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sexual violence
'Intolerable and Alarming': Proportion of Women Killed in War Doubled in 2023
"Women continue to pay the price of the wars of men," said one U.N. official.
Oct 23, 2024
The proportion of women killed in wars doubled last year compared with 2022 figures, with women comprising 4 out of every 10 conflict zone deaths around the world, according to a report published Tuesday by the United Nations.
U.N. Women, the agency behind the report, also found that cases of conflict-related sexual violence verified by the world body increased by 50% in 2023.
"These increases in deaths during war and in violence against women are taking place against a backdrop of increasing blatant disregard of international law designed to protect women and children during war," U.N. Women said.
"For example," the agency continued, "women in war zones are also increasingly suffering from restricted access to healthcare. Every day, 500 women and girls in conflict-affected countries die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. By the end of 2023, 180 women were giving birth every day in war-torn Gaza—most without necessities or medical care."
Earlier this year, the U.N. Security Council released a report estimating that 33,433 civilians including at least 13,337 women were killed in conflict zones around the world in 2023, a 72% increase from the previous year.
The vast bulk of these deaths occurred in Gaza, from which Hamas launched the deadliest-ever attack on a single day against Israel on October 7, 2023. The report states Hamas militants killed at least 280 women that day while abducting at least 90 other women and 36 children. The publication does not say how many Israeli women or children were killed by so-called "friendly fire" that day or under Israel's Hannibal Directive, which authorizes fratricide to prevent Israelis from falling into enemy hands.
Since October 7, more than 152,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed or wounded, including more than 10,000 people who are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings. According to Gaza and international officials, more than 5,000 women and 10,000 children were killed in the embattled coastal enclave between October 7 and the end of 2023.
Israel is on trial for alleged acts of genocide at the International Court of Justice over its conduct in Gaza.
The report details the dire situation in Sudan, "which already had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world before the outbreak of the armed conflict in April 2023," and where "2.64 million women and girls of reproductive age are now in need of urgent assistance, including 260,000 pregnant women."
"Amid reports of widespread sexual violence, most victims were unable to access the necessary medical care during the first 72 hours after being raped, including post-exposure prophylaxis or emergency contraception, and the United Nations received reports of victims of rape having been denied an abortion because it was outside of the timeline allowed for by law," the publication notes.
The new report also notes "a lack of overall progress on women's full, equal, and meaningful participation in peace processes."
"Preliminary data from the analysis of over 50 processes indicate that in 2023, on average, women made up only 9.6% of negotiators, 13.7% of mediators, and 26.6% of signatories to peace agreements and cease-fire agreements," the publication states. "The data show little progress over the past decade. None of the peace agreements reached in 2023 included a women's group or representative as a signatory."
U.N. Women Executive Director Sima Bahous lamented that "women continue to pay the price of the wars of men."
"This is happening in the context of a larger war on women," she continued. "The deliberate targeting of women's rights is not unique to conflict-affected countries but is even more lethal in those settings."
"We are witnessing the weaponization of gender equality on many fronts," Bahous added. "If we do not stand up and demand change, the consequences will be felt for decades, and peace will remain elusive."
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The Cost of War for Women and Girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The conflict raging in DRC is largely for the control of the country's important raw materials, with the most vulnerable paying the highest price.
Oct 14, 2024
Decades long conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has ravaged lives of millions. Nearly six million people have been killed since 1996 and the country has the largest population of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Africa with 7.1 million people forced from their home or community. North Kivu Province is particularly impacted with almost one million IDPs living in makeshift camps with limited access to essential services like water, shelter, sanitation and food around the capital city of Goma.
Sexual Violence – A Weapon of War
One of the most distinct elements of this conflict is the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. From 2021 to 2022, there was a 91 percent rise in reports of gender-based violence (GBV) in North Kivu. Between January and March 2024, more than 12,600 cases of sexual violence were recorded. These numbers, however, are only the tip of the iceberg. Many survivors are unable to access life-saving GBV services; and many do not report abuse out of fear of stigmatization by their communities or retaliation by perpetrators. Both Human rights groups to humanitarian relief organizations report that tens of thousands of women and girls have been victims of systemic sexual violence, including rape, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution.
Most cases of sexual violence involve armed combatants and militias with majority of victims being women and girls—some as young as three years old and others as old as 80. These acts have profound and lasting health consequences for the victims, ranging from physical injuries and psychological trauma to the risk of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies. Unfortunately, 2024 has been marked by an increase in this violence against women and girls in North Kivu. According to a recently released report, We Are Calling for Help, Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provided treatment to 25,166 victims and survivors of sexual violence across the country in 2023. Between January and May 2024, it had already treated 17,363 victims and survivors in North Kivu alone – 69 percent of the total number of victims treated in 2023.
Displacement resulting from heavy fighting between the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) and the M23 rebel group has exacerbated the vulnerability of individuals to sexual violence. Victims are often attacked when they venture outside the IDP camps to gather firewood or seek food. The disruption of humanitarian aid due to insecurity has compounded the challenges. Women and girls are being forced to take greater risks to meet critical needs. Food insecurity and the lack of livelihood opportunities have also led to women being forced to resort to harmful coping mechanisms, including prostitution.
Urgent International Response Needed to Protect Women & Children
The situation in North Kivu is an ugly reminder of the human toll of armed conflicts, with the worst price paid by women and children. Despite the horrors unleashed on the most vulnerable, international response has yet to meet the need of the hour.
With 25.4 million people affected, DRC has the highest number of people in need of humanitarian aid in the world and yet remains one of the most underfunded crises. The United Nations $2.6 billion Humanitarian Response Plan to assist 8.7 million people in 2024, is only 16% funded. At the end of 2023, World Food Programme reported the need for $546 million to sustain its emergency response in the region over the next six months, or be forced to sharply cut assistance, provide reduced support to fewer people — and over a shorter time period. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, received only 41% of the required $298.9 million for the emergency situation in DRC. In the absence of sustained humanitarian support, strengthened protection measures for civilian populations, and increased funding for the Humanitarian Response Plan, especially for programs addressing GBV, displaced women are endlessly enduring violence day after day.
A Resource Curse
The conflict raging in DRC is largely for the control of the country's important raw materials—tin, tungsten, coltan and gold, collectively known as 3T or 3TG. Electronic products from cell phones, laptops to the surge in electric cars have boosted the demand and competition for DRC’s mineral wealth. 2018 Nobel Prize winner, Denis Mukwege, a Congolese doctor, condemned the global demand for these minerals for fueling conflict and consequently, rape in his country. In April 2024, lawyers representing the Congolese government notified Apple of concerns about its supply chain, stating “their products are tainted by the blood of the Congolese people.” International community and the multinational corporations who benefit from Congo’s mineral wealth have the primary responsibility to ensure the return of peace in the country.
Two neighboring countries, Rwanda and Uganda, are extensively involved in illegal exploitation of DRC’s mineral resources and the violence that has plagued the eastern region in the past three decades. The Rwanda-backed M23 has intensified its activities in recent years, resulting in the resurgence of widespread violence and massive displacement of people. For years, the United Nations has sounded the alarm over Rwanda’s continued assistance to the M23, putting forward solid evidence of the “direct involvement” of Rwandan Defense Forces in the conflict in eastern Congo-Kinshasa, as well as Rwanda’s provision of “weapons, ammunitions, and uniforms” to the M23 rebels. The United Nations has also implicated Uganda, which has allowed M23 “unhindered” access to its territory during its operations.
Despite this evidence, Western countries, especially the United States, have continued to provide support to the two countries, including military aid. This, despite the legal restrictions that are supposed to prohibit the U.S. from releasing International Military Education & Training (IMET) funds to countries in the African Great Lakes region that “facilitate or otherwise participate in destabilizing activities in a neighboring country, including aiding and abetting armed groups.” It was only in October 2023 that the U.S. State Department placed Rwanda on a blacklist for violating the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) due to Rwandan support for M23, which recruits child soldiers. Support to Uganda continues.
Armed groups, competing for control of profitable minerals, will continue to unleash terror and perpetrate violent crimes against humanity until the impunity for the warring parties is brought to an end; Rwanda and Uganda end military support for M23; and the international community, including the United States, suspends military assistance to governments supporting armed groups. If not, the price of war and conflict will continue to be paid by women and children—victims of DRC’s “resource curse.”Keep ReadingShow Less
'Shame Must Change Sides': Thousands March in France Against Sexual Violence
The protests were organized in support of Gisèle Pélicot, who has become a symbol of feminist defiance in the country when she chose to make the rape trial of her husband and 50 other men public.
Sep 14, 2024
Thousands of people took to the streets in 30 French cities and Brussels on Saturday to protest rape and sexist violence and to support Gisèle Pélicot, a woman in her early 70s whose husband of 50 years is on trial for drugging her periodically and inviting dozens of men into their home to rape her while she was unconscious.
Pélicot has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France when she decided to make the trial of her husband and 50 other men public to ensure that "no woman suffers this."
"We are all Gisèle," protesters chanted in Paris, according to Le Monde. "Rapist we see you, victim we believe you."
The crime was discovered when her now ex-husband Dominique, a 71 year old who has plead guilty to drugging and raping his wife, was caught taking photos up the skirts of women in 2020. As part of that investigation, police uncovered a USB drive with a file labeled "abuse," which included more than 20,000 photos and videos of the attacks on his wife that were taken over a nine-year period. There was evidence that he had recruited more than 80 men to participate via an online forum. Police identified and charged 50 of the participants.
At the trial, which began September 2 and is expected to last four months, Pélicot described her harrowing experience. As The Guardian reported:
"My world fell apart. For me, everything was falling apart. Everything I had built up over 50 years."
She said she had barely recognized herself in the images, saying she was motionless. "I was sacrificed on the altar of vice," she said. "They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag."
"When you see that woman drugged, mistreated, a dead person on a bed—of course the body is not cold, it's warm, but it's as if I'm dead." She told the court rape was not a strong enough word, it was torture.
Saturday's protests were called by feminist groups in France.
"We thank her a thousand times for her enormous courage," Fatima Benomar of the feminist group "Coudes a Coudes" association toldBFM TV.
34-year-old Justine Imbert, who attended a 200-strong march in Marseilles with her six-year-old daughter, told Le Monde, "It must have taken huge courage, but it was essential," for Pélicot to make the trial public.
"It allows people to see the faces of her husband and all the others, to see they are not outcasts but 'good fathers,'" Imbert said.
"I am here to support Gisele and all women as there are many Giseles, too many Giseles."
The men accused in the trial include a member of the local government, a civil servant, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, and more than one nurse.
"It's shocking… because we see that the [men on trial] are a bit like Mr Everyman. It goes against the idea that there is only one type of rapist," 21-year-old photographer Pedro Campos said, according to The Guardian.
Martine Ragon, 74, told journalists she had come to the demonstration in Marseilles to "denounce rape culture."
"This well-publicized trial will allow people to speak out about it, to raise awareness," Ragon said.
Anna Toumazoff, who helped organize the protest in Paris that brought around 700 people to the Place de la Republique, also emphasized the need to talk about "rape culture."
"After seven years of MeToo, we know that there is not a special type of victim. We are also collectively realizing that there is no special type of a rapist," Toumazoff toldThe Associated Press.
Magali Lafourcade, a magistrate and secretary general of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, told AP that Pélicot's sharing of her story was important because 90% of women who are raped in France do not press charges and 80% of the cases that are brought forward are dropped.
Lou Salome Patouillard, a 41-year-old artist, who joined the demonstration in Marseilles, toldReuters, "I am here to support Gisele and all women as there are many Giseles, too many Giseles."
During the trial, Pélicot said that she began to have problems with her memory during the period when her husband was repeatedly drugging her. When she told her husband she was afraid she had Alzheimer's, he scheduled her a doctor's appointment. During the investigation, it was revealed that she had contracted multiple sexually transmitted diseases.
Through her lawyer, Stephane Babonneau, Pélicot explained her decision to make the trial public.
"It's a way of saying... shame must change sides," Babonneau said at the start of the trial, words that have been taken up as a rallying cry by France's feminist movement.
When supporters unfurled a banner from the Marseilles court building on Saturday, that is what it said: "Shame must change sides."
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