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
January 03, 2013 | Lauren Wolfe |
Violence against women
What can we do to end rape in 2013?
On Tuesday, I wrote a piece for CNN calling to make 2013 The Year to End Rape. I know it’s wishful—there’s a lot to try to end: global legal failings that allow rapists to commit crimes with impunity; attitudes that blame the victim, leading to suicides and honor killings; misogyny that conditions men (and women) to view women and girls as less than human, as objects to be controlled.
WMC Women Under Siege
End culture of rape in 2013
On December 16, a young medical student in one of India's major cities was gang-raped, her body destroyed by the bodies of the men who allegedly assaulted her and also by the rusting metal bar doctors say they used to penetrate her. The bar removed part of her intestines. The rest were removed in a hospital far from home where she struggled for her life for just a few days.
WMC Women Under Siege
An open letter to the chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit
Dear Mrs. Dixit: I have read your comments on the Delhi gang-rape. I applaud your honesty in admitting failure, in admitting the dangerous condition of Delhi for women and your determination that there must be change. In a more cynical mood, I think that it is easy for you to make these admissions considering that you are not in charge of security. However, you are in charge of the city and the mindset thriving in it makes this your responsibility.
WMC Women Under Siege
A garden in Afghanistan: Women, roses, and guns
Sometimes an image comes across my desk that really grabs me. I was lucky enough to have this happen recently when I received a holiday card from a Belgian photographer named Wendy Marijnissen in my email. I clicked and found a strange twilight enveloping a garden of soft trees and red roses. In the middle of the picture a guard stands awkwardly with a gun. Plastic tents billow in the background. What exactly was I looking at? I asked Marijnissen to tell me more:
WMC Women Under Siege
Sexualized violence in Syria: Keeping track of a crisis in motion
On a still warm day in October, I sat on a panel of mostly Syrian women at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. One woman wore a wool scarf draped around her shoulders in the black, red, and green of the Free Syrian Army. Most wore a hijab, the Islamic headscarf. Turn by turn, we described our work documenting and assisting Syrian women and children who were drawn into the ongoing Syrian conflict.
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 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
Why everyday gender inequality could lead to our next war
What if I suggested that reducing the rates of rape and sexism in the U.S. would reduce our risk of international conflict? You might think that American girls and women who regularly adapt their lives to deal with “harmless” street harassment, or who are assaulted by American men, have little to do with, say, the Iraq War. Yet research shows an undeniable relationship between the treatment of women in everyday life and a nation’s propensity for engaging in war.
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A forgotten battleground: Women’s bodies and the civil rights movement
Every few years, my consistently intrepid mother would experience terrifying nightmares. When I was 7, I asked her to tell me what monster was frightening her so much that she stirred and let out petrifying screams in her sleep.
WMC Women Under Siege
What’s in a name? The rhetoric of rape
Campaigners in Egypt have recently drawn attention to the increasingly widespread sexual harassment, assault, and rape suffered by women in public spaces. The severity of the situation there well documented and longstanding, with women suffering “violations of their human rights” in the form of intrusive virginity tests, “assault and torture,” and even “being dragged naked on the ground,” according to a 2011 press release from the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights.
WMC Women Under Siege
#SudanRevolts: Women lead a revolution
In June, female students at the University of Khartoum held an impromptu demonstration against the dramatic rise in the cost of living in Sudan. Rising inflation, exacerbated by the secession of South Sudan in July 2011 and with it, a third of Khartoum’s revenue, has led to soaring costs in the country. Many people struggle to make ends meet, not least university students who find it difficult to cover even the most basic needs.
WMC Women Under Siege
Bargaining away justice for women in Rwanda
Over the course of a mere 100 days, from April through July of 1994, between 500,000 and 1 million Rwandan men, women, and children were slaughtered during the Rwandan genocide. The United Nations and human rights groups report that anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 women were also horrifically sexually violated. Testimonials of women given to Human Rights Watch following the end of the conflict indicate that almost every woman and adolescent girl who survived the genocide was raped.
WMC Women Under Siege
What are the solutions to wartime rape?
Part of Women Under Siege’s mission is to try to understand and share findings on the complexities of wartime rape in its varied forms in order to develop targeted solutions that would work effectively in different situations. We need to get a better grasp on what’s happening so we can stop it, and to stop it we need to think creatively and strategically. Here are some ideas on how to end or prevent sexualized violence in the context of various conflict situations.
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What do we mean by rape in war?
For many of us, the phrase “wartime rape” evokes blurry, broad ideas of military assault, battles, and weapons. Just like the common misconceptions that surround rape in places like the U.S. or the UK (such as the idea that rape is a crime committed by a shadowy stranger in a dark alley, when, according to UK charity Rape Crisis, “only 9 percent of rapes are committed by ‘strangers’”) it is easy to make incorrect assumptions about the causes and manifestations of wartime rape.
WMC Women Under Siege
Sudan’s activists face rape, one fights back
In many regards, Safiya Ishaq is an unremarkable 25-year-old. She is excellent at braiding hair but terrible at being on time. She studied fine arts at Khartoum University in Sudan. Not unusually for a student, Ishaq became involved with politics.
WMC Women Under Siege
It's not a revolution for those left behind
“Who should I blame for this? Mubarak for destroying my country’s education so those men have no respect for women and have become just animals … our useless police who are incapable of defending us…our religious leaders who claim that they want what’s best but they don’t go to these young men and teach them what’s right…. Who? … I am sorry for the women of Egypt… . I am angry but I am not broken.”
WMC Women Under Siege
‘On the Media’: Balancing advocacy and accuracy
After Sen. Joseph Lieberman published this Washington Post op-ed advocating for the U.S. to step up its efforts to topple the Syrian regime last month, Jackie Blachman-Forshay and I wrote a response.
WMC Women Under Siege
We talk to the BBC about UK launch of anti-rape team for conflict zones
This morning brings the announcement that the UK government will be training experts (police, psychologists, doctors, lawyers, and forensic experts, according to the BBC) to deploy to conflict zones to collect evidence of sexualized violence—an initiative we can only be hopeful will do more than any government is doing now to stop the rape of women in wars.
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One threat too many: Where do we go from here?
I’m sitting in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris having just opened an email from one of Women Under Siege’s writers. She’d sent me a copy of a threat she’d received that scattered chills up my arms and down my legs. The sender said he was coming for her; he’d kill her, that “little bitch.”
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Who is Congo?
We know that victims of wartime rape are not just victims, or even survivors. They are mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, teachers, advocates, cooks, helpers, and dreamers. A new video series about Congo offers a fuller story of the country and its people than what we usually see.
WMC Women Under Siege
Afghan women face horrors for ‘moral crimes’
A cab driver abducted Marya, 15. He and another man raped her. Tahmina, 18, was trying to find the boy she liked in the hopes of escaping domestic violence and forced marriage. Two men she didn't know found her instead. They raped her. Malalai invited the guy she was seeing over to her house when she was alone, but he proved to be a mistake and raped her.
WMC Women Under Siege
Photography as a baton: Spreading the message of Congo's women
It’s easy to get bogged down in statistics of women who experience sexualized violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The numbers are staggering: A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in May 2011 showed that 12 percent of women in Congo had been raped at least once in their lifetime.
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The cartography of suffering: Women Under Siege maps sexualized violence in Syria
When we hear about conflicts in foreign countries and imagine terrible acts, our thoughts don’t turn immediately to rape. We think of bombings and refugees and government suppression.