Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Human Rights

/INT’L WOMEN’S DAY/RIGHTS: Women Withstand Wars

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Mar 7 2003 (IPS) - Women are "incredibly courageous and resilient" and find ways to cope with the daily realities of war, debunking the stereotype of women as passive and vulnerable, says the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Frequently, women who are not participating directly in armed conflict become deliberate targets of the war or in danger of getting caught in the crossfire, says Charlotte Lindsey, director of the ICRC project on women and war.

In war situations, women might need assistance in confronting certain threats, such as sexual violence, but women "are not intrinsically vulnerable," said Lindsey in presenting a report on the effects of war on women, Friday in Geneva, on the eve of International Women’s Day, March 8

Irish activist Caoimhe Butterly, who provides social assistance services in the Palestinian territories, described the situation of the women there, subjected to more than 50 years of "periods of intensive violence and periods of lesser violence."

The Palestinian women "are seeing the entire infrastructure of their communities broken up" by the violence resulting from the military occupation of their lands, Butterly.

"There is no respite, there is no time to breathe and no time to reflect on what is happening," she said.

Many Palestinian women have told Butterly that the hardest thing to endure is the lack of hope. In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, there is a pervasive "feeling of helplessness," she said.

But the suffering inflicted by war is due to the fact that the principles of international humanitarian law established to protect women are not being applied, says the ICRC.

The situation of women caught up in armed conflict could be improved if the states and parties involved assumed the responsibility and obligation "to implement and respect the law that they are signatories to," said Lindsey.

Wars are not men’s games – half of the people involved are women, said Kate Adie, a war correspondent for the British news network BBC, during a roundtable discussion of women journalists organised in Geneva by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Armed conflict affects women in many ways, ranging from displacement from their homes to sexual violence.

But women also experience war as combatants or in support services to the armed forces. "In that role they are often captured or detained," Lindsey told a press conference.

As members of the civilian population, "women also experience threats and violence against them, separation and loss of their family members," added the ICRC representative.

The dangers women face in armed conflicts include the loss of their livelihoods and increase risk of sexual violence, physical harm, deprivation and even death.

The ICRC and other international humanitarian organisations are demanding access to zones of conflict in order to provide protection and assistance for women and the civilian population in general.

The Red Cross is a depositary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its additional protocols, which encompass international rules for treatment of persons who are taken prisoner, wounded or ill, and treatment of the civilian population in times of war.

Lindsey noted that these laws expressly stipulate that detained women must be provided sleeping quarters and sanitation services separate from men.

In Colombia, where the internal armed conflict has endured for more than four decades, the ICRC urged that women prisoners should have female guards and that mothers should be reunited with their children.

ICRC health programmes in Colombian women’s prisons in Bogotá, Medellín and Bucaramanga included an initiative to prevent breast cancer, through regular examinations of the female inmates.

In assisting women victims of war, the ICRC has run into some very strong cultural differences, says Lindsey.

In some zones of conflict, for example, women who have had limbs amputated will not seek orthopaedic assistance because of their fear of "dishonour" in receiving medical treatment from male personnel, she noted.