The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict ended, for me, not with a bang but with a tiny symbol of my irrelevance. As I stood, furiously tweeting, after the summit’s closing plenary, I was literally pushed aside by a bodyguard to Angelina Jolie. (Special Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Jolie was a co-host of the summit, with UK Foreign Secretary William Hague.)

In a women’s ward in a New Delhi hospital lies a frail 15-year-old girl. Her face and head are bandaged, leaving visible only a bruised blue-black eye and swollen lips. Burn marks and scabs extend down her neck to her whole body, and a strange stench surrounds her.

Despite the outrage at violence against women that spread through India this past year, thousands of women and children continue to be victims of rape, trafficking, and other forms of sexualized violence. The stories of these women and children go unreported and are largely ignored by global campaigns against violence. But one of the worst and most brutal cases has been that of Soni Sori.

Angelina Jolie doesn't mince words. “Let us be clear what we are speaking about,” the award-winning actress and humanitarian said in June as she addressed the United Nations Security Council session on sexualized violence in conflict. “Young girls raped and impregnated before their bodies are able to carry a child, causing fistula; boys held at gunpoint and forced to sexually assault their mothers and sisters; women raped with bottles, wood branches, and knives to cause as much damage as possible; toddlers, even babies, dragged from their homes and violated.”

On November 21, 2011, President Barack Obama signed into law the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act. The act aims to reform Peace Corps’ policies and procedures for preventing and responding to sexual assault. Its passage was intended to end the epidemic of sexual assault against Peace Corps volunteers and endemic culture of victim-blaming in the agency. But the success of the Kate Puzey Act is threatened by the Peace Corps’ use of outdated, victim-blaming definitions of sexual assault.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“I sometimes heard the cries of the girls with my own ears…there were girls who made food that I saw, but also sometimes at night there were commanders…and you could see the girls prepare the food, and at night you could listen to the girls even saying, ‘I don’t want to.’”

The Violence Against Women Act is causing contention as it comes to Congress for the third time for reauthorization. Democrats want to extend the act, first approved in 1994, to provide protection to Native American women, victims in same-sex relationships, and undocumented immigrants—some of the country’s most vulnerable populations. But Republicans have accused Democrats of deliberately including these “controversial” issues in an attempt to lure them into blocking the bill.

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.

As nightfall approached on July 30, 2010, hundreds of armed men streamed into the village of Luvungi in eastern Congo from the nearby forests surrounding the area. At first they told the villagers they were just there for food and shelter and that their presence should cause no alarm. However, what unfolded over the next four days marked one of the worst attacks against a civilian community in Congo in the last two years.

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.