WMC Women Under Siege
Report: Sexualized violence may disproportionately affect children in war
“They didn’t hit her, but they ruined her.” That’s how a young woman named Maimouna described the gang rape of her 16-year-old neighbor in Mali, according to a new report from Save the Children. The NGO has transcribed interviews with witnesses such as Maimouna and with dozens of firsthand survivors to illustrate their latest findings.
WMC Women Under Siege
April 03, 2013 | Lauren Wolfe |
Disability,
International,
Violence against women,
WMC Loreen Arbus Journalism Program
Syria has a massive rape crisis
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.
WMC Women Under Siege
Now in their 80s and 90s, aging WWII sex slaves haven’t forgotten
It’s a euphemism we still haven’t shaken. “Comfort women” refers to the women and girls—usually foreign, from countries like Korea, the Philippines, and China—forced by the Japanese military to do sex work mainly during World War II.
WMC Women Under Siege
Women’s bodies: Cause of ‘epidemics and disasters’?
Her name is Amina. She is a teenage girl. A man in her country, Tunisia, thinks stones should be thrown at her until she dies because she posted a photo of herself on a website. Because she is a woman. Because she had the audacity to make a comment about her own body, and to photograph her body, and to use it to share her ideas with others.
WMC Women Under Siege
How media can help stop rape
With the verdict in on the Steubenville rape, we are now confronted with yet another case involving two 13-year-old girls in Torrington, Conn., who say they were sexually assaulted by three young men. Presumably, the media will say these boys had a “bright future” ahead of them just as it said of the Steubenville boys. And just as in Steubenville, I expect the mainstream media to play the same game it always does—ignoring the victim and focusing entirely on how this will impact the lives of the rapists.
WMC Women Under Siege
Un-silencing the crime of sexualized violence against journalists
In June 2011, I published a report at the Committee to Protect Journalists called “The Silencing Crime” about sexualized violence and journalists. I called it that because rape and other forms of sexualized assault are used constantly around the world to frighten women journalists into silence, and unfortunately, the method is effective, my research found.
WMC Women Under Siege
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
Poynter: CNN’s Steubenville coverage called too sympathetic to teens found guilty
Journalists took to Twitter Sunday to criticize the the media’s coverage of the two teenage boys who were found guilty in the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case. Lauren Wolfe, Xeni Jardin and others called out CNN’s Poppy Harlow and Paul Callan for sympathizing with the men and highlighting that the woman who was raped was “allegedly drunk.”
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
Why I work with rape survivors in Africa
“Has the world forgotten about us?” These words from Fatima, a Darfuri rape survivor, still haunt me. It was the summer of 2006 and I was collecting interviews as part of my research-based activism with 25 Darfuri genocide survivors at a refugee camp in Chad.
WMC Women Under Siege
Gloria Steinem challenges BBC presenter on violence against women
On Tuesday, Gloria Steinem, who originated WMC’s Women Under Siege, spoke to BBC “Hardtalk” presenter Stephen Sackur about the women’s movement. But I wanted to do more than point you to the video (which you can watch here) and highlight something I found particularly interesting about their chat.
WMC Women Under Siege
New Holocaust findings highlight larger gap in conflict and rape research
One of the most emailed New York Times stories over the weekend was a piece about the Holocaust. In it, Eric Lichtblau explains new findings from experts at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: that the number of Nazi ghettos, camps, and other sites of systematic human misery is six times what the study authors had predicted.
WMC Women Under Siege
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
Kenyan rape survivors sue government for inaction
Imagine if rape survivors held politicians accountable every time their government failed to protect them. In Kenya, eight survivors of sexualized violence are suing their country for its “non-action” in response to attacks following Kenya’s 2007 general elections. As we’ve written about previously, the post-election violence took place during a dispute over who had won, which developed into tribal clashes.
WMC Women Under Siege
The media and violence against women: A conversation with Maria Hinojosa
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.
WMC Women Under Siege
February 13, 2013 International,
Violence against women
Gender justice group urges South Africa's Zuma to create commission to stop sexualized violence
After the gruesome rape and murder of 17-year-old Anene Booysen, South Africans are wondering how to put an end to their country’s high levels of sexualized violence. In an open letter, the Sonke Gender Justice Network, a human rights group based in the country, calls on South Africa’s president to act.
WMC Women Under Siege
Placing blame: Report debunks misconceptions about wartime rape
The media loves to generalize about war, and with it, wartime sexualized violence. But ignoring nuance does nobody any favors—neither the survivors themselves, nor those who are trying to stop it.
WMC Women Under Siege
The devil’s in the data: How rape culture shapes rape stats
If you follow debates about sexualized violence in the United States or elsewhere, in war or in peace, then you’ve probably heard at least some of the following statistical (or quasi-statistical) claims about patterns of rape: One in three U.S. women has been sexually assaulted. Seventy-five per cent of Liberian women were raped during the civil war there. Sexualized violence is declining (or increasing). Intra-military rape in the U.S. is down.
WMC Women Under Siege
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
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
January 29, 2013 | Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, Sussan Tahmasebi |
International,
Violence against women
Voices from the ground: How to help Syria’s humanitarian crisis
In recent months, the International Civil Society Action Network’s (ICAN) staff have held regular in-person and online consultations with Syrian civil society activists based inside the country or those who have recently left. They are providing relief and development support to refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). This brief summarizes key priorities and recommendations on immediate humanitarian issues that must be addressed by the international community.
WMC Women Under Siege
Why I’m breaking the cycle of violence in Afghanistan
I never realized how devastating our culture was for women until my brother-in-law tortured my sister. Growing up in Afghanistan, I had already watched my father beat my mother—but that was seen as just another part of daily life. Then the cycle of violence continued when I myself became an abuser.
WMC Women Under Siege
January 23, 2013 Media,
Violence against women
Women’s Media Center, Columbia University sponsoring symposium on sexualized violence
The Women’s Media Center and Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health on Friday are sponsoring a free symposium to discuss how to end global sexualized violence.
WMC Women Under Siege
When will I 'earn' my right to safety?
Delhi. Ohio. Nepal. Around the world, women are suffering sexual assaults so heinous that they are making the headlines on an almost daily basis. And yet, almost inconceivably, governments, members of the judiciary, and authority figures around the world continue to advocate that the solution lies with women—that their behavior is to blame and that their behavior has the power somehow, magically, to prevent rape.
WMC Women Under Siege
Why Steubenville is not Delhi: How we are failing in this country
The father of the woman gang-raped and killed in Delhi in December has told the media that the crime against his daughter is “an awakening” for India. It certainly has been an awakening for much of the world, as I wrote in this op-ed for CNN. The local and international media have been cracking open issues from dowry-related burnings of women to street harassment, asking exactly what is wrong with men in India to have created such a culture of hate and violence against women. It is heartening to watch the introspection.