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Barbara Stahura
Freelance Writer
Freelance Writer
Under this declaration, the state shares responsibility for violence against women, whether the perpetrator was an agent of the state or not, explains Sheila Dauer, director of Amnesty International USA Women's Human Rights Program. Yet despite many countries' signatures on these documents, "states still systematically and consistently are failing to enforce this," she says.
In fact, governments all around the globe have allowed these abuses to continue unchecked, even abetted them. According to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, even though violence against women was made illegal almost everywhere by 1995, such violence has actually increased since then.
Rape as a weapon of war
Rape of any kind traumatizes. Yet strategic, systematic rape of large numbers of women during wartime has a more sinister purpose. "It destabilizes the entire community through the body of one woman," says Jeanne Ward, gender-based violence research officer for the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium in New York City.
The Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict of the 1990s brought this crime to international attention. Ward cites reports that say between 13,000 and 50,000 Muslim women and 800 Serb women were sexually assaulted and often forced into sexual servitude during the war.
Dr. Gill Hinshelwood, senior physician at London's Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, assists refugees from countries where torture occurs. "Rape is extremely effective. It destroys the family," she says of rape being used to torture women during war and otherwise. "Sometimes I wonder why the perpetrators do anything else, such is the damage it can do. Rape can have a longer lasting, more searing effect than many other forms of torture."
Rape was used by members of the Revolutionary United Front "as a systematic tool of war in Sierra Leone," explains Dr. Lynn Amowitz of Physicians for Human Rights. "It's a way of breaking down the bonds of family and community. You make them less cohesive by going after the women."
Ward notes that the courageous willingness of some Bosnian women to report their rapes "had a historic effect on international law as it relates to sexual violence. It stimulated public interest in gender-based violence as a component of warfare." In 2000, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia handed down sentences to three Serb men that were the first-ever based solely on crimes of sexual violence against women and the first to recognize sexual violence as a crime against humanity.
Women killed for "dishonoring" family
Crimes against women by strangers are horrific enough. Yet consider the traumas and torture that families visit upon their own daughters, often in the name of culturally-sanctioned "honor."
In Jordan, more than half the women murdered there are killed to preserve a family's honor. Among their "crimes" are falling in love with a man not chosen by their families, seeking a divorce, and being raped. One article of the Jordanian penal code states that "he who discovers his wife or one of his female relatives committing adultery and kills, wounds or injures one of them, is exempted from any penalty."
Queen Noor, along with her late husband, King Hussein, has long spoken out against these savage crimes, saying they are not consistent with Islamic law or the constitution. The Jordanian police have established a Family Protection Unit, and the Ministry of Social Development has created a shelter for women in danger from their families. Even so, when Parliament tried in 2000 to pass a bill to toughen punishments against men guilty of these crimes, it was soundly defeated.
The Pakistan government has condemned honor crimes yet done little to actually bolster investigations or prosecutions. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported that, in 1998-99, more than 850 women were killed by a male relative in Punjab, the country's most populous province. One famous case occurred in April 2000, when Samia Sawar, who was seeking a divorce, was shot dead in the office of a leading human rights activist. Her brother killed her on the orders of their parents.
Rupees and rebuffs cause for harm
Money and overweening male pride account for thousands more deaths and injuries to women, who typically face official indifference to their plight.
When Indian women marry, social custom requires they pay a dowry to their husband's family. Each year, more than 5000 brides are killed, and thousands more maimed, because their dowries are deemed too paltry. They are usually doused with kerosene and set afire, thus the crime called "bride burning." Their in-laws, even husbands, are often known to be the culprits, but only a tiny percentage of the killers are ever brought to justice. Furthermore, even
In fact, governments all around the globe have allowed these abuses to continue unchecked, even abetted them. According to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, even though violence against women was made illegal almost everywhere by 1995, such violence has actually increased since then.
Rape as a weapon of war
Rape of any kind traumatizes. Yet strategic, systematic rape of large numbers of women during wartime has a more sinister purpose. "It destabilizes the entire community through the body of one woman," says Jeanne Ward, gender-based violence research officer for the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium in New York City.
The Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict of the 1990s brought this crime to international attention. Ward cites reports that say between 13,000 and 50,000 Muslim women and 800 Serb women were sexually assaulted and often forced into sexual servitude during the war.
Dr. Gill Hinshelwood, senior physician at London's Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, assists refugees from countries where torture occurs. "Rape is extremely effective. It destroys the family," she says of rape being used to torture women during war and otherwise. "Sometimes I wonder why the perpetrators do anything else, such is the damage it can do. Rape can have a longer lasting, more searing effect than many other forms of torture."
Rape was used by members of the Revolutionary United Front "as a systematic tool of war in Sierra Leone," explains Dr. Lynn Amowitz of Physicians for Human Rights. "It's a way of breaking down the bonds of family and community. You make them less cohesive by going after the women."
Ward notes that the courageous willingness of some Bosnian women to report their rapes "had a historic effect on international law as it relates to sexual violence. It stimulated public interest in gender-based violence as a component of warfare." In 2000, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia handed down sentences to three Serb men that were the first-ever based solely on crimes of sexual violence against women and the first to recognize sexual violence as a crime against humanity.
Women killed for "dishonoring" family
Crimes against women by strangers are horrific enough. Yet consider the traumas and torture that families visit upon their own daughters, often in the name of culturally-sanctioned "honor."
In Jordan, more than half the women murdered there are killed to preserve a family's honor. Among their "crimes" are falling in love with a man not chosen by their families, seeking a divorce, and being raped. One article of the Jordanian penal code states that "he who discovers his wife or one of his female relatives committing adultery and kills, wounds or injures one of them, is exempted from any penalty."
Queen Noor, along with her late husband, King Hussein, has long spoken out against these savage crimes, saying they are not consistent with Islamic law or the constitution. The Jordanian police have established a Family Protection Unit, and the Ministry of Social Development has created a shelter for women in danger from their families. Even so, when Parliament tried in 2000 to pass a bill to toughen punishments against men guilty of these crimes, it was soundly defeated.
The Pakistan government has condemned honor crimes yet done little to actually bolster investigations or prosecutions. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported that, in 1998-99, more than 850 women were killed by a male relative in Punjab, the country's most populous province. One famous case occurred in April 2000, when Samia Sawar, who was seeking a divorce, was shot dead in the office of a leading human rights activist. Her brother killed her on the orders of their parents.
Rupees and rebuffs cause for harm
Money and overweening male pride account for thousands more deaths and injuries to women, who typically face official indifference to their plight.
When Indian women marry, social custom requires they pay a dowry to their husband's family. Each year, more than 5000 brides are killed, and thousands more maimed, because their dowries are deemed too paltry. They are usually doused with kerosene and set afire, thus the crime called "bride burning." Their in-laws, even husbands, are often known to be the culprits, but only a tiny percentage of the killers are ever brought to justice. Furthermore, even
