31 March 2005: Amnesty International Report on the Israel/Occupied Territories:
Women carry the burden of conflict, occupation and patriarchy
"Palestinian women in the Occupied Territories bear the brunt of
the conflict. They are victims of multiple violations resulting from Israel's
policies and restrictions, and of a system of norms, traditions and laws
which treat women as unequal members of Palestinian society..." Read
full report
Refugee women
from Darfur visited by Amnesty International
delegates in a camp (Chad, 11/2003) ©AI
see
more photos here
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Women's
lives and bodies -- unrecognized casualties of war
report from Amnesty international, December 2004
Women and girls bear the brunt of armed conflicts fought today
both as direct targets and as unrecognized "collateral damage".
Lives Blown Apart a new report in Amnesty International's
campaign, Stop Violence Against Women, calls for global action
to challenge both the violence and the failure of governments
to prevent it.
…The
report lays out the global picture revealing a systematic pattern
of abuse repeating itself in conflicts all over the world from
Colombia, Iraq, Sudan, Chechnya, Nepal to Afghanistan and in 30
other ongoing conflicts. Despite promises, treaties and legal
mechanisms, governments have failed to protect women and girls
from violence…
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Other
reports:
- Struggling
To Survive: Barriers to Justice for Rape Victims in Rwanda
September 2004
From Summary:
"Ten years after the 1994 genocide, many of the tens of thousands
of Rwandan women who were victims of sexual violence have remained
without legal redress or reparation. Perpetrators of the genocide
employed sexual violence against women and girls as a brutally effective
tool to humiliate and subjugate Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu.
Grieving for lost family members and suffering physical and psychological
consequences of the violence, women and girls who were victims of
sexual violence are among the most devastated and disadvantaged of
genocide survivors..."
Download
Printer-friendly PDF file of this report (424 Kb, 60 pages)
- Shattered
Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and its Aftermath
Human Rights Watch/Africa Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Project
Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme Human Rights
Watch
Copyright © September 1996 by Human Rights Watch.
From Introduction:
"During
the 1994 genocide, Rwandan women were subjected to sexual violence
on a massive scale, perpetrated by members of the infamous Hutu militia
groups known as the Interahamwe, by other civilians, and by soldiers
of the Rwandan Armed Forces (Forces Armées Rwandaises, FAR), including
the Presidential Guard. Administrative, military and political leaders
at the national and local levels, as well as heads of militia, directed
or encouraged both the killings and sexual violence to further their
political goal: the destruction of the Tutsi as a group. They therefore
bear responsibility for these abuses.
"Although the exact number of women raped will never be known,
testimonies from survivors confirm that rape was extremely widespread
and that thousands of women were individually raped, gang-raped, raped
with objects such as sharpened sticks or gun barrels, held in sexual
slavery (either collectively or through forced "marriage") or sexually
mutilated. These crimes were frequently part of a pattern in which
Tutsi women were raped after they had witnessed the torture and killings
of their relatives and the destruction and looting of their homes.
According to witnesses, many women were killed immediately after being
raped.
"Other women managed to survive, only to be told that they were
being allowed to live so that they would "die of sadness."
(full text at link above)
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