported Tuesday, Amnesty International’s recent publication, “Iraq: A decade of abuse,” is a horrifying, pain-filled heap of rape, sexualized torture, and other forms of sexualized violence. And the rights group is still gathering evidence.
WMC Women Under Siege
March 13, 2013 International, Violence against women
International campaign asks 57th Commission on the Status of Women to uphold women's rights
The International Campaign to Stop Rape & Gender Violence in Conflict, on whose advisory committee WMC's Women Under Siege serves, sent the following letter to the delegates of the 57th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women today. The letter calls on member states to conclude negotiations with a strong statement that will prioritize action to end violence against women.
WMC Women Under Siege
February 27, 2013 | Lauren Wolfe | International, Violence against women
Salacious, voyeuristic, insensitive: How the media harms one survivor of rape
Context. It’s a simple word that requires its own set of words to make clear: Context, according to Merriam-Webster, contains “the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning.” Everything has it. But that doesn’t mean it’s in great supply, whether in how we speak about the world or in how we are presented with the news.
WMC Women Under Siege
February 01, 2013 | Coleen Kivlahan | International, Violence against women
Why treating rape survivors is so complicated
As a clinician engaged in the evaluation of sexually and physically abused and tortured populations, I have often quietly pondered this question: Compared with victims of purely physical violence and torture, why do victims of sexualized violence frequently have such long-lasting effects?
WMC Women Under Siege
February 01, 2013 | Helen Benedict | Media, Violence against women
Covering rape responsibly
In the light of the recent coverage of the rapes in India, it’s time to talk about how we cover rape in this country. For some 20 years now, I have been criticizing the press for never asking why men rape. Now, with the rapes in New Delhi gaining so much attention, I ask it again.
WMC Women Under Siege
December 17, 2012 | Lauren Wolfe | International, Misogyny, Violence against women
Eight reasons why victim-blaming needs to stop: Writers, activists, and survivors speak out
About once a day someone comes to this website by searching “Are rape victims to blame?” I hope when these visitors arrive they find some solace in the message they find here that rape victims are not culpable, ever, no, never. Unfortunately, they will also find information on how rape survivors are blamed mercilessly around the world for the violence perpetrated against them.
WMC Women Under Siege
December 06, 2012 | Lauren Wolfe | International, Media, Violence against women
Revealing rape: How to illustrate a crime

Women describe their rapes from behind black face scarves in videos on our site that documents sexualized violence in Syria. We have no photos of women whose faces aren’t covered. We have few photos of survivors of rape even with their faces covered.

WMC Women Under Siege
October 25, 2012 Immigration, International, Violence against women
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
September 21, 2012 | Rachel Halder | International, Violence against women
‘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.
WMC Women Under Siege
August 16, 2012 | Laura Bates | International, Violence against women
A crime upon a crime: Rape, victim-blaming, and stigma
In Sudan, where tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes by fighting and destruction, where the lives of refugees have already been devastated by the loss of their homes and families, women bear a second, enduring pain. Because for many Darfuri women, the “crime” of falling victim to rapists and sexual attackers renders them valueless, “dishonored,” and rejected.
WMC Women Under Siege
May 17, 2012 | Michele Lent Hirsch | International, Race/Ethnicity, Violence against women
The fine line between 'obedience' and rape in North Korea
When Shin Dong-hyuk was 10 years old, he watched his mother be raped by her boss. In an attempt to fetch her for dinner, Shin approached the office where he had been told she would be. The door was locked. Through a window he saw her kneeling as she washed the floor, then saw her boss approach and grope her. Shin’s mother and the man took off their clothes, and the boy watched the rest unfold.
WMC Women Under Siege
May 15, 2012 International, Media, Violence against women
Not natural, not forever: How we're trying to end rape in war
That rape is used as an actual strategy and weapon of war goes unnoticed much of the time by the media, which tends to focus on the explosions and traumas you can show in photos or film footage. But Janis Mackey Frayer, South Asia bureau chief of CTV News, has brought this subject to her readers in a two-part series that focuses on the work of Women Under Siege.
WMC Women Under Siege
April 26, 2012 | Karestan C. Koenen | Feminism, Misogyny
'Do I give off a slut vibe?' A professor addresses sexism in the Ivy League
“You smell soooo good, I could just eat you up.” “Here, sit on my lap.” “No, mine!” “I get her first!” “Putting him alone in a room with a woman is like giving an alcoholic a bottle of booze—he just can’t help himself.”
WMC Women Under Siege
April 25, 2012 | Laura Bates | International, Violence against women
Defining justice when the law is unjust: How gender imbalance affects women around the world
Justice is supposed to confer equality, impartiality, protection for victims, and punishment for perpetrators. Yet as recently as the 1970s, spousal rape was not considered a criminal offense in some U.S. states.
WMC Women Under Siege
April 17, 2012 | Lauren Wolfe | International, Violence against women
Lost in a life outside Syria

I met photojournalist Matilde Gattoni very recently on Facebook, which is to say we haven’t actually met in person. Even so, she’s already made an impression on me. Her work has a way of highlighting humanity—literally in chiaroscuro but also figuratively.

WMC Women Under Siege
February 07, 2012 | Lynsey Addario | Gender-based violence, International, Media, Violence against women
What it’s like to cover ‘unbearable’ stories of rape in Congo

It's been less than a year since photojournalist Lynsey Addario returned from Libya, where soldiers loyal to Muammar Gaddafi sexually abused her during six days in captivity. I interviewed Addario just after she returned, and her honesty and stated intention of “shaming the Libyans” for what had been done to her evinced a remarkable personal strength.

WMC Women Under Siege
February 07, 2012 | Tia Palermo | International, Media, Violence against women
When the numbers don’t add up: Researchers and media struggle with stats on sexualized violence

In January 2011, The Economist published the number of women raped in six conflicts, including an estimate of 500,000 women raped in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Many readers may have taken these statistics at face value. In fact, however, estimates of rape in Rwanda range from 250,000 to 500,000 and are based on the number of reported pregnancies from rape, which underestimates prevalence.

WMC Women Under Siege
February 07, 2012 | Karestan C. Koenen | Disability, Health, International, Violence against women, WMC Loreen Arbus Journalism Program
Fallout: How rape has affected the women I study, and my life

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.

WMC Women Under Siege
February 07, 2012 | Lara Logan | International, Violence against women
From darkness, dignity: Why sexualized violence must move from the shadows

When I was overwhelmed by a mob of men in Tahrir Square in Egypt last February, I was filled with the certainty that I would die there. In my mind I could see an image of my body lying discarded in the dirt.

It struck me that it would be a truly meaningless death.

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