WMC Women Under Siege
Abuses by the Indian government keep one woman on a 14-year hunger strike
Irom Sharmila, 42, has long advocated for the repeal of India’s Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, or AFSPA, which gives the Indian army legal immunity for various brutal actions. She has been arrested again and again since starting a hunger strike in November 2000. “I have spent 14 years of my life chewing my tongue just for violence on all sides to end,” she has said.
WMC Women Under Siege
New evidence emerges of mass rape during post-election violence in Kenya
A study by Physicians for Human Rights published today in the peer-reviewed online publication PLOS One has found that the pattern of sexual assault perpetrated during the period following the contested 2007 presidential elections in Kenya is consistent with the patterns of mass rape documented in conflict settings elsewhere.
WMC Women Under Siege
The cookstove-rape prevention myth and the problem with simple solutions
Indoor air pollution might not be a problem for you and me, but it is a deadly issue for roughly 3 billion people in the world. According to the WHO, household air pollution killed 4.3 million people in 2012. That accounts for nearly 8 percent of global deaths that year.
WMC Women Under Siege
Photos: Everyday life in Juárez, one of the most violent cities on earth
The year photographer Itzel Aguilera moved to the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez in 2008, it achieved notoriety as the most violent city in the world. Living there with her husband and daughters Valeria, 6, and Dalia, 7 months old, Aguilera, who is 43, was starting to feel unsafe.
WMC Women Under Siege
August 21, 2014 | Lauren Wolfe |
Violence against women
The Index: The Cost of Violence Against Women
Cost of sexualized and domestic violence in the U.S. estimated per year in 2003, in billions: 5.8 ... Overall cost of health care in this estimate, in billions: 4.1 ... Cost of rape in this estimate, in millions: 319 ...
WMC Women Under Siege
In Iraq, women ‘are the battlefield’
Yanar Mohammed’s voice is shaky when she picks up the phone. It is noticeable. She apologizes and takes a quick second to compose herself. She has been unnerved by something she just saw on television.
WMC Women Under Siege
August 08, 2014 | Priyali Sur |
Disability,
International,
Violence against women,
WMC Loreen Arbus Journalism Program
Indian government fails acid attack survivors, activists say
In India, the battle for justice is on many fronts for women who survive acid attacks. They continue, in part, because the government has failed to regulate the sales of acid and police have repeatedly failed to even take reports of attacks. So beyond the punishment of specific perpetrators, activists and survivors are fighting to obtain compensation from the government—and rehabilitation.
WMC Women Under Siege
July 18, 2014 | Cara Hoffman |
Violence against women
Giving women a fair fight in the US military
It’s unfathomable to think that in 2014 half the global population will be prevented from a full range of occupations because of their gender. This kind of prejudice is broadly seen as a throwback to a distant and unenlightened era—which is why the findings of a recent study of the best U.S. colleges was surprising to many.
WMC Women Under Siege
The smartest way to end rape in war
As a human rights lawyer for more than 40 years, pushing every avenue to advance women’s rights, this month’s Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict hosted by UK Foreign Minister William Hague and Angelina Jolie was a confirming moment of hope.
WMC Women Under Siege
No more music, no more jasmine: A Syrian-American’s reflections on Aleppo
As a young Syrian-American, visiting Aleppo with my family was the highlight of my year. The sweet scent of jasmine abounded in the gardens, mixed with the aroma of Turkish coffee. At night, cafes were always full of people enjoying the cool breeze. But the city’s landscape has drastically changed: Barrel bombs have destroyed entire districts. Missiles have shattered homes, schools, cars, and lives. My family tells me that the pictures in the news do not do justice to the enormity of the devastation. Aleppo has been dubbed “the world’s most dangerous city.”
WMC Women Under Siege
How to seize the huge opportunity created by the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict
“What a fabulous suit. She was perfect, perfect,” said a French woman standing behind me on the escalator. We had just emerged from two hours in a giant auditorium on the outskirts of London where we heard politicians, UN officials, and Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee speaking at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, billed as the largest gathering ever to focus attention and develop effective solutions to ending rape in war.
WMC Women Under Siege
June 18, 2014 International,
Violence against women
Siege talks to BBC about the UK summit: ‘Listen to the grassroots organizers’
The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, which ended on June 13, has now been met with both criticism and praise throughout the media. Our director, Lauren Wolfe, spoke to the BBC’s Radio Scotland from London, where she was a delegate at the summit. She has a mixed take.
WMC Women Under Siege
Ignoring the evidence at the End Sexual Violence in Conflict summit
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.)
WMC Women Under Siege
UK summit on sexualized violence: ‘A time warp in the wrong direction’
I spent the past week in London at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict hosted by UK Foreign Secretary William Hague and UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie. It was a historic gathering of ministers and other government representatives, UN officials, the ICRC, and civil society, including our Campaign to Stop Rape & Gender Violence in Conflict.
WMC Women Under Siege
Do we really need Angelina Jolie?
Everyone keeps asking me if we need Angelina Jolie. Leading up to the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, which Jolie and UK Foreign Secretary William Hague are chairing in London this week, they want to know whether she is useful to this cause. I’ve been thinking a lot about this and have been searching for an answer. And I think I’ve found it.
WMC Women Under Siege
Stigma remains in place as sexualized violence increases in CAR
The Central African Republic may have a new leader for now—Interim President Catherine Samba-Panza was sworn in in January—but there are still old problems that exist when it comes to the country’s long history of sexualized violence.
WMC Women Under Siege
Safety a click away: The tech industry’s response to violence against women
To combat sexualized violence, advocates and technologists have created new, tech-based apps and services in recent years. Some recent anti-rape device creations include rape-resistant underwear, female condoms with teeth, hairy leg tights, and even “killer tampons.” But not all of the creations are that bizarre. Some tech-based responses include smartphone apps, GPS tools, and other personal safety services and software that may be useful in the right—or wrong—situation.
WMC Women Under Siege
Rape is being used as tool of ethnic violence in South Sudan
In what experts are calling the single worst atrocity since fighting broke out in South Sudan last December, hundreds of men, women, and children were killed last month when rebels seized the northern oil town of Bentiu. The rebels denied the allegations, saying it was retreating government troops who perpetrated the murders. Then, fighters took to radio airwaves—the means by which most South Sudanese citizens access news—and broadcast “hate messages” calling on men to rape women.
WMC Women Under Siege
Abduction of schoolgirls highlights Nigeria’s booming sex trafficking industry
On April 14, nearly 300 Nigerian girls were abducted from their dormitories in a school in the northeastern town of Chibok. But this is hardly the first time Nigerian children have been kidnapped en masse for the purposes of sex—in fact, Nigeria is the birthplace of a sex-trafficking pipeline that leads directly to Italy.
WMC Women Under Siege
Exposing the secret of domestic abuse in Egypt
It wasn’t easy growing up as a teenage Muslim girl, with a father who thought he owned your body just because he put a roof over your head or food on the table. Not just that—this was a Muslim man who perverted the teachings of his own religion to justify the sexual abuse that he inflicted upon me, his own daughter.
WMC Women Under Siege
Siege talks to BBC about why sexualized violence against women is under-reported
With the story of more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by an extremist group in Nigeria hot in the news, we spoke to the BBC about why coverage of such violence against women and girls in conflict is so sporadic—and what can be done to make a lasting difference once and for all in the media and in the lives of those affected around the world.
WMC Women Under Siege
The Index: Justice for Rape in War
Year in which General Andrew Jackson is credited with coining the phrase “booty and beauty” to make clear what kind of “spoils…to the victor go”: 1812 ... Year in which an international tribunal established that sexualized violence is a crime against humanity and potentially an act of genocide: 1995 ...
WMC Women Under Siege
A Delhi street where sex workers are forgotten
With painted faces and shiny clothes, almost every day of their lives these women are forced to sell themselves for sex. Their work and lives are at the bottom of everyone’s concern, but they are still tied to Garstin Bastion Road—commonly known as GB Road—Delhi’s biggest red light area, which lies at the center of a busy commercial corner of the capital.
WMC Women Under Siege
‘Everybody knew who testified’: Can disguises work for rape survivors?
A woman sits, microphone in hand, behind a billowing, black curtain—further obscured by a black veil that hides her face, her body, and even her hands—as she finds the courage to recount her rape by government soldiers in Minova, Democratic Republic of Congo.
WMC Women Under Siege
‘The system is designed to make you give up’: An American tackles domestic violence in China
Kim Lee met Li Yang on a trip to China in 1999, when he was lecturing about “Crazy English,” a way of learning the language that involved overcoming inhibitions through shouting slogans such as “Conquer English to Make China Stronger!”