Brazilian women demonstrated in São Paulo on Sept. 28, International Safe Abortion Day, which began to be celebrated in Latin America. The activists are promoting the campaign "Neither imprisoned, nor dead" against the repression of women's right to abortion, which affects even young girls who are entitled to this right by law. CREDIT: Rovena Rosa / Agência Brasil

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 31 2023 (IPS)

A total of 17,456 babies were born to girls aged 10 to 14 in Brazil in 2021. The annual figures are falling, but still reflect the plight of ruined childhoods and the failures of judges and doctors when it comes to the issue of abortion rights.

Data from the Information System on Live Births (Sinasc) of the Ministry of Health put the number of births to girls in this age group at 252,786 in the decade 2010-2019, compiled by the Feminist Health Network. That is an annual average of 25,278."This country does not take care of women. While cardiology has advanced a lot in Brazil, medicine dedicated to women, such as obstetrics and gynecology, remains stuck in the last century and resists updating. An example is the persistence of curettage, a practice abolished by the World Health Organization (WHO) more than 20 years ago." -- Helena Paro

This phenomenon has ceased to be invisible since 2020, when a string of scandals erupted involving girls prevented from having abortions by judges, hospitals and even authorities such as the then Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves, during the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).

In Brazil, abortion is legal in cases of rape, risk of death of the pregnant woman and anencephalic fetuses. It is also an unquestionable right of girls up to 14 years of age, since all of them are legally victims of rape and their abusers face sentences of eight to 15 years in prison.

But there were judges, even in the appeals courts, who ruled against the termination of pregnancy in girls as young as 10 or 11 years old.

At the base of this iniquity is the social criminalization of abortion, to which many religious people who identify “abortion as murder, as a repulsive crime” contribute, lamented Clara Wardi, technical advisor of the Feminist Studies and Advisory Center (Cfemea), based in Brasilia.

Religious morality infiltrates the State

“The stigma is strong, in the culture, in the family, even in schools. That is why girls are reluctant to choose abortion, even if it is legal. And to do it clandestinely is expensive and risky,” she told IPS from Petrópolis, the city near Rio de Janeiro where she lives.

Many doctors argue that they are “conscientious objectors” and refuse to carry out abortions, which forces the girls to go on a “pilgrimage” in search of respect for their rights in other hospitals and even in the courts.

In spite of everything, a Cfemea survey conducted since 2018 found a growing public opinion against the criminalization of abortion. To the question “Are you for or against the imprisonment of women who terminate their pregnancy?”, 59.3 percent said “against” in 2023, up from 51.8 percent in 2018.

Those in favor of imprisonment also increased, but less, from 26.7 percent to 28.1 percent, reflecting the ideological polarization during Bolsonaro’s administration, which caused the proportion of “undecideds”, those who answered “it depends on the circumstances”, to fall from 16.1 percent to 7.6 percent.

There are “institutional barriers” to legal abortion, an issue in which the State ceases to be secular by subordinating its services to religious morality. The most emblematic case is that of an 11-year-old girl pregnant for the second time in the northeastern state of Piauí, who in late 2022 was denied an abortion by a public hospital and by the justice system.

Taken to a public shelter, she gave birth to her second child in March 2023. In other words, the State acted to remove her from her family, deny her the legal abortion she demanded and force her to give birth, Wardi said.

Damares Alves, a radical evangelical Christian who was Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights (2019-2022) during the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, mobilized her officials to pressure young pregnant girls to desist from getting an abortion, which was legal in their case because they are recognized as victims of rape. CREDIT: Fabio Rodrigues-Pozzebom / Agência Brasil

Ignorance

All this occurs in the midst of “collective failures” of society itself, such as insufficient information on reproductive rights and the possibility of choice for women, especially girls. There is no choice without access to health services, she argued.

“The criminalization of abortion invalidates the legality of the three situations. It is necessary to get out the information that abortion is legal in Brazil and to train qualified personnel to offer the service, without the need for legal action to obtain access,” said Denise Mascarenha, executive coordinator of the group Catholics for Choice in Brazil.

The basic flaw is in the training of health workers, whether doctors, nurses or psychologists, who “do not recognize the violence involved in a pregnancy in girls under 14 years of age,” which has been present in the Penal Code all the way back to 1940, said Helena Paro, professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Faculty of Medicine of the Federal University of Uberlândia.

Universities, she said, do not train doctors to take care of rape victims, but good teaching would not be enough, anyway, she added. There is a lack of experience in practical assistance to patients, with a focus on women’s human rights, said the physician specialized in gynecology and obstetrics.

In Brazil there are just over 60 medical centers offering legal abortion services – virtually nothing for a population of 203 million inhabitants in which women constitute a majority of 51.7 percent, she told IPS from Uberlândia, a city in the southern state of Minas Gerais.

Only about 2,000 legal abortions are performed each year in Brazil, where it is estimated that more than 400,000 illegal abortions are performed annually, resulting in many deaths as well as complications that overload hospitals.

Judge Rosa Weber seen passing her vote in defense of the decriminalization of abortion up to 12 weeks of gestation, in her last sessions as president of the Supreme Federal Court, before retiring on Oct. 2. CREDIT: Antonio Cruz / Agência Brasil

Medical care that discriminates against women

“This country does not take care of women. While cardiology has advanced a lot in Brazil, medicine dedicated to women, such as obstetrics and gynecology, remains stuck in the last century and resists updating. An example is the persistence of curettage, a practice abolished by the World Health Organization (WHO) more than 20 years ago,” Paro commented.

She coordinates the Uberlândia Comprehensive Care Center for Victims of Sexual Assault (Nuavidas), opened in 2017 at her university hospital. Since 2021, the center has been offering abortion-related services via telemedicine, following an initial face-to-face consultation.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the online assistance, also facilitated by the efficacy of the abortion drug misoprostol, approved by the WHO and Brazilian health authorities.

Paro’s activities led to an attempt to disqualify her by the Regional Council of Medicine of Minas Gerais, which accuses her of using her knowledge “to commit crimes” and not for the well-being of patients.

“It’s all upside down,” the physician replied, arguing that she cares for the health of patients “based on scientific evidence” that the Council denies.

The councils, one national and 27 regional (in each of the states), regulate medical practice in the country and several of them acted unscientifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, by approving, for example, the use of ineffective drugs such as chloroquine.

A conservative offensive in Congress threatens to further restrict the right to abortion in Brazil, contrary to what is happening in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay, which have decriminalized abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

A 2007 bill, called the Statute of the Fetus, gained renewed momentum last year in the lower house of Congress, at the initiative of ultra-conservative lawmakers. Its approval would prohibit any abortion, guaranteeing the fetus all the rights of a human being, especially the right to life, from the moment of conception.

Other measures to criminalize abortions even in the restricted circumstances currently permitted are under parliamentary discussion.

To counteract this conservative offensive, Brazilian women’s rights movements launched the campaigns for decriminalization “Neither imprisoned nor dead” and “Girls, not mothers”, the latter of which is being carried out throughout Latin America.

Feminists are also celebrating the ruling of Judge Rosa Weber, who recorded her vote in favor of decriminalizing abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy on Sept. 22, before leaving the presidency of the Supreme Federal Court and retiring 10 days later.

The highest court in the country, which has acted as a counterweight to the ultraconservative initiatives of the legislature and of the Bolsonaro administration, will ultimately decide whether to rule in favor of or against the legalization of abortion on any grounds up to 12 weeks.

Weber’s vote is in line with the demands of the feminist movement, especially with the strong, early contribution of black women, in advocating “reproductive justice as a tool for social transformations,” Wardi said.

“It is an important milestone in the fight for abortion rights in Brazil” and affirms “the legitimacy of the judiciary in ensuring women’s human rights,” Mascarenha said from São Paulo.

But the current circumstances are not very favorable to her argument, with a Congress dominated by conservative and ultra-conservative groups.

Also because the process within the Supreme Federal Court on the right to abortion is facing indefinite postponement since its new president, Luis Roberto Barroso, replaced Weber.

Women and children who escaped the brutal violence in Myanmar wait for aid at a camp in Bangladesh. Credit: Parvez Ahmad/IPS

By Naimul Haq
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Oct 10 2017 (IPS)

Yasmin, 26, holds her 10-day-old baby, who she gave birth to in a crowded refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, a southeastern district bordering Myanmar.

Three weeks ago, when she was still in her home in Hpaung Taw Pyin village in Myanmar, she was raped by a group of soldiers as houses burned, people fled and gunfire shattered the air.“I have been working as a human rights activist for the last 20 years but never heard of such an extreme level of violence." --Bimol Chandra Dey Sarker, Chief Executive of the aid organisation Mukti

With sunken eyes, Yasmin told IPS how she was beaten and raped in her ninth month of pregnancy by Myanmar soldiers. Yasmin’s village was almost empty when she and many of her neighbours were violated. Only a few dozen women and children remained after the men had fled in fear of being tortured or killed.

“On that dreadful evening an army truck stopped in our neighbourhood, and then came the soldiers raiding homes. I was alone in my home and one of the soldiers entering my thatched house shouted to invite a few others to join him in raping me.”

“I dare not resist. They had guns pointed at me while they stripped me to take turns one by one. I don’t remember how many of them raped me but at one stage I had lost consciousness from my fading screams,” she said, visibly exhausted and traumatized by the horrific ordeal.

Yasmin’s husband was killed by the Myanmar army on September 4 during one of the frequent raids, allegedly by state-sponsored Buddhist mobs against the Muslim minority in their ancestral home in Rakhine state.

Bandarban, a hilly district, and Cox’s Bazaar, a coastal district, both some 350 km southeast of Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, are hosting the overcrowded Rohingya camps. The locals here are no strangers to influxes of refugees. Rohingyas have been forced out of Myanmar since 1992, and Bangladesh, as a neighbor, has sheltered many of them on humanitarian grounds.

However, the latest Rohingya exodus, following a massive government crackdown that began last August, has shaken the world. The magnitude of the atrocities carried out by the military junta this time is beyond imagination. Some describe the persecution as ‘genocide,’ which Myanmar’s rulers deny.

To add to the communal violence, dubbed ‘ethnic cleansing’ by Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, the military junta intensified physical assaults and soldiers have been sexually harassing innocent, unarmed Rohingya women alongside the regular killings of men.

The reasoning is obvious: no one should dare to stay in their homes. Many believe it’s a pre-planned operation to clear Rakhine state of the Rohingya population, who Myanmar does not recognize as citizens.

One Rohingya man, who managed to reach the Bangladesh border in mid-September, told IPS, “They have indeed successfully forced the Rohingya men out while the remaining unprotected women were a headache for the military junta, as killing the unarmed women would expose them to international criticism. So they chose a strategy of frightening the women and children – apply physical assault and sexual abuse, which worked so well.”

Newly arrived Rohingya refugees enter Teknaf from Shah Parir Dwip after being ferried from Myanmar across the Naf River. Credit: Farid Ahmed/ IPS

IPS spoke with many of the agencies, including the United Nations and local NGOs, working on the ground to provide emergency services such as food distribution, erecting shelters, organizing a safe water supply and hygienic latrines and, of course, healthcare.

Everyone who spoke to this correspondent said literally every woman, except the very old and young, has had experiences of either being molested or experiencing an extreme level of abuse like gang rape.

Survivors and witnesses shared brutal stories of women and young girls being raped in front of their family members. They described how cruel the soldiers were. They said the soldiers showed no mercy, not even for the innocent children who watched the killings and burning of their homes.

Bimol Chandra Dey Sarker, Chief Executive of Mukti, a local NGO in Cox’s Bazaar, told IPS, “I have been working as a human rights activist for the last 20 years but never heard of such an extreme level of violence. Many of the women who are now sheltered in camps shared their agonizing tales of sexual abuse. It’s like in a movie.”

Kaniz Fatema, a focal person for CODEC, a leading NGO in coastal Cox’s Bazaar, told IPS, “Stories of sexual abuse of Rohingya women keep pouring in. I heard women describing horrific incidents which they say are everyday nightmares. How can such violence occur in this civilized world today?”

“Although women are shy and traumatized, they speak up. Here (in Bangladesh) they feel safer and so the stories of abuses are being submitted from every corner of the camps,” she said.

The chief health officer of Cox’s Bazar 500-bed district hospital, where most of the wounded are being treated, told IPS, “At the beginning we were providing emergency treatment for many Rohingya refugees with bullet wounds. Now, we are facing a new crisis of treating so many pregnant women. We are registering pregnant women and admitting them almost every day despite shortages of beds. Many of these women complain of being sexually harassed.”

An attending nurse at the hospital who regularly treats the sexually abused women, said, “Many women still bear marks of wounds during rape encounters. It’s amazing that these women are so tough. Even after so many days of suffering, they keep silent about the agonies and don’t complain.”

The UNFPA is offering emergency reproductive healthcare services in Bandarban and Cox’s Bazaar, where aid workers shared similar tales from women who suffered torture and gang rape at gunpoint.

“It is so horrifying,” said a field worker serving in Ukhia upazila in Bandarban, adding, “I heard of a young girl being raped in front of her father, mother and brother. Then the soldiers took the men out in the courtyard and shot them.”

Faisal Mahmud, a senior reporter who recently returned to the capital from Rohingya camps, also said he spoke to many victims of rape. “Most of them I spoke to were so traumatised they were hardly able to narrate the brutality. I could see the fear in their faces. Although I hardly understand their dialect, a translator helped me to understand the terrifying tales of being stripped naked and gang raped.”

Mohammad Jamil Hossain trekked through the deep forests, evading mines and Myanmar border guards who look for men to catch and take back.

“The systematic cleansing will not end until every member of Rohingya population is evicted and forced out of the country,” he said. “The whole world is watching and yet doing nothing to stop the killings.”

Shireen Huq, founder member of Naripokkho, Bangladesh’s leading NGO fighting for women’s rights, told IPS, “I was shocked and overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people, mostly women and children, fleeing Myanmar and entering Bangladesh. The media had reported widespread atrocities, mass rape, murder, arson and brutality in the state of Rakhain.”

“Women arriving at Nayapara through Shah Porir Dwip were in a state of shock and fatigue. Many of them were candid about the julum (a word used to mean both torture and rape) they had undergone, about being raped by several military,” she said.

“We must ensure appropriate and adequate care for the refugees, especially all those who have suffered sexual violence. They need medical care, psycho-social counseling and abortion services.”

“Agencies working in the Rohingya refugee camps estimate that 50,000 women are pregnant. Several hundred deliveries have already taken place. Round the clock emergency health services must be made available to deal with the situation,” Shireen said.

More than 501,800 Rohingya have fled the Buddhist-majority country and crossed into Bangladesh since August 25. Densely populated refugee settlements have mushroomed around road from Teknaf to Cox’s Bazar district that borders Myanmar divided by Naf river. About 2,000 of the refugees are flooding into the camps every day, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

IOM has appealed to the international community for 120 million dollars between now and February 2018 to begin to address the humanitarian crisis.

“The refugees who fled Rakhine did so in the belief that they would find safety and protection in Cox’s Bazar,” said William Lacy Swing, IOM’s Director General, in a statement on October 4. “It is our responsibility to ensure that the suffering and trauma that they have experienced on the way must end.”

Meanwhile, witnesses say there are still thousands of refugees in the forest waiting to cross over the Bangladesh border, which has now been officially opened. Many can be seen from distant hilltops, walking with whatever belongings they could take.

“I was really struck by the fear that these people carry with themselves, what they have gone through and seen back in Myanmar,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, told Reuters in a camp recently, where refugees live under thousands of tarpaulins covering the hills and rice paddies.

“Parents killed, families divided, wounds inflicted, rapes perpetrated on women. There’s a lot of terrible violence that has occurred and it will take a long time for people to heal their wounds, longer than satisfying their basic needs,” Grandi said.

Protesters gather outside the Lahore Press Club in the capital of Pakistan's Punjab province on July 12, 2016 to demand justice for victims of sexual violence. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS

By Irfan Ahmed
LAHORE, Feb 3 2017 (IPS)

Amid a wave of reforms to tighten the country’s laws on honour killings and sexual assault, on Feb. 2, the Sindh Assembly passed a law making DNA testing in rape cases mandatory in the province.

It follows on the heels of a unanimous vote by Pakistan’s Parliament last October to plug gaps in the criminal justice system and boost the rate of conviction in rape cases.The conviction rate for rape in Pakistan has been less than four percent, prompting protests and legal reforms.

For long, the sole reliance on eyewitnesses and circumstantial evidence has benefitted the accused in rape cases and conviction rates have remained negligible in the country.

The new national law, called The Anti-Rape Laws (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act, also makes DNA evidence admissible, calls for verdicts in rape cases to be announced within three months, and allows filing of appeals within six months.

It also gives approval to holding of in-camera trials and use of technological aids to record testimony of victims and witnesses in order to save victims from humiliation. In the past, many victims and their families would not pursue cases for this very reason.

Another important feature of the law is that it tries to ensure protection of victims’ identity in the media. Those who violate victims’ privacy face jail terms of up to three years and fines. Mass media in the past has been criticised for disclosing names and sometimes even publishing the pictures of rape victims.

Fauzia Viqar, chairperson of the Punjab Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW), told IPS that the law will require police to collect evidence from rape victims in the presence of a female officer.

She added that stringent action has also been recommended in cases of custodial rape by police officers. Furthermore, the past conduct of a rape victim and her acquaintance with the alleged rapist will not imply that the sexual act was done with the former’s consent, as it would often happen in the past.

Cases “mishandled from the very start”

Amina Bibi, an 18-year-old from Pakistan’s Punjab province, was allegedly raped by four men on Jan. 5, 2014. All the accused were granted bail. A desperate Amina set herself on fire outside a police station on Mar. 13 that year and succumbed to her burn injuries the next day.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan took up the case and sought a report from police. The report was presented Apr. 21, 2014, only to be dismissed by the court. The report claimed that Amina had not been raped – something the court was not ready to believe, especially when it could find no other reason for her suicide.

Amina’s case trained the spotlight on the plight of thousands of rape victims in Pakistan who suffer due to flaws in the criminal justice system, socio-cultural inhibitions, the negative attitudes of investigators, police failure to collect evidence and the humiliation of victims in trial courts.

According to the National Police Bureau (NPB) of Pakistan, around 3,000 cases of rape are reported every year – 3,173 cases were reported in 2012 and 3,164 in 2013. The conviction rate, however, is less than four percent, according to a report released by the NGO War Against Rape (WAR).

“One of the foremost reasons for the poor conviction rate is rape cases are mishandled from the very start,” Asad Jamal, a Lahore-based lawyer who has represented several rape victims, told IPS.

He says very few police officials know how to collect scientific evidence in rape cases or record the statements of traumatised rape victims. Citing the example of a case he is fighting right now, Jamal says the police investigator concerned even forgot to preserve the clothes that the victim was wearing at the time of the sexual assault.

In the case of Amina Bibi too, it was found that police had failed to conduct timely forensic and DNA tests. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif suspended several senior police officers and ordered the arrest of others in connection with the case.

Jamal said sometimes police insist on including the names of fake witnesses to strengthen rape cases but such practices end up benefiting the accused, especially in appellate courts. “Ideally, scientific and DNA evidence should be enough to convict an accused, but unfortunately trial courts depend a lot on eyewitnesses for primary evidence,” he says.

Jamal pointed to another reality – rape victims often belong to disadvantaged sections of society while rapists are mostly powerful people.

He says crime data indicates that girls in the 9-19 age group from lower income families are most vulnerable to rape. “That’s why the number of domestic workers subjected to rape is on the rise,” he said.

Zia Awan, founder of the Madadgar National Helpline for women and children, told IPS, “The number of rape cases reported in Pakistan is only a fraction of the actual number.”

He receives a large number of calls from women who are undecided on whether to report the case or remain silent in order to avoid humiliation and life-long stigma. The impunity of rapists and the ordeal of rape victims deter the latter from seeking justice, he says.

“The shameful attitude of society, police and lawyers towards rape victims is the biggest hurdle in securing justice,” said Faisal Siddiqui, a Karachi-based lawyer.

His own client, a rape victim, had to seek psychological treatment for two years after appearing in court for cross-examination, he says. The defence lawyer, he says, asked her about the minutest details of the assault and made her recall the traumatic incident over and over again.

Unfortunately, he says, many lawyers deliberately confuse rape victims during cross-examination in order to get relief for the accused. “They ask shameful questions which no woman can answer.”

Sources privy to rape investigations reveal that due to socio-cultural mores police usually try to put the blame on complainants and prove that rape victims are women of loose morals. Their perception is that a woman who has really been raped would not dare to report the crime out of shame and fear of public humiliation.

If the victim has had any association with the alleged rapist or has been socially active or has a ‘modern’ lifestyle, police tend to believe that her allegations are fabricated.

In the past, legal provisions in Pakistan also made this possible. Shahid Ghani, a Lahore-based lawyer, cites such a provision: “When a man is prosecuted for rape or an attempt to ravish, it may be shown that the prosecutrix was of generally immoral character.”

He says this provision allowed for looking into a victim’s history to prove that she may not be innocent and may be sexually active.

Speaking to IPS in 2014, top police officials admitted that investigators needed to handle rape cases differently.

Inspector Amjad Naeem, master trainer at the Police Training College, Lahore, said there has to be an element of empathy in rape cases and special care must be shown by investigators in seeking information from victims.

“The victim has to be told not to change clothes, wash herself or go to the washroom before evidence is collected,” he told IPS. “In case it is necessary to go to the washroom, the urine and stool should be collected for later examination.”

Thanks to a project called Gender Responsive Policing (GRP), launched by the German development agency GIZ in collaboration with NBP, many policymakers have begun to believe that more women should join the police force and handle cases of violence against women.

Ali Mazhar, communication manager at GIZ, told IPS that a large number of policewomen have been trained under the programme to understand cases of violence against women.

Under the programme, he says, Ladies Complaint Units (LCUs) are being set up at police stations where women officers attend to women’s complainants in an environment that is free of harassment and fear.

Excerpt:

“No more rapes, everyone against the 33” reads a sign in a Jun. 8 mass protest by women in the city of São Paulo. Demonstrations against Brazil’s sexist culture have mushroomed around the country, after the global outrage caused by the gang rape of a teenager by 33 men. Credit: Paulo Pinto/AGPT

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 17 2016 (IPS)

The outrage in Brazil over the gang-rape of a 16-year-old girl by more than 30 men prompted mass protests by thousands of women on the streets of cities around the country, while activists complain that the response to the case by politicians has been misfocused.

The first reaction by the government, in the face of the national outcry, was to create a new women’s protection unit to support the public security forces. Critics say the policy is completely police-oriented and merely focused on stepping up law enforcement.

Rio de Janeiro state Governor Francisco Dornelles said he was in favour of executing rapists, even though capital punishment is actually prohibited by the Brazilian constitution.

The Senate rushed through a proposal to stiffen prison sentences for sexual assault, increasing them by one- or two-thirds when the rape is committed by two or more people. It is now pending approval in the lower house of Congress.

But Sonia Correa, one of the heads of the global organisation Sexuality Policy Watch, said stiffer sentences are not the solution, as shown in India which adopted the death penalty in 2013 for gang rapes or rapes that lead to death.The low rape reporting rates “are due to the fear of what friends, the family, the police or even the judge will think. Social opinion holds that men can’t control their sexual desires, and react to an attractive woman who is all made up and wearing provocative clothing.” -- Marisa Sanematsu

It is a cultural issue, she said. “Society itself has always fomented violence against women,” and a large part of the population blames the victims themselves, Correa added.

There is a perception that violence against women has increased, as a result of the publicity surrounding the rape of the teenage girl, who believes she was drugged at her boyfriend’s house in a Rio de Janeiro favela or slum on Saturday May 21 and woke up in a different house on Sunday May 22, surrounded by the men who apparently raped her.

She said she counted 33 attackers, some of whom were armed, when she regained consciousness. She only went to the police days later, after several of the men posted a video and photos of the rape on the social networks.

The police officer put in charge of the case was replaced for not taking her account seriously.

As a result of the public uproar and the evidence, a new lead investigator was named and the case was put in the hands of a police unit that specialises in crimes against children and adolescents, which accepted the video as proof of the rape. Using the video, several suspects were identified, and two have been arrested so far.

“The culture of rape has deep roots, nearly geological, and not only in Brazil, where its deepest layers lie in colonisation and slavery, with their male-oriented traditions of controlling the bodies of other people, not only women, but also slaves,” said Correa, an architect with a graduate degree in anthropology.

Brazil’s penal code, which dates to 1940 with subsequent amendments, included sexual assault among crimes against public morals; in other words, rape was an attack against society and the family, not against the woman and her body, she pointed out to IPS.

Not until 2009 was a reform adopted to correct that distortion and include male victims. Before that, only females were considered victims of rape.

The penalties, which range from six to 30 years in prison and are driven up by aggravating factors like physical injuries, death or the young age of the victim, have failed to curb the apparent rise in sexual assaults in this country of 205 million people.

Officially, 50,600 rapes were committed in 2011: 138 a day or one every 10 minutes, according to statistics from the governmental Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA).

But this is estimated to represent just 10 percent of the real number of rapes, which could exceed half a million cases a year. Most victims do not go to the police out of shame, fear of sexist police officers, or ignorance about how to report rape or about the crime itself.

A large part of the cases involve underage victims abused in their own homes by relatives or friends of the family – another major barrier standing in the way of reporting the incidents.

“It’s a tragedy that affects largely black people, who account for 51 percent of rape victims,” although this proportion is probably underestimated, according to Jurema Werneck, a medical doctor who is the coordinator of Criola, a non-governmental organisation that defends the rights of Afro-Brazilian women.

The large number of rapes “has its origin in sexism, but also in patriarchal racism,” because it is “an act of power against those who they see as inferior and powerless, like black women,” she told IPS.

The culture of rape is “a contradiction in the population, which mobilises to protest against an appalling crime, and even wants to lynch the suspects when children are raped, but shows a certain level of tolerance towards sexual violence against women,” said Marisa Sanematsu, contents director at the Patricia Galvão Institute, a local feminist organisation.

The Rio Peace organisation covered the sand on Copacabana beach, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, with blood-red or bloody women’s underwear and giant photos of women’s faces, also bloodied, representing the women who have been murdered in Brazil. Credit: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil

The apparent general condemnation is not reflected in the low rape reporting rates “which are due to the fear of what friends, the family, the police or even the judge will think. Social opinion holds that men can’t control their sexual desires, and react to an attractive woman who is all made up and wearing provocative clothing,” she said.

“A large part of the population thinks there are ‘rapable’ women, who know the risks they’re running and should know how to protect themselves, and shouldn’t expose themselves,” said Sanematsu, who added that society accepts the unequal social roles assigned to males and females.

Gender education, she said, is the best way to prevent and reduce all kinds of violence. But the current trend is to ban it in schools, as the state government did in São Paulo, Brazil’s richest, most populated state.

“Nothing will be achieved unless we attack the roots of the culture of trivialized violence,” which isn’t associated with poverty, but affects all social classes, she said.

To change the culture of rape “the central issue is a new construction of masculinity,” which is now based on “sexual predation,” said Correa.

The growth of conservative forces in Brazilian society, and especially in Congress, worries women’s rights activists.

Congress is studying several bills that would further restrict abortion, which is already illegal, and would restrict the rights gained by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) community and unconventional families.

The wave of conservativism was accentuated with the new government of Vice President Michel Temer, who is now acting president due to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.

The old Ministry of Policies for Women, now demoted to a secretariat under the Ministry of Justice, is headed by an evangelical member of the lower house of Congress who has already publicly stated that she is opposed to abortion in case of pregnancy caused by rape, one of the few circumstances in which “therapeutic abortion” is currently allowed.

Temer’s cabinet is the first in years to not include a single woman or black person.

“Dogmatic religious forces are expanding and aim to control the country,” said Correa. They hold a large number of seats in Congress and own media outlets, especially TV stations, where they further their conservative agenda.

 Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A billboard in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir promotes gender equality and protests violence against women. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Jul 17 2015 (IPS)

Rizwana* had hoped and expected that justice would be served – that the man who raped her would be sufficiently punished for his crime. Months after she suffered at his hands, however, the perpetrator remains at large.

"We receive 1,000 to 1,500 complaints of domestic violence annually." -- Gulshan Akhtar, head of Srinagar’s only women’s police station
Hailing from a poor family in the northwestern part of the Indian administered state of Kashmir, Rizwana worked hard to finish her studies, knowing that if she landed a job it would help ease her family’s financial woes.

When an official in the frontier Kupwara District hired her as an assistant earlier this year, she thought she had struck gold. But she quickly discovered that the man’s support and eagerness to offer her a job was simply a front for ulterior motives.

“After working in the office for just a few days he summoned me to a room on the upper floor and bolted the door. Then he made sexual advances on me. When I objected to his behaviour, he forcibly raped me,” the young graduate told IPS.

Her entire family was traumatised by the experience; Rizwana quit her job and her mother suffered a panic attack that confined her to the hospital for weeks

Rizwana approached the State Women’s Commission (SWC) in Srinagar, the state’s summer capital, and pleaded that the official be terminated from his position and sent to jail.

“But so far nothing has happened,” she said. “While the women’s commission is supporting me, the rapist is yet to be brought to justice as he uses his influence to get away with the crime.”

Militarisation breeds impunity

Anyone who follows the daily headlines in this heavily militarised territory in northern India knows that Rizwana’s case is not unusual. Every year, thousands of women experience sexual or physical abuse, both in and outside their homes, though few come forward to report it.

Women’s rights advocates blame the conflict in Kashmir – which dates back to the 1947 partition of India and has claimed 60,000 lives in six decades – for nursing a culture of impunity that makes women extremely vulnerable to gender-based violence.

In 2007, the Indian government revealed that it had 337,000 army personnel stationed in the region. At the time, this amounted to roughly one soldier for every 18 persons, making Kashmir “the most heavily militarised zone” in the world, according to sociologist Bashir Ahmad Dabla.

In 2013, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on violence against woman stated in her final country report on India that legislative provisions like “the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has mostly resulted in impunity for human rights violations [since] the law protects the armed forces from effective prosecution in non-military courts for human rights violations committed against civilian women among others, and it allows for the overriding of due process rights.”

Noting that impunity for armed forces was “eroding fundamental rights and freedoms […] including dignity and bodily integrity rights for women in Jammu and Kashmir”, the rapporteur called on the Indian government to repeal the Act.

A woman holds up a picture of her son, injured in the conflict. Here in Kashmir, women often bear the brunt of fighting and some have been subjected to rape at the hands of the armed forces. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Two years later, her recommendations are yet to be acted upon, with the result that not only armed forces but officials in any capacity feel at liberty to exploit women’s rights and freedoms, often in the form of sexual transgressions.

For instance, IPS recently gained access to a sexual harassment complaint filed by the female staff of the Kashmir Agricultural University with the State Women’s Commission.

Staff filed a joint appeal earlier this month so as to conceal each woman’s individual identity.

It stated: “Being the working ladies at the university, we want to share with you [the] bitter and hard realities we have been facing for the past many years”, adding that the male staff – and one official in particular – routinely harass the women, using their institutional authority to prevent the victims from taking action.

The complainants are demanding “strict punishment” for the culprits according to provisions on sexual harassment in India’s 2013 Criminal Law (Amendment) Act.

Nayeema Ahmad Mehjoor, chairperson of the SWC, told IPS that she acted on the appeal as soon as it was filed, and has already visited the university in order to take up the issue with the necessary authorities.

“They have assured me of initiating a fair probe, and we are expecting a detailed report within a few days,” she stated.

Domestic violence on the rise

These assurances are comforting but hold little weight in a society that routinely puts women’s issues on the backburner, a reality reflected in the low rate of reporting sexual crimes.

The situation is even worse in the domestic sphere, experts say, where spousal or intimate partner violence is on the rise.

Gulshan Akhtar, head of Srinagar’s lone Women’s Police Station, has been a busy officer over the past few years as she struggles to deal with a growing domestic violence caseload.

On a typical day, she receives between seven and 10 cases of domestic disputes involving violence towards the female partner.

“When this police station was established in 1998, it used to receive far fewer complaints compared to what we have been receiving over the past five-year period,” Akhtar told IPS.

“Now we receive 1,000 to 1,500 complaints of domestic violence annually,” she said, adding that the SWC receives an additional 500 complaints on average every year.

Kashmir’s State Women’s Commission (SWC) records roughly 500 cases of domestic violence every year. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

These figures – which are conservative estimates, considering that many women are silent about their suffering – reveal that every single day, over five Kashmiri women endure sexual or physical abuse.

Local news reports indicate that Jammu, the state’s winter capital, tops the list of districts with the highest number of domestic violence cases, recording over 1,200 separate incidents since 2009.

Earlier this year, newspapers quoting officials from the State Home Ministry stated that over 4,000 culprits have been booked in connection with these crimes, but rights groups maintain that prosecution levels are too low to act as a deterrent.

This past May, the women’s rights NGO Ehsaas organised a sit-in at Partap Park in Srinagar to draw attention to a surge in domestic violence.

Academics, journalists and activists gathered to mourn a woman whose husband had burned her to death the month before.

Addressing the crowd, Ehsaas Secretary and Women’s Project Consultant Ezabir Ali said, “It is high time to speak out against this barbaric form of human nature and a send message to the government to act strictly against such acts.”

The sit-in called attention to all the many forms of violence against women – from dowry killings and burnings, and from verbal and emotional abuse to rape. In 2013, according to statistics released by the Crime Branch, Kashmir recorded 378 cases of rape, an increase of 75 cases from the year before. Data for 2014-2015 is still pending.

Conflict leaves women vulnerable

Some experts say the increase in such heinous crimes is due to militarisation and the use of rape as a weapon of war.

A 2014 report by Human Rights Watch noted that “a local court recently ordered the reopening of the investigation into alleged mass rapes in the villages of Kunan and Poshpora in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara district in 1991. Residents of the villages allege that soldiers raped women during a cordon and search operation.”

Because of the brutality involved in these incidents, and because the victims included old women and young girls alike, scholars and advocates have claimed that it set a precedent for violence against women, since the perpetrators have yet to be brought to justice.

Others say violence has risen together with women’s shifting socio-economic role in traditional Kashmiri society. With more women leaving the home to work, men feel their financial hold weakening.

“This is causing conflict as many men […] do not feel comfortable with women acquiring a [better] economic status,” author and sociologist Dabla told IPS.

IPS recently met two women at Srinagar’s Rambagh women police station, one of whom had come to lodge a complaint that her husband was forcing her to hand over her monthly earnings, or risk a divorce.

Indeed, surveys and studies undertaken by the women’s NGO Ehsaas reveal that 75 percent of Kashmiri men “felt their masculinity was threatened” if their wives did not obey them.

Activists working to safeguard women and create a more peaceful society overall say that deep and fundamental changes in both the law and social attitudes are necessary to achieve some degree of gender equality and women’s rights.

*Name changed for her protection

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

The lack of jobs after graduation frequently pushes Cameroonian girls into searching for work opportunities, sometimes overseas and sometimes with horrific consequences. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jul 15 2015 (IPS)

Her lips are quavering her hands trembling. Susan (not her real name) struggles to suppress stubborn tears, but the outburst comes, spontaneously, and the tears stream down her cheeks as she sobs profusely.

The story of this 28-year-old’s servitude in Kuwait is mind-boggling. Between her sobs, she tells IPS how she left Cameroon two years ago in search of a job in Kuwait.

“I saw job opportunities advertised on billboards in town. The posters announced jobs such as nurses and housemaids in Kuwait. As a nurse and without a job in Cameroon, I decided to take the chance.”"We were herded off to a small room. There were many other girls there: Ghanaians, Nigerians and Tunisians … [then] bidders came and we were sold off like property" – Susan, a young Cameroonian women who escaped from slavery in Kuwait

With the help of an agent whose contact details she found on the billboard, Susan found herself on a plane, bound for Kuwait.

She was excited at the prospect of earning up to 250,000 CFA francs (420 dollars) a month. That is what the agent had told her, and it was a mouth-watering sum compared with the roughly 75 dollars she would have been earning in Cameroon, if she had a job.

“We work in liaison with companies in the Middle East, so that when these ladies go, they don’t start looking for jobs,” Ernest Kongnyuy, an agent in Yaounde told IPS.

But the story changed dramatically when Susan, along with 46 other Cameroonian girls, arrived in Kuwait on Nov. 8, 2013.

“We were herded off to a small room. There were many other girls there: Ghanaians, Nigerians and Tunisians,” then “bidders came and we were sold off like property.”

Susan was taken away by an Egyptian man. “I think I got a taste of hell in his house,” she says, tears streaming down her cheeks.

She would begin work at five in the morning and go to bed after midnight, very often sleeping without having eaten.

Very frequently, she tells IPS, the man tried to rape her but when she threatened to report the case to the police, she met with a wry response from her tormentor. “He told me he would pay the police to rape me and then kill me, and the case wouldn’t go anywhere.”

Cut off from all communication with the outside world, Susan says that she found solace only in God. “I prayed … I cried out to God for help,” she recalls.

Susan’s is not an isolated case. Brenda, another Cameroonian lucky enough to escape, has a similar story. She had to wash the pets of her master, which included cats and snakes.

“I was sharing the same toilet with cats … I called them my brothers, because they were the only “persons” with whom I conversed.”

Pushed to the limits, both girls told their employers that they were not ready to work any longer. Brenda says that when she insisted, she was thrown out of the house.

“At that time I was frail, I was actually dying and I didn’t know where to go.” After trekking for two days, she found the Central African Republic’s embassy and slept for two days in front of it before she was rescued.

Susan was locked in the boot of a car and taken to the agent who had brought her from the airport.

“Events moved so fast and I found myself spending one week in immigration prison and an additional three days in deportation prison,” she says.

When both girls were finally put on a flight bound for Cameroon, all their property had been seized, except for their passports and the clothes they were wearing.

The scale of the problem is troubling. According to the 2013 Walk Free Global Index of Slavery, about three-quarters of a million people are enslaved in the Middle East and North Africa.

The report indicates that for the past seven years, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have been ranked as Tier 3 countries for human trafficking and labour abuses. Tier 3 countries are those whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards in human trafficking and are not making significant efforts to do so.

Apart from Africa, people from India, Nepal, Eritrea, Uzbekistan, etc. … “migrate voluntarily for domestic work, convinced of the employment agencies’ promises of lucrative jobs,” said the report.

“Upon entering the country, they find themselves deceived and enslaved – within the bounds of a legal sponsorship system.”

Susan and Brenda are now back home, but they are suffering from the trauma of their horrible experience in Kuwait.

The Trauma Centre for Victims of Human Trafficking in Cameroon has been working to bring relief to the women. “We try to make them feel at home,” says Beatrice Titanji, National Vice-President of the Centre.

“They have been exposed to bad treatment. They have been called animals. They have been told they stink, and when they enter the car or a room, a spray is used to take away the supposed odour … I just can’t fathom seeing my child treated like that,” she told IPS.

She called on the government to investigate and prosecute the agents, create jobs and mount guard at airports to discourage Cameroonians from going to look for jobs in the Middle East.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Phulkali Bai’s family members physically tortured her for joining Narmada Mahila Sangh (NMS), a women’s rights group in central India, but she refused to quit. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
BETUL, India, Jun 4 2015 (IPS)

Mamta Bai, 36, distinctly remembers the first time the police came to her village: it was December 2014 and her neighbour, Purva Bai, had just been beaten unconscious by her alcoholic husband, prompting Mamta to make a distress call to the nearest station.

Once in the neighborhood, policemen pulled the abusive husband out of his home and asked the village women if they wanted him to be arrested.

“We want a life of dignity, free of violence. Nothing else matters more than that.” -- Ramvati Bai, a survivor of domestic violence and member of Narmada Mahila Sangh, a local rights group in central India
“Yes,” they answered in unison. But first, they wanted him to be tied to a pole in the middle of the village. “We wanted everyone to see what would happen to wife beaters from now on,” recalls Mamta Bai, a ‘Kanooni Sakhi’ (meaning ‘legal friend’ in Hindi) with the local rights group Narmada Mahila Sangh (NMS).

Spread across 213 villages in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, the organisation helps victims of domestic violence seek justice. But as the incident above indicates, these activists are not your average legal defenders.

Steeped in the harsh realities that govern life in India’s vast and lawless central states, the women know that the justice system here – from the police stations to the courts to the jails – are riddled with corruption, bureaucracy and entrenched patriarchal attitudes.

So they seek local solutions to their problems.

In this case, they weren’t content to let the offender spend a few nights in jail only to return to the same home and habits as before. So they went a step further, and extracted from Purva Bai’s husband a signed letter to the local police chief in which he vowed never to hurt his wife again.

“We wanted to teach him a lesson. The arrest and the humiliation of being tied to a pole in public view made him afraid,” says Santri Bai, another NMS member. “Now he knows, 42 of us [women] are ready to send him to the prison if he ever ill-treats his wife.”

Torture, burnings, deaths

Narmada Mahila Sangh operates in the Betul and Hoshangabad districts of Madhya Pradesh, a state that has an exceptionally high rate of gender-based violence, with 62 percent of women experiencing some form of abuse compared to the national average of 52 percent.

These crimes include molestation, marital rape, murder, beatings, dowry-related killings and, in the case of women suspected of practicing ‘witchcraft’, torture and burnings.

In 2013-14, the state registered 10,000 violent acts against women, 4,000 of which took place in Betul district.

Despite this grim reality, NMS was not founded to tackle gender-based crimes. It began in 2002 as a federation of women’s self-help groups focused on economic empowerment, with each unit running small savings schemes and generating collective loans to improve their livelihoods.

According to the Planning Commission of India, Madhya Pradesh has an extreme poverty rate of 35 percent, compared to India’s national average of 25 percent. This means that the state is home to some 30 million people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day.

But as the women began spending more time on trying to break the cycle of poverty, they faced backlash from their husbands and other community members.

Women members of Narmada Mahila Sangh (NMS), a women’s rights group, meet in Borgaon village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

“Women began to attend meetings, visit each other’s homes, discuss livelihood options and also take more interest in the affairs of their own family, such as their children’s education,” explains Asha Ayulkar, a resident of Chiklar village, not far from Betul town.

“This angered family members, especially men who saw it as women challenging their authority and breaking with tradition. They beat them as punishment.”

So in 2012, having grown its membership to over 9,000 members, NMS began a kind of ‘crusade’, launched with the belief that changing women’s economic situation could not be accomplished without simultaneously tackling deeply entrenched patriarchal values.

Collective education, community support

The first order of business was to secure some kind of training, since few women in these rural areas have a formal education let alone specialised legal expertise.

While the literacy rate for Madhya Pradesh is estimated to be 70 percent, it falls to just 60 percent for women – and even this gives no real indication of true literacy levels, since many girls drop out before completing secondary schooling.

With the help of civil society organisations like Pradan, a non-profit that works to empower marginalised communities, 30 members of NMS are now trained paralegals and they in turn run workshops for other women in the villages on a range of issues from understanding existing laws and policies, to learning how to conduct a basic investigation before approaching the police.

“We also learn of how to talk to a survivor and counsel her – a Kanooni Sakhi must meet her alone, lock eyes with her, and appear strong, yet sympathetic,” Ayulkar explains to IPS.

“Together we learn about the Indian Penal Code and its various articles relating to torture, assault, rape and dowry deaths.”

Although the 50-year-old only studied until the 6^th grade, she is today the district’s most respected paralegal, and boasts a success rate of over 80 percent.

Cutting the red tape

The initiative, though small when compared to the scale of gender-based violence in this country of 1.2 billion people, is an example of how community justice can often be more effective than the centralised legal system.

Sexual and physical abuse is a grossly underreported offence throughout India, with a recent study published by the American Journal of Epidemiology revealing that only two percent of victims of gender-based crimes report the incident to the authorities.

This could be due to the dismal conviction rate, which the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) estimates at just 30 percent – meaning seven out of 10 perpetrators generally walk free.

Even those that are booked for a crime often spend a few years – sometimes even just a few days – in jail before rejoining the community.

Various Kanooni Sakhis (legal friends) tell IPS that attackers get off scot-free by bribing the police. Other times, authorities simply refuse to report complaints at all – activists recount incidents of women sitting for entire days at police stations attempting to file a First Information Report (FIR).

“So NMS trains women on how to lodge their cases, how to request public prosecutors when they can’t afford a lawyer and how to check the status of a complaint by using the Right to Information Act,” Mamta Bai tells IPS.

Lawyers from the Indian capital of New Delhi and Madhya Pradesh’s capital, Bhopal, have all participated in trainings schemes to strengthen the women’s group.

The result, experts say, is impressive.

“The women are now keeping records of each case,” Angana Gupta, assistant manager at the Mumbai-based L&T Finances – one of Pradan’s partner organisations – tells IPS. “They have files for each case with details of the evidence, the steps taken and the official responses. They are also using mobile phones and tablets to network with fellow gender activists.”

Social backlash

Learning the law was the easy step. The harder part has been – and will continue to be – changing social attitudes in these rural areas.

Take the case of Ramvati Bai, a tribal woman in Bakud village. A widowed mother of two, Ramvati was sexually harassed and assaulted by her father-in-law for three years. But when she finally gathered the courage to file a complaint, the police dismissed her, calling it a “family matter”.

It was only after her fellow NMS members intervened that the police registered a case and arrested the accused. But this angered Ramvati’s relations who ordered her to leave their home.

Phulkali Bai of Borgaon village was also thrown out of her home a few weeks ago after she filed a court case against her physically abusive in-laws.

Fortunately for both, NMS has offered steady support, helping them get back on their feet by finding work and building their own huts to live in.

But some, like 28-year-old Nirmala Bai, are not so lucky. She died in 2013, after her husband allegedly strangled her and set her body on fire. The police arrested the husband for abetment of suicide but then released him on parole.

Despite their determination to seek justice for the deceased girl, NMS had to abandon the case as the victim’s family members refused to came forward to bear witness.

They don’t let these setbacks get them down. They continue their micro-savings schemes and push ahead with the cases that need their help. Village Protection Committees identify threats or patterns and try to step in before tragedy occurs. If it does, NMS members help each other to keep moving.

“We want a life of dignity, free of violence,” Ramvati Bai tells IPS. “Nothing else matters more than that.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

She is just 14, but Janida avoids eye contact with others, preferring to look down at the ground and nodding her head if someone tries to engage her in conversation.

Janida (not her real name) was once a sociable and playful child, but that was before she was sexually abused by her stepfather and giving birth to a baby who is now four months old.

Her days marked by trauma and depression, Janida is just one of many girl children in Kenya who have been abused and robbed of their childhood, leaving them emotionally scarred.

“The little girl [Janida] underwent both physical and mental torture,” Teresa Omondi, Deputy Executive Director and Head of Programmes at the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Kenya, told IPS. ”Her best option was to terminate the pregnancy rather than suffer the mental and physical torture, but she could not afford the cost of a safe abortion.”Many of the induced abortions taking place continue to be unsafe and complications are common” – Teresa Omondi, Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Kenya

Under Article 26 (4) of the Kenyan constitution, “abortion is not permitted unless, in the opinion of a trained health professional, there is need for emergency treatment, or the life or health of the mother is in danger, or if permitted by any other written law.”

In September 2010, Kenya’s Ministry of Health released national guidelines on the medical management of rape or sexual violence – guidelines that allow for termination of pregnancy as an option in the case of conception, but require psychiatric evaluation and recommendation.

Then, in September 2012, the health ministry released standards and guidelines on the prevention and management of unsafe abortions to the extent allowed by Kenyan law, only to withdraw them three months later under unclear circumstances.

According to Omondi, “the law has not yet been fully put into operation and many providers have not been trained to provide safe abortion, meaning many of the induced abortions taking place continue to be unsafe and complications are common.”

The health ministry is responsible for doctors and nurses not being permitted to be trained on providing safe abortion, said Omondi, so “it is ridiculous that while Kenya’s Ministry of Health accepts that post-abortion care is a public health issue regarding numbers, practitioners have their hands tied.”

The issue of unsafe abortions in Kenya hit the headlines in September last year, when Jackson Namunya Tali, a 41-year-old nurse, was sentenced to death by the high court in Nairobi for murder, after the death of both Christine Atieno and her unborn baby in a botched illegal abortion.

Various inter-African meetings attended by Kenya have been held on reducing maternal mortality rates by providing safe abortions, with health ministers agreeing that statistics show that countries that do provide safe abortions have reduced their maternal mortality rates.

In a recent analysis, Saoyo Tabitha Griffith, Reproductive Health Rights Officer at FIDA and an advocate at the High Court of Kenya, said that despite Kenya having adopted a Constitution that affirms among others, women’s rights to reproductive health and access to safe abortion, Kenyan women continue to die from unsafe abortion – a preventable cause of maternal mortality.

For Dr Ong’ech John, a health specialist in Nairobi, perforated uteruses and intestines, heart and kidney failures, anaemia requiring blood transfusion as well as renal problems are just a few of the health complications arising from an abortion that goes wrong.

“Unsafe abortion complications are not just about removal of the products of conception that were not completely removed. One can evacuate but the perforated uterus has to be repaired, or you remove the uterus and it is rotten,” Dr Ong’ech told IPS.

“When the health ministry issued a directive in February this year instructing all health workers, whether from public, private or faith-based organisations, not to participate in any training on safe abortion practices and the use of the medication abortion, many questions were left unanswered,” said Omondi.

A highly respected Kenyan doctor, Dr John Nyamu, spent one year in prison in 2004 after his clinic was raided following the discovery of 15 foetuses on major roads together with planted documents from a hospital he had worked for but had since closed.

Speaking of his ordeal with Mary Fjerstand, a senior clinical advisor at Ipas, a global non-governmental organisation dedicated to ending preventable deaths and disabilities from unsafe abortion, Nyamu said that the publicity surrounding his imprisonment helped people to “realise the magnitude and consequences of unsafe abortion in Kenya; women were dying in great numbers. Before that, abortion was never spoken of in public.”

He went on to say that Kenya wants to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of a 75 percent reduction in maternal mortality, but that “it can’t be achieved if safe abortion is not available.”

A May 2014 World Health Organisation (WHO) updated fact sheet indicates that every day, approximately 800 women die worldwide from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, with 99 percent of all maternal deaths occurring in developing countries.

Edited by Phil Harris   

By Serra Sippel
WASHINGTON, Mar 18 2015 (IPS)

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned speech marking the 50th Anniversary of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and the bloody attack on civil rights marchers by police.

President Obama issued what was tantamount to a call to action for Americans to speak out for what is right. He stated: “…Loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. It requires the occasional disruption, the willingness to speak out for what’s right and shake up the status quo.”

Courtesy of Serra Sippel

As a longtime advocate for the health and human rights of women, I take President Obama’s words to heart. They express the core tenet of policy advocacy.

Advocates should applaud and praise government when it does the right thing for women and girls. And when it doesn’t, we must speak out for what’s right, even if it is disruptive and causes discomfort.

Last week, the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) hosted a panel at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) where panelists from Human Rights Watch, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), and Dandelion Kenya spoke about the brutal sexual violence and rapes that women face, and the absence of comprehensive post rape care for these women and girls, especially when it comes to abortion access.

The discussion was disturbing and emotional as we heard about the fear, stigma, and suffering that so many women face while governments stand by and refuse to provide comfort and care—including the United States.

The status quo – that no U.S. foreign aid should support safe abortion access – is causing too much suffering in this world and it must end.

Only a few months ago the U.N. secretary-general released an important report stating: “In line with Security Council resolution 2122 (2013), I call on all actors to support improved access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services in conflict-affected settings. This must include access to HIV counseling and testing, which remains limited in many settings, and the safe termination of pregnancies for survivors of conflict-related rape.”

The Obama administration has taken great strides toward women’s rights and sexual and reproductive health in U.S. foreign policy, from the USAID Strategy on Female Empowerment and Gender Equality to the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security.

And at the United Nations last September, President Obama focused on the serious problem of rape in conflict, acknowledging that, “mothers, sisters, daughters have been subjected to rape as a weapon of war.”

We applaud and praise the administration for such bold action. However, when it comes to reproductive rights and access to safe abortion for women and girls globally, the Obama administration has failed to demonstrate the same bold leadership.

Twenty years ago, the U.S. joined governments from around the world in a promise to women and girls that where abortion is legal, it should be safe and available. Today, the U.S. has not lived up to that promise. And when it comes to abortion access for women and girls raped in conflict, inaction by the U.S. government is unconscionable and advocates must speak out.

The time is now for the president to stand with women and girls and take executive action to support abortion access for women and girls in the cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment.

The time is now for the president to answer the call to action echoed by advocates from around the world.

We have sent letters to the president from religious leaders and CEOs of global human rights and women’s rights organisations. We have brought advocates from South Africa, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda to speak directly to the White House to implore the president to act.

We rallied in front of the White House asking the president to stand with women and girls. And, we have gathered at CSW to share first-hand accounts of what women and girls are experiencing globally.

Ending the status quo on foreign aid and abortion means to boldly embrace the notion that women and girls matter. Our U.S. foreign aid must be used to save and improve lives—and that is what safe abortion does, especially for those raped in conflict.

CHANGE and others will continue to “speak out for what’s right” and “shake up the status quo,” because the lives of women and girls matter. I hope we can count on President Obama to join us.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Protestors armed with bamboo sticks faced police in riot gear in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, on May 4, 2013. Credit: Kajul Hazra/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2015 (IPS)

The cradle of some of the world’s most ancient civilizations, home to four out of the planet’s six billion people, and a battleground for the earth’s remaining resources, Asia and the Pacific are poised to play a defining role in international affairs in the coming decade.

But what does the future look like for those working behind the scenes in these rising economies, fighting to safeguard basic rights and ensure an equitable distribution of wealth and power in a region where 70 percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day?

In its flagship annual report, the State of the World’s Human Rights, released Wednesday, Amnesty International (AI) slams the overall trend in the region as being “regressive”, pinpointing among other issues a poor track record on media freedom, rising violence against ethnic and religious minorities, and state repression of activists and civil society organisations.

The presence of armed groups and continuing conflict in countries like Pakistan, particularly in its northern tribal belt known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), as well as in Myanmar and Thailand, constitute a major obstacle to millions of people trying to live normal lives.

Much of the region’s sprawling population is constantly on the move, with the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) counting 3.5 million refugees, 1.9 million internally displaced people (IDPs), and 1.4 million stateless people, mostly hailing from Afghanistan and Myanmar.

UNHCR has documented a host of challenges facing these homeless, sometimes stateless, people in the Asia-Pacific region including sexual violence towards vulnerable women and girls and a lack of access to formal job markets pushing thousands into informal, bonded or other exploitative forms of labor.

Intolerance towards religious minorities remains a thorny issue in several countries in Asia; Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have allowed for the continued prosecution of Shi’a Muslims, Ahmadis and Christians, while hard-line Buddhist nationalist groups in both Myanmar and Sri Lanka have operated with impunity, leading to attacks – sometimes deadly – on Muslim communities.

Meanwhile, ethnic Tibetans in China have encountered an iron fist in their efforts to practice their rights to freedom of assembly, speech, and political association. Since 2009, about 130 people have set themselves aflame in protest of the Chinese government’s authoritarian rule in the plateau.

A dark forecast for women and girls

Despite all the conventions ratified and millions of demonstrators in the streets, violence against women and girls continues unchecked across Asia and the Pacific, says the AI report.

In the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea, home to seven million people, an estimated 75 percent of women and girls experience some form of gender-based or domestic violence, largely due to the age-old practice of persecuting women in the predominantly rural country for practicing ‘sorcery’.

In the first six months of 2014, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission had recorded 4,154 cases of violence against women, according to the AI report, while India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported an average of 24,923 rapes per year.

A 2013 U.N. Women study involving 10,000 men throughout Asia and the Pacific found that nearly half of all respondents admitted to using physical or sexual abuse against a partner.

According to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), two out of every five girls in South Asia could wind up as child brides, with the highest prevalence in Bangladesh (66 percent), tailed closely by India (47 percent), Nepal (41 percent) and Afghanistan (39 percent).

“In East Asia and the Pacific,” the organisation said, “the prevalence of child marriage is 18 percent, with 9.2 million women aged 20-24 married as children in 2010.”

Holding the State accountable

Amnesty’s report presents a cross-section of government responses to activism, including in China – where rights defender Cao Shunli passed away in a hospital early last year after being refused proper medical treatment – and in North Korea, where “there appeared to be no independent civil society organisations, newspapers or political parties [and] North Koreans were liable to be searched by the authorities and could be punished for reading, watching or listening to foreign media materials.”

Imposition of martial law in Thailand saw the detention of several activists and the banning of gatherings of more than five people, while the re-introduction of “colonial-era sedition legislation” in Malaysia allowed the government to crack down on dissidents, AI says.

Citizens of both Myanmar and Sri Lanka faced a virtually zero-tolerance policy when it came to organised protest, with rights defenders and activists of all stripes detained, threatened, attacked or jailed.

Throughout the region media outlets had a bad year in 2014, with over 200 journalists jailed and at least a dozen murdered according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Amnesty’s report also found torture and other forms of ill treatment to be a continuing reality in the region, naming and shaming such countries as China, North Korea, the Philippines and Sri Lanka for their poor track record.

An earlier Amnesty International report, ‘Torture in 2014: 30 years of broken promises’, found that 23 Asia-Pacific states were still practicing torture, three decades after the U.N. adopted its 1984 Convention Against Torture.

The report found evidence of torture and ill treatment ranging “from North Korea’s brutal labour camps, to Australia’s offshore processing centres for asylum seekers or Japan’s death rows – where prisoners are kept in isolation, sometimes for decades.”

In Pakistan the army, state intelligence agencies and the police all stand accused of resorting to torture, while prisoners detained by both the policy and military in Thailand allege they have experienced torture and other forms of ill treatment while in custody.

In that same vein, governments’ continued reliance on the death penalty across Asia and the Pacific demonstrates a grave violation of rights at the most basic level.

Amnesty International reported that 500 people were at risk of execution in Pakistan, while China, Japan and Vietnam also carried on with the use of capital punishment.

Perhaps the only positive trend was a rise in youth activism across the region, which is home to 640 million people between the ages of 10 and 24, according to the United Nations. The future of the region now lies with these young people, who will have to carve out the spaces in which to build a more tolerant, less violent society.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A displaced mother and her child inspect the remnants of their burnt house in Khor Abeche, South Darfur. Apr. 6, 2014. Credit: UN Photo/Albert González Farran

By Josh Butler
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 2015 (IPS)

More than 200 Darfurian women were reportedly raped by Sudanese troops in one brutal assault on a town in October 2014, with the conflict in war-torn Darfur escalating to new heights.

A report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday claimed up to 221 women in the town of Tabit, in northern Darfur, were raped over a 36-hour period between Oct. 30 and 31.“Three of them participated in the attack, and two said they had orders to rape. Their attacks were more or less a pre-emptive strike on the town for allegedly supporting rebel groups." -- HRW's Jonathan Loeb

Several hundred Sudanese government troops were said to have looted the town, severely beat men and boys, and sexually assaulted women and girls.

Jonathan Loeb, the report’s author and a fellow in the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, told IPS that HRW investigators were forced to conduct secretive phone interviews with victims and witnesses, as Sudanese forces blocked all access to the town. Even in the aftermath of the October attack, Loeb said United Nations peacekeepers, aid workers, human rights investigators and journalists were denied access.

“The only time they let anyone in, it was in circumstances not remotely close to a real investigation,” Loeb said.

“People did take real risks to talk to us. Some only wanted to speak after they obtained a new phone card or number that wasn’t registered to them, and some only spoke once they were outside the town.”

Witnesses and victims told of brutal beatings and whippings, as well as repeated rapes. They reported Sudanese forces claiming the attack was in retribution for the disappearance of a soldier from a nearby army base.

“[The soldiers] made us lie with our faces down and they said: ‘If anyone [lifted] their head it would be shot off. And if you don’t find our missing soldier you will be food for termites,’” a man called Idriss told HRW.

Khatera, a woman, explained the systematic nature of the Sudanese attack.

“Immediately after they entered the room they said: ‘You killed our man. We are going to show you true hell.’ Then they started beating us. They took my husband away while beating him. They raped my three daughters and me,” she said.

“Some of them were holding the girl down while another one was raping her. They did it one by one. One helped beat and the other raped. Then they would go to the next girl.”

Loeb said investigators had several theories on the reason behind the attack.

“We don’t know for certain, but from the victims’ perspective, they were being collectively punished for the soldier going missing. They were accused of abducting or killing him,” he said.

He said other possible reasons for the attack included discouraging rebel forces from using Tabit as a meeting point before attacking the Sudanese base. Four Sudanese defectors told HRW the base had received intelligence that a rebel commander was to soon arrive in Tabit.

“Three of them participated in the attack, and two said they had orders to rape. Their attacks were more or less a pre-emptive strike on the town for allegedly supporting rebel groups,” Loeb said.

Dan Sullivan, director of policy and government relations with activist organisation United To End Genocide, said the situation in Darfur has sharply deteriorated in recent months.

A U.N. panel reported over 3,000 villages were destroyed by Sudanese forces in 2014, with almost 500,000 people displaced.

“It is bad, and it’s getting worse. The sad truth is, we’re seeing the highest levels of violence and displacement since the height of the Darfur genocide almost a decade ago,” Sullivan told IPS.

“A lot of people have been displaced consistently over a long time. There’s lawlessness, tribes fighting over gold reserves, and the government of Sudan continues to drop bombs in direct violation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions. There just hasn’t been any enforcement of violations.”

Both Sullivan and Loeb attributed a recent surge in violence to a newly created militia force, the Rapid Support Force (RSF). Sullivan said the RSF was formed largely of former members of the Janjaweed, the Sudanese counter-insurgency force accused of killing tens of thousands of Darfurians during the genocide.

“They are a reconstitution of the Janjaweed, the men on horseback with guns. It’s the same people, but now they’re in this new force and supported by the government of Sudan,” Sullivan said.

Loeb said it was unclear whether the Sudanese government had directly ordered, or had knowledge of, the Tabit atrocity, but said the government at least played a role in the attempted cover-up.

“We’re able to state the soldiers reported they were given orders by a senior commander, and another travelled from the regional capital to participate. We’re not sure how far up the chain of command these orders came from,” Loeb said.

“We know the government at a variety of levels was complicit in the cover-up, and stopping the investigation going forward.”

Loeb said the commissioner of the locality threatened victims and witnesses with violence or death if they spoke to the U.N or journalists.

“There was significant government involvement, an government-orchestrated cover-up. But exactly how high it went, we don’t know,” he said.

The HRW report calls for the U.N. to make greater interventions into the conflict to protect at-risk Darfurian citizens, as well as for a formal investigation into the Tabit incident.

“Citizens in Tabit are extremely vulnerable. They are living in the same houses where the rapes happened, and Sudanese soldiers are a constant presence. We’re recommending the U.N. mission on the ground establish a permanent presence and base in the town,” Loeb said.

“The Security Council should demand that happen. The incident also requires further investigation by an international body. We say the High Commissioner for Human Rights would be best placed.”

Sullivan said the conflict in Darfur would continue until real structural and political change happened in the region. He said current Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, in power since 1989 and indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2009 for the campaign of mass killing and rape, would retain power for the foreseeable future.

“It comes down to accountability. The guy in charge at the beginning of the genocide [Al-Bashir] continues to be president. He’s wanted on charge of genocide, but is set for election again and win again in April,” Sullivan said. “This cloud of impunity is a major part of allowing the attacks to continue.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Students at Columbia University carry mattresses on the Carry That Weight National Day of Action to show their support for survivors of sexual assault. Credit: Warren Heller

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25 2014 (IPS)

“A recurring nightmare for me is I’m trying to tell someone something and they are not listening. I’m yelling at the top of my lungs and it feels like there is a glass wall between us.”

Jasmin Enriquez is a two-time survivor of rape. Like two-thirds of rape survivors, Enriquez knew her rapists. The first was her boyfriend when she was a high school senior, the second a fellow student she had been seeing at college."What I hear from women is that they are told to shut up: they are told to shut up during it, they are told to shut up after it, and they are told by some institutions to continue keeping their mouths shut." -- Dr. Dana Sinopoli

“[The nightmare] shows how I’ve always felt that even as someone coming forward as a survivor, as soon as I start giving details to some people, they instantly start to shut it down. As in, you’re being crazy or hyperemotional, instead of taking it as one whole piece and looking at it holistically,” Enriquez told IPS.

Women who have experienced gender-based violence are at a significantly increased risk of developing a mental disorder, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety or depression, within one to three years after the assault.

Enriquez explains, “People don’t seem to understand that after being sexually assaulted, it’s something that you have to live with the rest of your life.

“Most of the time there is an incredible amount of anxiety or depression or other mental health issues that people just don’t understand,” she says. “It’s been five years since I was sexually assaulted and I still live through the trauma.”

A special Lancet series published Friday says that one in three women have experienced physical or sexual violence from their partner.

Researcher Dr. Susan Rees from the University of New South Wales told IPS that there is strong evidence that if you are exposed to gender-based violence, you are at a much higher risk for the onset of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression as well as attempted suicide.

Rees’ research into the connection between gender-based violence and mental disorders has shown that women who have been assaulted are significantly more likely to experience a mental disorder in their lifetime.

Women who have experienced one form of gender-based violence have a 57 percent chance of developing a mental disorder compared with only 28 percent of women who have not experienced gender-based violence. Significantly, 89 percent of women who have experienced gender-based violence three to four times will develop a mental disorder.

It is important for survivors of assault to get early support to help prevent the onset of an associated mental disorder, Rees said.

However, experiencing sexual assault can be confusing, especially for young women and girls, and this may prevent them from getting early intervention.

Enriquez explains that she didn’t initially realise the connection between her response to the trauma of sexual violence and the symptoms she was experiencing.

“I’ve recently been very jumpy, kind of always tense and I get startled easy, I didn’t understand why that was happening and it was very frustrating.”

Enriquez’ fiancé, who is not the person who assaulted her, used to jump out at her or play games to surprise her, and she found this really upsetting,

“I didn’t understand that it was related to me being sexually assaulted until probably my senior year of college. I feel like if I had been educated about what normal symptoms are of PTSD, I would have known that there was more to it and that it was a normal piece of it.”

Community attitudes affect prevalence

Community attitudes towards women, including strong patriarchal attitudes, power imbalance and gender inequality contribute to the prevalence of violence against women, said Rees.

“It makes sense that if you change attitudes then you can change prevalence, you can reduce the risk for women,” she said.

This is what Enriquez aims to do with her organisation Only With Consent. Together with her fiancé, Enriquez speaks with students to raise awareness and change young people’s attitudes towards sexual assault.

“I definitely think that there’s a gender piece that goes with both the mental health and the sexual assault and that it ties back to any time a woman expresses an emotion of being angry or upset we immediately call her out for being irrational or emotional.” Enriquez told IPS.

“If the majority of survivors who are speaking out are women, and they are expressing these feelings of being upset or being angry, or being really hurt, or any of those feelings, we discredit what they are saying, because we see them as irrational creatures,” Enriquez said.

Psychologist Dr. Dana Sinopoli told IPS that it is also important to consider how gender-based violence affects men, especially men who experience childhood sexual assault. She said that this should involve addressing gender stereotypes such as that men are aggressive or impulsive.

As Carry That Weight explains on its website:

“People of all gender identities can experience and be affected by sexual and domestic violence—women are not the only survivors just as men are not the only perpetrators. We strive to challenge narrow and inaccurate representations of what assault looks like and also acknowledge that these forms of violence disproportionately affect women, transgender, gender nonconforming, and disabled people.”

Sinopoli added however that changing community attitudes towards women was an important part of addressing gender-based violence.

“Consistently what I hear from women is that they are told to shut up, they are told to shut up during it, they are told to shut up after it, and they are told by some institutions to continue keeping their mouths shut.

“That is what we can link to the depression and the anxiety and a lot of the re-experiencing and retriggering that is so central to PTSD,” Sinopoli said.

Sinopoli added that “the way that society reacts, to someone who discloses or is struggling, is so important.

“The more that people speak up the more that we will actually see a decline in such significant psychological symptoms.”

Early intervention can help

When helping someone who has experienced violence, Rees said that it is important that friends and family reassure the victim that it “it is never acceptable to be hit, or to be treated violently or to be raped.”

Unfortunately, population studies show that women who have experienced gender-based violence are also at increased risk of experiencing it again in their lifetime.

“This might be the case because often men target women who are vulnerable, so if she has a mental disorder or trauma as a result of an early childhood adversity, she may be more likely to be targeted by men who in a sense benefit from powerlessness, inequality and fear.”

She said that warning bells that a relationship is unhealthy include controlling, jealous behaviour such as telling you who you should socialise with, or getting jealous because you are doing better than he is at university.

“Often women think that’s because he cares about me, he’s worried about me and that why he wants to know where I am all the time,”

But this type of behaviour should actually be seen as a warning of future emotional and perhaps physical abuse, Rees said.

Rees said that the reasons women don’t leave violent relationships are complex,

“She may be suffering depression. She may not have the economic resources to leave. She may worry about the children, and rightly so, because often people end up homeless, and she also may know that she’s at high risk of retaliation from the perpetrator if she leaves.”

Rees also explained that it is important for health practitioners to receive training so they can be confident to ask about domestic violence and respond appropriately.

She added that primary health care responses need to be integrated with community-based services to ensure that survivors have access to help that is sensitive to the complex impact of sexual violence.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Scores of women in India are downloading and using mobile ‘safety apps’ as a way of guarding against rape. Credit: vgrigas/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Sujoy Dhar
NEW DELHI, Nov 14 2014 (IPS)

It was 9:45 pm when 23-year-old Manira Chaudhury, a final-year Master’s student in New Delhi, who was traveling home in a rickshaw, pressed a button on her smart phone that sent out emergency alerts to two of her closest friends.

Immediately, two frantic calls followed.

“I am safe,” Chaudhury assured her distressed friends. “I was just checking that the app works.”

She uses VithU, a mobile phone app developed by Channel V, which was launched in November last year in India in the aftermath of the horrific rape-murder of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus in the Indian capital on Dec. 16, 2012.

The smart phone app is activated by tapping twice on an icon on the screen, which instantly sends the following message to pre-loaded emergency contacts: ‘I am in danger. I need help. Please follow my location’, along with details of the sender’s whereabouts.

“Fortunately I have never faced a situation where I felt the need to use it,” Chaudhury tells IPS. “But I think it is important to have it. I don’t think girls should have to live in constant fear of an attack but at the same time we cannot live in denial.

“We know bad things are happening out there and it’s wise to take certain precautions,” she explains.

After ‘Nirbhaya’

"I don’t think girls should have to live in constant fear of an attack but at the same time we cannot live in denial. We know bad things are happening out there and it’s wise to take certain precautions." -- Manira Chaudhury, a final-year Master’s student in New Delhi
While dime-a-dozen safety apps are now available in India, mostly launched by mobile phone companies and other private groups, the Government of India plans to launch a safety app of its own later this month, as an auxiliary service to the existing 181 helpline for women, which was started after the fatal Delhi bus rape.

“This new app will also facilitate pre-registering of crimes based on perceived threats,” says Khadijah Faruqui, a women’s rights activist and human rights lawyer who is heading the 181 Helpline.

Safety apps are just one of many responses to the 2012 gang rape, which sparked massive protests around this country of 1.2 billion, with scores of people taking to the streets to demand tougher laws, increased security measures, sensitization of the police force and stronger government action to tackle sexual violence against women.

Lawmakers and politicians responded to the tragedy by pushing out the Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, 2013, which incorporates various sexual crimes into the penal code, and promises stiffer penalties for offenses such as stalking, voyeurism or harassment.

The government also established six new fast-track courts to hear rape cases, and experts say there has been an explosion in public debate about women’s safety.

Still, millions of women continue to live in fear, while the frequency and brutality of rapes appears unchanged despite tougher laws.

The latest figures provided by India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in 2012 point to 24,923 rapes per year, while police reports from various cities show an alarming rise in assaults in 2013-2014.

India’s financial hub, Mumbai, which used to be considered a safe place for women, witnessed a 43-percent rise in the number of reported rapes this year compared to the previous year, according to the city’s police.

Meanwhile, the capital city saw an alarming five-fold rise in sexual assaults in 2013, police records say.

An abundance of apps

Against this backdrop, many women have welcomed the rise in innovative solutions to the constant threat of sexual violence.

For instance, Microsoft India recently released the safety application called ‘Guardian’ for Windows phones, which allows users to select a ‘track me’ feature that enables friends and family to follow the person in real-time using cloud services, among others.

The app also comes with an SOS alert function and a feature that allows the user to record evidence of an attack.

According to Microsoft-IT India Managing Director Raj Biyani, “It is a robust personal security app with more safety features and capabilities than any other comparable app available to Indian smart phone users today.”

Then there is Circle of 6, which won the 2011 Apps Against Abuse challenge sponsored by the Obama Administration and works by offering users a number of icons that send the user’s selected ‘circle’ messages for help, interruption, or advice.

Originally designed to guard against date rapes in the United States, the app’s developers saw a 1,000-percent rise in the number of downloads in India after the Nirbhaya tragedy, prompting them to translate the app into Hindi and tailor it to fit the Indian context.

According to Circle of 6–New Delhi, the app has been programmed in both English and Hindi and it has been designed in a gender-neutral manner.

Says Nancy Schwartzman, a representative of the team who created Circle of 6, “Administrations should make Circle of 6 a priority and should invest in the future of safety with this technology. Circle of 6 is […] a smart and efficient way to centralize both social and emergency communications.”

The app creators said the hotlines have been pre-programmed so that they are in sync with the 24/7 women’s hotline of New Delhi and the women counseling and support service run by the NGO Jagori.

A user of the app, who feels uneasy to contact the police, can also reach out to the Lawyer’s Collective, a leading public interest legal service provider.

Government gets on board

Taking its cue from private initiatives by IT firms and advocacy groups, the government is now pouring resources into the issue of women’s safety.

Under former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the finance ministry approved proposals aimed at streamlining police, mobile and legal services in the country, resulting in the creation of a fund worth one trillion rupees (about 16 billion dollars) to be used exclusively on projects aimed at enhancing women’s safety.

For example, a proposal by the ministry of home affairs, designed in consultation with the ministry of information technology, calls for integration of the police administration with the mobile phone network to rapidly trace and respond to distress calls.

The ministry of information technology also plans to issue instructions to all mobile phone manufacturers to introduce a mandatory SOS alert button to all handsets.

The scheme will be launched in 157 cities in two phases.

Yet another project – known in its initial stage as ‘design and development of an affordable electronic personal safety device’ – being undertaken by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) aims to roll out a self-contained safety system in the form of a wristwatch.

India’s ministry of road transport and highways has proposed a scheme that will cover 32 towns, each with a population of over one million people, where public transportation vehicles will be fitted with GPS tracking devices to enhance law enforcement’s ability to respond to attacks.

Still, an app alone cannot solve the massive problem of violence against women in India, with an average of 57 cases of rape reported every day, according to an analysis of government data by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI).

According to Jasmeen Patheja, founder of a student-led project at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore known as Blank Noise, the “solution is not in the app itself, but its function and role and space for intervention.”

But Rimi B. Chatterjee, a writer and activist based in Kolkata who also teaches English in the prestigious Jadavpur University, which is leading a viral protest against the molestation of a girl student on campus in September this year, is skeptical about the effectiveness of the apps.

“I am personally not sure about their efficacy and I fear that they can actually be launched by companies to bank on the insecurity of women to make money. So I have never advised my students to use them,” says Chatterjee.

“The solution to women’s safety is in the counselling and training of men and not in development of apps. The problem is not with the women, it lies with men and their mindset, as young men are learning to disrespect women from their seniors,” she says.

However, according to Faruqui, an app like the one to be launched in connection with the 181 Helpline on Nov. 25, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the aim will be to address the gaps in the existing apps and ensure that a woman in distress can find timely assistance.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Women in the north Indian village of Katra Shadatganj in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where two young girls were recently raped and hanged. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
CHIRANG, India, Sep 30 2014 (IPS)

On a bright March morning, a 17-year old tribal girl woke as usual, and went to catch fish in the village river in the Chirang district of India’s northeastern Assam state.

Later that evening, villagers found her lifeless body on the riverbank. According to Taburam Pegu, the police officer investigating the case, her assailants had raped her before slitting her throat.

The girl was a member of the Bodo tribe, which has been at loggerheads with Muslims and Santhals – another indigenous group in the region. The tragic story reveals a terrible reality across India, where thousands of girls and women are sexually abused, tortured and murdered in a tide of gender-based violence (GBV) that shows no sign of slowing.

“We have a culture of impunity. Our legal system itself negates the possibility [...] of punishment in cases of violence against women.” -- Anjuman Ara Begum, former programme officer at the Asian Human Rights Commission
Conflict and a lack of accountability, particularly across India’s northern, eastern and central states where armed insurgencies and tribal clashes are a part of daily life for over 40 million women, fuel the fire of sexual violence.

According to a report released earlier this year by the United Nations Secretary-General assessing progress on the programme of action adopted at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, violence against women is universal, with one in every three women (35 percent) experiencing physical or sexual abuse in her lifetime.

Of all the issues related to the ICPD action plan, ending gender-based violence was addressed as a key concern by 88 percent of all governments surveyed. In total, 97 percent of countries worldwide have programmes, policies or strategies to address gender equality, human rights, and the empowerment of women.

Still, multiple forms of violence against women continue to be an hourly occurrence all around the world.

A recent multi-country study on men and violence in the Asia-Pacific region, conducted by the United Nations, reported that nearly 50 percent of 10,000 men surveyed admitted to sexually or physically abusing a female partner.

In India, a country that has established a legal framework to address and end sexual violence, 92 women are raped every day, according to the latest records published by the government’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

This is higher than the average daily number of rapes reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which currently stands at 36.

Sexual violence is particularly on the rise in conflict areas, experts say, largely due to a lack of accountability – the very thing the United Nations describes as “key to preventing and responding to gender-based violence.”

According to Suhas Chakma, director of the Asian Centre for Human Rights in New Delhi, “There are human rights abuses committed by security forces and human rights violations by the militants. And then there is also violence against women committed by civilians. No matter who is committing the crime […] there has to be accountability – a component completely missing” from the current legal framework.

An example of this is Perry*, a 35-year-old woman from the South Garo Hills district of India’s northeastern Meghalaya state – home to 14 million women and three armed groups – who was killed by militants in June this year.

Members of the Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA), an insurgent group, allegedly tried to rape Perry and, when she resisted, they shot her in the head, blowing it open. The GNLA refused to be held accountable, claiming that the woman was an informant and so “deserved to die”.

Another reason for the high levels of GBV in India is the dismal conviction rate – a mere 26 percent – in cases involving sexual assault and violence.

In 3,860 of the 5,337 rape cases reported in the past 10 years, the culprits were either acquitted or discharged by the courts for lack of ‘proper’ evidence, according to the NCRB.

“We have a culture of impunity,” Anjuman Ara Begum, a Guwahati-based lawyer and former programme officer at the Asian Human Rights Commission, told IPS, adding, “Our legal system itself negates the possibility or certainty of punishment in cases of violence against women.”

With a declining conviction rate, armed groups have been playing the role of the judiciary to deliver instant justice. In October 2011, a kangaroo court of the armed Maoists in the Palamu district of India’s eastern Jharkhand state cut off the hands of a man accused of rape.

In August 2013, the Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP) – an insurgent group operating in the northeastern state of Manipur – launched an “anti-rape task force”.

Sanakhomba Meitei, the secretary of KCP, told IPS over the phone that his group would deliver fast-track justice for rape victims. “Our intervention [will] instill fear in the [minds of the] rapists,” said Meitei, adding, “We will deliver stringent punishment.”

This is a worrying trend, but inevitable, given the failure of the legal system to deliver justice in these troubled areas, according to A L Sharada, director of Population First – a partner of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in India.

“What we need is a robust legal system, and mob justice hurts that possibility. In fact, such non-judicial justice systems are also very patriarchal in nature and ultimately against women. What we really need are quick convictions [in] every case of gender violence that has been filed,” Sharada stated.

According to the NCRB over 50,000 women were abducted across the country in 2013 alone, while over 8,000 were killed in dowry-related crimes. More than 100,000 women faced cruelty at the hands of their husbands or other male relatives, but only 16 percent of those accused were convicted.

*Not her real name

This story originally appeared in a special edition TerraViva, ‘ICPD@20: Tracking Progress, Exploring Potential for Post-2015’, published with the support of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. The contents are the independent work of reporters and authors.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

In India, 27 percent of women aged 20-49 were married before they were 15 years old. Credit: Jaideep Hardikar/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Aug 20 2014 (IPS)

Basanti Rani*, a 33-year-old farmers’ wife from the northern Indian state of Haryana, recently withdrew her 15-year-old daughter Paru from school in order to marry her off to a 40-year-old man.

“In an increasingly insecure social milieu, where rape and sexual abuse have become so common, marrying off my daughter was a wise move,” she told IPS.

“Who would’ve married her had she been abused or raped? Now, at least, her husband can look after her.”

Such a mindset, widespread across this country of 1.2 billion people, is just one of the reasons why India hosts one out of every three child brides in the world.

A recent United Nations report entitled ‘Ending Child Marriage – Progress and Prospects’ found that, despite the existence of a stringent anti-child marriage law, India ranks sixth among countries with the highest prevalence of child marriages across the globe.

The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) defines child marriage as unions occurring before a person is 18 years of age, and calls the practice a “violation of human rights.”

In India, 27 percent of women aged 20-49 claim to have tied the knot before turning 15, the survey states.

“The problem persists largely because of the patriarchal vision that perceives marriage and childbearing as the ultimate goals of a girl’s life,” explains Sonvi A. Khanna, advisory research associate for Dasra, a philanthropic organisation that works with UNICEF.

The increasing rates of violence against girls in both rural and urban India, adds Khanna, are instilling fear in the minds of families, leading them to marry their girls off as soon as they reach puberty.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s July 2014 records, there were 309,546 crimes against women reported to the police last year against 244,270 in 2012.

Crimes included rape, kidnapping, sexual harassment, trafficking, molestation, and cruelty by husbands and relatives. They also included incidents in which women were driven to suicide as a result of demands for dowries from their husbands or in-laws.

The NCRB said the number of rapes in the country rose by 35.2 percent to 33,707 in 2013 – with Delhi reporting 1,441 rapes in 2013 alone, making it the city with the highest number of rapes and confirming its reputation as India’s “rape capital”.

Mumbai, known for being more women-friendly, recorded 391 rapes last year, while IT hub Bangalore registered 80 rapes.

Obstacles to ending child marriages

The law, experts say, can do little to change mindsets or provide alternatives to child marriage.

A report by Dasra entitled ‘Marry Me Later: Preventing Child Marriage and Early Pregnancy in India’ states that the practice “continues to be immersed in a vicious cycle of poverty, low educational attainment, high incidences of disease, poor sex ratios, the subordination of women, and most significantly the inter-generational cycles of all of these.”

According to the report, despite the fact that child marriage as a practice “directly hinders the achievement of six of eight Millennium Development Goals, as an issue, it remains grossly under-funded.”

If the present trends continue, of the girls born between 2005 and 2010, 28 million could become child brides over the next 15 years, it states.

The increasing rates of violence against girls in both rural and urban India are instilling fear in the minds of families, leading them to marry their girls off as soon as they reach puberty. Credit: Credit: Sujoy Dhar/IPS

The 2006 Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA) seeks to prevent and prohibit the marriage of girls under 18, and boys under 21 years of age.

It states that if an adult male aged 18 and above is wed to a minor he shall be “punishable with rigorous imprisonment for two years or with [a] fine, which may extend to […] one lakh” (about 2,000 dollars).

Furthermore, if “a person performs, conducts, directs or abets any child marriage”, that person too shall face a similar punishment and fine.

Experts term PCMA a fairly progressive law compared to its predecessors, one with the rights of the child at its core.

It even allows for annulment of a child marriage if either party applies for it within two years of becoming adults. Even after annulment of the marriage, the law provides for residence and maintenance of the girl by her husband or in-laws until she re-marries.

“Any children born of the marriage are deemed legal and their custody is provided for, keeping the child’s best interests in mind, states this law,” a Delhi-based High Court advocate told IPS.

Yet, the legislation has not been adequately enforced due to its heavy reliance on community reporting, which rarely happens.

“Since reporting a child marriage could mean imprisonment and stigma for the family, immense financial loss and unknown repercussions for the girl, few come forward to report the event,” Khanna said.

“Adding to the problem is corruption among the implementers, or the police, who are insensitive to the need [to] stop child marriages.”

Small wonder, then, that convictions under PCMA have been few and far between.

According to the NCRB, only 222 cases were registered under the Act during the year 2013, compared to 169 in 2012 and 113 in 2011. Out of these, only 40 persons were convicted in 2012, while in 2011, action was taken against 76 people.

Young brides make unhealthy mothers

Apart from social ramifications, child marriages also lead to a host of medical complications for young mothers and their newborn babies.

According to gynecologist-obstetrician Suneeta Mehwal of Max Health Hospital in New Delhi, low birth weight, inadequate nutrition and anaemia commonly plague underage mothers.

“Postpartum hemorrhage (bleeding after delivery) is an added risk. Girls under 15 are also five times more likely to succumb to maternal mortality than those aged above 20.”

According to data released by the Registrar General of India in 2013, the maternal mortality rate (MMR) dropped from 212 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2007-09 to 178 in 2010-12.

Still, India is far behind the target of 103 deaths per live births to be achieved by 2015 under the United Nations-mandated Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Infant mortality declined marginally to 42 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2012 from 44 deaths in 2011. Among metropolitan cities, Delhi, the national capital, was the worst performer, with 30 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2012.

One in every 24 infants at the national level, one in every 22 infants in rural areas, and one in every 36 infants in urban areas still die within one year of life, according to the Registrar’s data.

This dire health situation is made worse by the prevalence of child marriage, experts say.

Activists point out that the main bottlenecks they encounter in their fieldwork are economic impoverishment, social customs, lack of awareness about consequences of child marriage and the belief that marriage offers social and financial security to the girl.

This is unsurprising since, according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2013, India is one of the hungriest countries in the world, ranking 63rd in a list of 78 countries, behind Pakistan at 57, Nepal at 49 and Sri Lanka at 43.

Many parents also believe that co-habitation with a husband will protect a young girl from rape and sexual activity.

“Nothing could be further from [the] truth,” explains Meena Sahi, a volunteer with Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement), a non-profit organisation working in the field of child welfare.

“On the contrary, the young girl is coerced into early sexual activity by a mostly overage husband, leading to poor reproductive health. Adolescent pregnancies do the worst damage – emotional and physical – to the mother as well as the newborn,” Sahi told IPS.

Social activists admit that to accelerate change, girls should be provided with robust alternatives to marriage. Education and vocational training should be used as bridges to employment for girls, especially in rural areas.

The 2011 census reported a nationwide literacy rate of 74.04 percent in 2011. Male literacy rate stands at 82.14 percent and female literacy hovers at 65.46 percent.

Engaging closely with those who make decisions for families and communities, explaining to them the ill effects of child marriage on their daughters, as well as providing information, as well as birth and marriage registrations, are some ways to address child marriages and track child brides.

Change is happening but at a glacial pace. In an attempt to eliminate child marriages in the Vidarbha district of the southern state of Maharashtra, 88 panchayats (local administrative bodies) passed a resolution this year to ban the practice.

Following the move, 18 families cancelled the weddings of their minor daughters.

Although annulment of child marriage is also a complex issue, India’s first child marriage was annulled in 2013 by Laxmi Sargara who was married at the age of one without the knowledge of her parents. Laxmi remarried – this time of her own choice – in 2014.

*Name changed upon request.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Yakiri Rubí Rubio, a young Mexican woman, was jailed for three months and is at risk of being sent back to prison for killing her rapist in self-defence. Credit: Daniela Pastrana/IPS

By Daniela Pastrana
MEXICO CITY, Jun 27 2014 (IPS)

“I just want all this to be over,” Yakiri Rubí Rubio, a young Mexican woman facing trial for killing the man who raped her in December 2013, laments to IPS.

The 21-year-old Rubio lives in the bustling neighbourhood of Tepito, one of the most dangerous areas of Mexico City.

On the evening of Dec. 9 she set out to meet her girlfriend when she was approached by two men in the street. They abducted her at knifepoint and took her on their motorcycle to a hotel, according to Rubio’s statements throughout the investigation.

She testified that both men beat her, then one of them, a 90-kilogram 37-year-old called Miguel Ángel Anaya, raped her while his brother, Luis Omar Anaya, went out for a smoke. Rubio fought her attacker and wounded him in the abdomen and neck with his own knife. Miguel Ángel fled the hotel on his motorbike, bleeding.

“Thousands of women have been raped and then killed, and their killers walk free. But a rape victim who defends her own life ends up in prison, while one of her attackers is at liberty." -- journalist and activist Lydia Cacho
Rubio also ran out of the hotel and asked some police officers for help. Bleeding and half naked, she got to a branch of the Public Prosecutor’s Office three blocks away.

While her various wounds were being treated, including a 14-centimetre gash on her arm, Luis Omar Anaya arrived and accused her of murdering his brother in a lovers’ quarrel, a specious argument according to her defence lawyers, since Rubio is a lesbian.

Rubio was charged with homicide, an offence punishable by 20 to 60 years in prison, and sent to a facility for women who have already been convicted and sentenced.

Three months later a judge reclassified her offence as “legitimate self-defence with excessive violence”, and set bail at 10,000 dollars. Her family paid this sum, with great difficulty; she was freed pending trial and had to appear weekly in court.

Now she lives shut up in her home, because of the constant threats she and her family receive. She only goes out in the company of her parents.

“She went from one kind of prison to another,” said Marina Beltrán, who raised Rubio since she was six months old, and was present at the interview with IPS.

Luis Omar Anaya denied taking part in the abduction and said he was at his home, a short distance from the hotel, when his brother arrived, at death’s door.

On Monday Jun. 23 Anaya petitioned a federal judge to revoke Rubio’s conditional release. The appeal must be decided within 90 days. IPS tried to interview Anaya’s lawyer, without success.

The entire legal process has thrown a protective cloak around the Anaya brothers, including subsequent fabrication of evidence against Rubio.

In the view of organisations working for the defence of women’s rights in Mexico, Rubio has become a symbol in the fight against machismo in the justice system, where the norm is to disparage the complaints of women who have been raped.

“Thousands of women have been raped and then killed, and their killers walk free. But a rape victim who defends her own life ends up in prison, while one of her attackers is at liberty,” wrote journalist and activist Lydia Cacho.

This case, at least, has shown all the defects of the justice system where rape is concerned.

The real situation is much worse because only 12 to 15 percent of women and girls who are raped report it, according to information presented by Amnesty International in July 2012 to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Amnesty International is not aware of the existence of any proof that the number of rapes is falling or that trials and convictions with sentencing are rising, the organisation said.

In Rubio’s case, officials at the Public Prosecutor’s Office took nine days to open an investigation into the rape and refer the case to the special prosecution service for crimes of violence against women.

She was not examined by a gynaecologist, nor was she given psychological care or contraceptive pills, as the law in the federal district of Mexico City requires.

Mexican Official Standard 046, in force since 2005, states that in the case of rape, institutions providing medical care “must offer emergency contraception immediately and up to 120 hours after the event” and are obliged to “provide medical abortion services.”

Failure to do so is another form of machismo, defence lawyer Ana Katiria Suárez, who is acting pro bono for Rubio, told IPS. She said the category of “excessive force” in legitimate self-defence is mostly used against women rape victims.

The main precedent for this case occurred in February 1996 in the state of Mexico, largely occupied by Greater Mexico City. On leaving a party, a young woman shot and killed her friend’s boyfriend who attempted to rape her.

A judge ruled then that, since his blood alcohol level was extremely high and hers was not, the aggressor was not responsible for his actions while she was in control of hers.

“Excess violence in legitimate self-defence is absurd!” Rubio’s mother complained. “How can you defend yourself a little bit?”

The nuance is decisive. Had the judge not ruled excessive violence when the offence was reclassified, Rubio would have been exonerated; but if she is found guilty of excessive violence, she will have to pay her rapist’s family more than 28,000 dollars for “damages.”

In contrast, Rubio’s rape complaint is at a standstill because the federal district prosecution service considers that the aggressor has paid in full. The prosecutors have not considered reparations for the harm done, or regarded the participation of the second attacker.

Six months after the rape, Rubio and her family are battling on two fronts: in the legal sphere, for her to be acquitted of murder and for reparations to be made, and on the personal level, to live without fear and get their lives back.

During this time her parents have given up their jobs and her brothers and sisters have left school. The family is receiving psychological support, and Rubio has had to learn how to deal with the press.

“At first it was dreadful, I would start crying because every time I had to talk about what happened I would relive it over again. Now I don’t cry any more. I just want it all to be over,” she said.

She also wants to go back to studying. “I used to prefer working. But now I would like to study law to help other women who are going through the same thing I did, but don’t have a lawyer like mine,” she said, finally summoning up a faint smile.

(END)

The village of rape survivor Angeline Mwarusena continues to be threatened by militia. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 12 2014 (IPS)

When sexual violence – whether against men, women or children – takes place in United Nations peacekeeping missions worldwide, the world body has been quick to single out the perpetrators and expel them back to their home countries.

But the U.N. has little or no authority to prosecute offenders, mete out justice or ensure adequate compensation to victims.

The 193 member states, which provide thousands of troops for peacekeeping missions largely in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean, are beyond the reach of the long arm of the law.

But at a summit meeting in London this week, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released a set of guidelines titled ‘Reparations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence.’

These reparations include restitution, compensation, rehabilitation and guarantees of non-repetition.

"People should have the right to silence if they so choose, but they also have the right to social justice [...]." -- Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN)
“A key element of reparation is that it should be proportional to the gravity of the violations and the harm suffered,” says the 20-page document.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), told IPS it would be useful to know how the United Nations plans to disseminate the guidelines so that its own staffers are trained in these issues.

“And what means do they have to ensure compliance?” she asked.

In other words, is this guidance just for optional use, or is this setting a baseline standard by which the United Nations must operate?

“What are the penalties for non-compliance? And how will they monitor this?” asked Anderlini, who is also a senior fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Centre for International Studies.

In its report, the United Nations also points out some of the flaws in the existing system.

In South Africa, for example, reparations to victims of sexual violence took the form of a one-off payment of approximately 4,000 dollars.

However, the policy failed to take into consideration both power differentials within families, as well as the historic lack of access to bank accounts among women.

“Local victims groups reported the money was often deposited into the accounts of male family member and women were given limited or no control over the resources,” the guidelines stated.

In some cases, tensions over how money should be spent in households lent itself to family violence, according to the United Nations.

Shelby Quast, policy director at the New York-based Equality Now, told IPS it is vital that reparations occur alongside development of a human rights-based legal framework that protects the rights of women and girls in the post-conflict and development periods.

“Because so much sexual violence is targeted toward adolescent girls, it is also important the variety of reparations – medical, psychological, financial, etc – pay special attention to the unique needs of girls at this particularly formative time in their lives,” she added.

Addressing the London summit on ‘Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict’, Zainab Hawa Bangura, U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, said: “Reparations are routinely left out of peace negotiations or sidelined in funding priorities, even though they are of utmost importance to survivors.”

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos cited a study by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which found that in one concentration camp near Sarajevo, 4,000 of the 5,000 male prisoners said they had been raped.

She said research in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) found that one in six of the men surveyed said they had experienced conflict-related sexual violence.

And a study in post-conflict Liberia found that among former combatants, 42 percent of women and 33 percent of men had experienced sexual violence.

“There are huge gaps in research, but we know that all sexual crimes are under-reported and those against men and boys in conflict are particularly difficult to quantify,” said Amos.

Under-Secretary-General Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who is also the executive director of U.N. Women, said stronger action is the need of the hour, and “sexual violence in conflict is a frontline concern for us.”

Anderlini, who has done extensive research on the subject and is armed with field experience, told IPS victims of sexual violence should have the right and ability to move beyond ‘victimhood’ and reclaim their lives.

To this end, they require physical and psycho-social care, access to justice, and educational and professional opportunities to rebuild their lives. They also need a socio-cultural context that accepts and respects them, she pointed out.

Anderlini also said justice for victims should not be limited to legal justice or stand-alone reparation programmes that depend on people coming forward.

“People should have the right to silence if they so choose, but they also have the right to social justice – meaning that the framing has to go beyond just reparation programmes to ensure that health, education, economic programming in conflict/ post conflict integrate and address the needs of people affected by sexual violence.”

For example, she said, health clinics and workers must be trained to deal with sexual violence issues in all these settings.

Educational and professional training and opportunities should be made available to sexual violence victims that also integrate a psycho-social dimension and group therapy support, said Anderlini, author of ‘Women Building Peace: What They do, Why it Matters.’

(END)

Amina Bibi, an 18-year-old from Pakistan’s Punjab province, was allegedly raped by four men on Jan. 5 this year. All the accused were granted bail. A desperate Amina set herself on fire outside a police station on Mar. 13 and succumbed to burn injuries the next day.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan took up the case and sought a report from police. The report was presented Apr. 21, only to be dismissed by the court. The report claimed that Amina had not been raped – something the court was not ready to believe, especially when it could find no other reason for her suicide.“One of the foremost reasons for the poor conviction rate is rape cases are mishandled from the very start."

Amina’s case has once again thrown the spotlight on the plight of thousands of rape victims in Pakistan who suffer due to flaws in the criminal justice system, socio-cultural inhibitions, the negative attitudes of investigators, police failure to collect evidence and the humiliation of victims in trial courts.

According to the National Police Bureau (NPB) of Pakistan, around 3,000 cases of rape are reported every year – to be precise 3,173 cases were reported in 2012 and 3,164 in 2013. The conviction rate, however, is less than four percent, according to a report released by the NGO War Against Rape (WAR).

“One of the foremost reasons for the poor conviction rate is rape cases are mishandled from the very start,” Asad Jamal, a Lahore-based lawyer who has represented several rape victims, told IPS.

He says very few police officials know how to collect scientific evidence in rape cases or record the statements of traumatised rape victims. Citing the example of a case he is fighting right now, Jamal says the police investigator concerned even forgot to preserve the clothes that the victim was wearing at the time of the sexual assault.

In the case of Amina Bibi too, it was found that police had failed to conduct timely forensic and DNA tests. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif suspended several senior police officers and ordered the arrest of others in connection with the case.

Jamal says sometimes police insist on including the names of fake witnesses to strengthen rape cases but such practices end up benefiting the accused, especially in appellate courts. “Ideally, scientific and DNA evidence should be enough to convict an accused, but unfortunately trial courts depend a lot on eyewitnesses for primary evidence,” he says.

Jamal pointed to another reality – rape victims often belong to disadvantaged sections of society while rapists are mostly powerful people.

He says crime data indicates that girls in the 9-19 age group from lower income families are most vulnerable to rape. “That’s why the number of domestic workers subjected to rape is on the rise,” he says.

Zia Awan, founder of the Madadgar National Helpline for women and children, told IPS, “The number of rape cases reported in Pakistan is only a fraction of the actual number.”

He receives a large number of calls from women who are undecided on whether to report the case or remain silent in order to avoid humiliation and life-long stigma. The impunity of rapists and the ordeal of rape victims deter the latter from seeking justice, he says.

“The shameful attitude of society, police and lawyers towards rape victims is the biggest hurdle in securing justice,” says Faisal Siddiqui, a Karachi-based lawyer.

His own client, a rape victim, had to seek psychological treatment for two years after appearing in court for cross-examination, he says. The defence lawyer, he says, asked her about the minutest details of the assault and made her recall the traumatic incident over and over again.

Unfortunately, he says, many lawyers deliberately confuse rape victims during cross-examination in order to get relief for the accused. “They ask shameful questions which no woman can answer.”

Sources privy to rape investigations reveal that due to socio-cultural mores police usually try to put the blame on complainants and prove that rape victims are women of loose morals. Their perception is that a woman who has really been raped would not dare to report the crime out of shame and fear of public humiliation.

If the victim has had any association with the alleged rapist or has been socially active or has a ‘modern’ lifestyle, police tend to believe that her allegations are fabricated.

Legal provisions in Pakistan also make this possible. Shahid Ghani, a Lahore-based lawyer, cites such a provision: “When a man is prosecuted for rape or an attempt to ravish, it may be shown that the prosecutrix was of generally immoral character.”

He says this provision allows for looking into a victim’s history to prove that she may not be innocent and may be sexually active.

Top police officials admit that investigators need to handle rape cases differently.

Inspector Amjad Naeem, master trainer at the Police Training College, Lahore, says there has to be an element of empathy in rape cases and special care must be shown by investigators in seeking information from victims.

“The victim has to be told not to change clothes, wash herself or go to the washroom before evidence is collected,” he told IPS. “In case it is necessary to go to the washroom, the urine and stool should be collected for later examination.”

Thanks to a project called Gender Responsive Policing (GRP), launched by German development agency GIZ in collaboration with NBP, many policymakers have begun to believe that more women should join the police force and handle cases of violence against women.

Ali Mazhar, communication manager at GIZ, told IPS that a large number of policewomen have been trained under the programme to understand cases of violence against women.

Under the programme, he says, Ladies Complaint Units (LCUs) are being set up at police stations where women officers attend to women’s complainants in an environment that is free of harassment and fear.

The U.S. government is being urged to roll back a longstanding policy that has banned foreign aid funding from being used for health care services for victims of sexual violence in conflict situations.

A group of leading U.S. and African NGOs gathered here Wednesday to launch a global campaign that, if successful, would provide millions of women and girls in crisis and conflict areas around the world with post-rape access to comprehensive health care.

The Centre for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), an advocacy group, was joined by the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch in calling on the administration of President Barack Obama to clarify or repeal four-decade-old legislation, known as the Helms Amendment, that forbids U.S. foreign aid recipients from using this funding to perform abortions “as a method of family planning.”

“The 1973 Helms Amendment is a law that says no funds are allowed for abortions overseas as a matter of family planning – full stop,” Serra Sippel, the president of CHANGE, told IPS. “But when we talk about abortion in the case of rape, that’s not family planning, so the law [actually] doesn’t forbid foreign assistance to pay for these cases.”

At the new campaign’s launch, Sippel said nearly 50 women between the ages of 15 and 49 are raped every hour in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), “where rape is used as a war weapon.”

Unwanted pregnancies resulting from rapes in conflict situations have become a particularly visible feature of the ongoing violence in the DRC, where people living in the eastern part of the country remain subject to marauding militias in a war that has claimed nearly three million lives. This situation is exacerbated by the ongoing social stigma surrounding rape across many parts of Africa.

“I will tell you about a 20-year-old girl who was raped and who, since abortion in the DRC is illegal, kept the baby, hiding her pregnancy because rape causes so much shame there,” Justine Masika Bihamba, the founder of the Women’s Synergy for Victims of Sexual Violence (SFVS), a network of 35 women’s rights organisations in the DRC, told IPS.

“But when she gave birth, she went with her mom – who didn’t want her to keep the child – and wrapped the baby in flannel and abandoned it along the road.”

When a hunter passed by and found the baby, he called for help.

“But everyone was afraid,” Bihamba continued, “and no one had the courage to come and cover the child. When they brought it to the hospital, they found out that the child was dehydrated and was about to die.”

The story underscores how difficult it can be for rape survivors to move on with their lives. Often, Bihamba said, women try to hide a post-rape pregnancy because evidence of her assault would brand her as “inferior” to other women, perhaps making it difficult later on to find a husband.

Changing the law

The new campaign, “Break the Barriers”, is now set to step up pressure on the Obama administration to support and allow access to safe abortion services for the millions of women and girls who face sexual violence in areas plagued by conflict. Currently, the confusion surrounding the Helms Amendment makes this difficult.

The problem, advocates suggest, is that the law has been interpreted by U.S. government agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), to include post-rape abortions, despite the fact that the text only refers to family-planning purposes.

(USAID was unable to respond to requests for comment by deadline.)

“President Obama doesn’t actually need congressional action to do this,” CHANGE’s Sippel said. “We are simply asking him to clarify, through an executive order, that the law doesn’t bar funding for abortions in cases of life endangerment.”

Yet others say more drastic change is required.

“We think that the Helms law is just bad law,” Liesl Gerntholtz, the executive director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, told IPS. “It deprives women of critical services and it really doesn’t advance human rights in any way.”

Gerntholtz says the Helms Amendment should be repealed.

Future roadmap

But the U.S. government has also recently taken a series of measures that recognise sexual violence as a frequent characteristic of conflict. In 2011, the Obama administration issued an executive order, the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, which sought to “protect women from sexual and gender-based violence and to ensure equal access to relief and recovery assistance.”

Yet advocates point out that women’s security worldwide remains unacceptably weak. Recent U.N. statistics find that the first half of 2013 saw 705 registered cases of sexual violence in the DRC alone, while the World Health Organisation notes that nearly 50,000 women and girls continue to die from unsafe abortions every year.

The Obama administration also recently embraced U.N. Security Council Resolution 2122, adopted in October, which is set to strengthen women’s participation in “all phases of conflict prevention, resolution and recovery,” in addition to ensuring better access to comprehensive reproductive services.

But, activists say, more needs to be done.

“We would like to see the U.S. develop a roadmap and strategies that will enable [reproductive services] to reach the most vulnerable,” Ruth Ojiambo Ochieng, the executive director of the Uganda-based Isis-WICCE, a women’s rights group, told IPS.

But while the newly launched campaign puts a strong emphasis on what the U.S. government could and should do, there are obstacles to what U.S. activism can achieve. Perhaps most importantly, abortion remains illegal in many countries.

In the DRC, for instance, abortion is criminalised by two articles of the country’s criminal code, which punish “women who get an abortion, but also anyone who assists them with the practice,” SFVS’s Bihamba told IPS.

Even if the Helms Amendment were to be repealed or clarified, U.S. and international humanitarian agencies would likely face legal hurdles in the provision of abortion on the ground.

Still, advocates hope that a strong U.S. stance on the issue will send an important signal globally.

“An executive order coming from the [Obama administration] would show the world that the U.S. government is stepping up to recognising that women who have been raped need access to abortion services,” CHANGE’s Sippel told IPS. “Global leadership by the U.S. government can really help push [countries] like the DRC to move forward and change their laws.”

Dharavi in Mumbai, Asia’s largest slum, is a challenging place to teach gender equality. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS.

By Shai Venkatraman
MUMBAI, Dec 10 2013 (IPS)

In a shanty tucked inside Dharavi, described as Asia’s largest slum settlement, a little piece of theatre unfolds. Several young boys are heckled as they pretend to go vegetable shopping – and calling them names are young girls. The boys are embarrassed.

While the exact opposite happens on Indian streets, the roles have been reversed in the play.

And it has made boys like 16-year-old Salman Shaikh, one of the participants, realise that sexual harassment is not “a harmless bit of fun” when you’re at the receiving end.“We realised that to make a meaningful change, we had to include the boys since they were going to be future partners.”

Since the brutal gang rape and death of a young woman on a bus in Delhi last December, NGOs in India have been reorienting adolescent sexuality programmes to sensitise boys on gender issues.

Laws alone are not enough in a country where male preference and discriminatory attitudes towards women persist, say experts.

“Laws become effective only where there is a change in social norms,” says Dr. Rema Nanda, founder of the NGO Jagriti Youth, which runs youth leadership programmes in the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, three of the country’s largest and most populous states. “They help, but for change to be pervasive it has to come from the community.”

The play in Dharavi, located in India’s financial capital Mumbai, is an attempt to bring about this change.

Those participating are enrolled in an initiative called Adolescents Gaining Ground, launched last year by the Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action (SNEHA). The approach is to use a mix of community meetings and role-playing to reach out to boys and girls.

“When we launched the programme, our focus was on girls,” says Garima Deveshwar Bahl, programme director with SNEHA. “We would talk about menstrual hygiene and nutrition. But the girls would bring up issues like sexual harassment or brothers not pitching in with domestic chores.

“We realised that to make a meaningful change, we had to include the boys since they were going to be future partners.”

The sex ratio in India, with its billion plus population, is 943 females to 1,000 males, according to the 2011 census.

A 2012 Unicef report, ‘Progress for Children: A Report Card for Adolescents’, says the country is home to 243 million adolescents, the highest in the world. The report also highlights that there is a critical need to invest in this group.

In India, though, most programmes are focused on issues like early marriage and early pregnancy, and largely involve adolescent girls.

Experts are now calling for large-scale interventions among boys – a demographic that has come into prominence after the Delhi bus incident and the rape of a Mumbai photojournalist in August this year. In both instances, the accused are between 16 and 25 years and were residents of slums.

It is in shanties like Dharavi that SNEHA runs its initiative. The facilitators and counselors are drawn from the local community to help create greater trust. To begin with, boys and girls are placed in separate groups to help them open up easily.

“Reaching out to boys is especially challenging as they are less willing to talk about their personal lives,” says Sanjeevani Vaithi, a facilitator with SNEHA. A resident of Dharavi, she was trained for a year before she started counseling.

“Girls face greater restrictions and they are happy for any opportunity to interact in safe spaces. Boys enjoy greater freedom in comparison. It becomes harder to pin them down. It takes time but they eventually listen,” she tells IPS.

The results are already visible.

“Now I don’t tease girls,” says Haseem Khan, 16, who joined the programme early this year. “And if I see someone doing that I speak up.”

The sensitisation goes beyond the streets.

Khan’s 18-year-old neighbour Saddam Hussain says, “I would never help my mother earlier. Now I see how hard she works and I help her out.”

An impact report done by SNEHA, six months after their programme started, is encouraging. Over 70 percent of boys and girls agreed that both genders are entitled to equal freedom; an improvement of over 20 percent.

When it comes to educating girls and sexual harassment, however, the change is not as significant.

Experts believe this highlights the need to focus on the concept of gender respect in a strong way at the school level. “They don’t have access to this education in their schools and this is the gap we are plugging. But it needs to be done very early,” says Bahl.

“We have to work on normalising female-male interactions in a public domain,” adds Dr Nanda of Jagriti Youth.

“Girls and boys may go to school together, but they don’t talk to each other. The more we segregate them, the more we reinforce stereotypes that women should not be seen, or need to be protected. You cannot on the one hand say women have to participate in the economy and then keep them apart.”

What is encouraging is the shift in the attitudes of stakeholders who are in a position to enable social change.

The tremendous public outrage after the Delhi incident and continued media focus on sexual assaults forced the Indian government to introduce a tougher anti-rape law earlier this year. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013 provides for a life term and even the death sentence for rape convicts, besides stringent punishment for offences like acid attacks, stalking and voyeurism.

“After the Delhi incident and the regular reporting of sexual assaults, we are definitely beginning to see a much improved response from various groups, especially in the government, when it comes to gender issues, which was not the case earlier,” says Bahl.

Gay and transsexual immigrants who enter the U.S. detention system face high levels of sexual abuse, new research warns, at times leading them to decide to return to their home countries rather than stay to fight a legal battle.

Activists say instances of LGBT immigrants who prefer being deported rather than endure abuse in U.S. detention facilities are quite common. Credit: Bigstock

Advocates say that, although sexual assault and violence are widespread in all types of prisons, LGBT immigrants are particularly vulnerable.

“One of my clients, a transgender Mexican woman detained in a facility in New Jersey, after months of mistreatment actually ended up accepting her deportation, rather than endure her situation,” Clement Lee, a detention staff attorney at Immigration Equality, an advocacy group representing LGBT immigrants in court, told IPS.

“I told her, ‘I can win your case, but it will take several months,’ but because she was poor she could not pay to get out of detention. In the facility, people were calling her ‘maricon’, Spanish for faggot, and she seriously feared for her physical safety.”

Clement notes that his clients often come from countries that are dangerous for them. He cites instances in which transgender individuals would be raped and assailed “for violating gender norms”, or instances in which some of his gay clients have been subjected to “conversion therapies” under which community and family members attempt to change their sexual orientation.

Jamaica is the country from which most of his clients have fled, “which is surprising,” he says, “given that country’s image as a beach paradise.”

According to other immigration activists closely involved in LGBT cases, instances of LGBT immigrants who prefer being deported rather than endure abuse in U.S. detention facilities are quite common.

Karen Zwick, a managing attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Centre (NIJC), says that the decision to accept deportation may not be a rational one, because these immigrants may be underestimating the risks they would face going back to their home countries.

“They can’t see beyond the terrible situation they’re in,” she told IPS.

According to a new report, released this week by the Centre for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think tank here, as many as 34,000 immigrants are detained each day by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in over 250 detention facilities across the country.

According to the study, which is based on evidence gathered through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, detained LGBT immigrants are far more vulnerable to abuse than other immigrants.

“What we tried to do with this report is to paint a clearer picture of what is going on inside these detention centres,” Sharita Gruberg, a policy analyst at CAP and the author of the report, told IPS. “And what we’ve found is that, in some centres, guards were still using homophobic language against LGBT detainees.”

But LGBT detainees say they face far worse problems than abusive language, reporting instead physical and sexual abuse by both fellow detainees and guards.

15 times more vulnerable

Because of internal regulations, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not keep data on sexual orientation or gender identity of detainees. But the information obtained through the FOIA request suggests that LGBT detainees are “15 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than the general population”.

ICE, the agency in charge of immigration detention facilities across the United States, has also been at the centre of an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an official watchdog, into the agency’s sexual abuse allegations.

According to a GAO report released Nov. 20, nearly 40 percent of total allegations were never acted upon “because ICE field office officials did not report them to … headquarters.”

“ICE takes the health, safety and welfare of those in our care very seriously,” an ICE official, who commented on the condition of anonymity, told IPS by e-mail. “The agency is continually working to ensure these reforms are consistently implemented at all facilities that house ICE detainees.”

The official also noted that in 2009 the agency initiated “fundamental detention reforms, including the development of new detention standards to protect vulnerable detainees.”

Yet advocates suggest an underlying problem with the way the U.S. immigration system functions.

“We know that the immigration detention system has extended vastly over the last 20 years, as we spend billions of dollars on immigration detention every year,” Harper Jean Tobin, the director of policy at the National Center for Transgender Equality, an advocacy group here, told IPS.

Tobin refers to the congressionally mandated requirement that ICE detain 34,000 immigrants at all times, also known as the “bed mandate”. According to the NIJC, this mandate “prevents ICE officers from exercising discretion and expanding more efficient alternatives to detention … that would allow individuals who pose no risk to public safety to be released back to their families.”

In the past, U.S. legislators have touched upon the issues surrounding mistreatment of detainees in immigration facilities. In 2003, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which sought to protect individuals against sexual abuse in confinement settings, including in immigrant detention centres.

But according to the new Centre for American Progress findings, PREA may have only partially addressed the issue of sexual abuse in detention facilities. It points out that ICE created its own standards on sexual assault in detention facilities, which are less comprehensive than those mandated by the Department of Justice in 2012.

Last June, Rep. Trey Growdy of South Carolina, the chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee, introduced the Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement Act (SAFE), which was later approved by the Judiciary Committee. Yet critics note that, if approved, this bill would not only do “nothing to resolve the legal status of 11 million undocumented immigrants” but would also “create an environment of rampant racial profiling and unconstitutional detentions.”

Girls in Pakistan face neglect and violence. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct 7 2013 (IPS)

Twenty-eight-year-old Omar Zaib, a taxi driver in Lahore, capital of Pakistan’s Punjab province, confessed in court last month to drowning his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter because he wanted a son. A few days later, the media reported that two newborn girls had been found abandoned at a railway station.

Before that, in August, the police arrested a man accused of burying his newborn daughter alive because she was physically deformed.

But things came to a head when news of the rape of a five-year-old in Lahore broke out last month. Pakistan’s civil society erupted in protest.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), the police have already registered 113 cases of rape and 32 of gang-rape in Lahore alone in the first eight months of this year.

But the malaise can be found across Pakistan, in small towns and big cities including Faisalabad, Tandlianwala, Kasur, Toba Tek Singh in the Punjab province; Karachi, Chachro in Sindh; and Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region.

The spate of such incidents in recent months has left civil society alarmed. An incensed Pakistani public is demanding the enactment of long-pending child protection laws, such as the Child Protection (Criminal Law Amendment) Bill 2009, the National Commission on the Rights of the Child Bill 2009, the Charter of Child Rights Bill 2009, the Prohibition of Corporal Punishment, the Child Marriages Restraint (Amendment) Bill 2009 and National Immunisation Bill 2009.

In addition, they are urging the government to implement the maximum punishment of life-long imprisonment until death, without possibility of parole, remission or pardon for paedophilia, rape and gang-rape convicts.

Arshad Mahmood, director of advocacy and child rights governance with Save the Children, says what is needed is a complete child protection system which would include not just the political will for law-making, but also a proper budget for implementation of the laws as well as for running the whole paraphernalia of monitoring.

“I think the Indian rape case triggered these protests,” Ayesha Khan, a development researcher working on women’s issues at the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi, tells IPS. She was referring to the brutal gang-rape of a paramedic in Indian capital New Delhi in December last year, which resulted in her death.

However, unlike the outrage the rape in Delhi triggered in neighbouring India, the anger in Pakistan remains restricted to hundreds of tweets and outpourings on social media sites.

“When will the social media activism transform into action?” asks Samar Minallah, a rights activist who was part of a recent protest in Islamabad and was dismayed by the lukewarm response.

According to Asha Bedar, a Karachi-based psychologist, “Violence against children, especially young girls, is nothing new, nor unique to Pakistan.”

There is no official database, but the non-governmental organisation Sahil puts the number of child sexual abuse cases at 3,861 in 2012, while Madadgaar Helpline’s national database recorded 5,659 cases of violence against children from January to October last year.

These numbers, however, remain only indicative, as most cases go unreported. More than the numbers, what Bedar finds alarming is the “noticeable increase” in severe forms of violence, with very young girls being abducted, raped and murdered routinely. But only the very severe cases manage to rouse society from its collective stupor, she laments.

“No wonder violence continues. We simply do not value our women enough,” she adds.

Aurat Foundation, an Islamabad-based women’s rights organisation, had in a report titled Beyond Denial reported 7,516 crimes against women in 2012. Released earlier this year, the report noted how crimes like murder, domestic violence and acid-throwing increased between 2010 and 2012. The total number of women who died through murder, honour killing and suicide, among other crimes, was 13,583 between 2008 and 2012.

“Give these tragedies any name, but the figures imply that 34 percent of the total number of women subjected to violence did not survive the assault,” Dr Rakhshinda Perveen, author of the report, tells IPS.

As with all cases of abuse, perpetrators target the most vulnerable members of society because it is with them that they can exert the most power and impose their will, whether physically or sexually, says Bedar. This tendency increases in times of stress, and young girls are frequently victims, Bedar adds.

Bedar’s views find endorsement in the findings of a recent United Nations multi-country study on men and violence in Asia and the Pacific, titled ‘Why Do Some Men Use Violence Against Women and How Can We Prevent It?’.

Published in the British Medical Journal and The Lancet early this month, it is based on interviews with 10,178 men aged between 18 and 49 years in Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea. One in four men admitted to raping a woman believing in “sexual entitlement” or as a form of punishment because they were angry.

“They believed they had the right to have sex with the woman regardless of consent. The second most common motivation reported was to rape as a form of entertainment, either for fun or because they were bored,” notes Emma Fulu, one of the authors of the report.

Minallah, however, blames parents as well for these incidents. “Nothing, not even poverty, can justify the murder of a newborn girl.” She thinks parents who neglect their children need to be penalised too.

She notes how in the recent case of the rape of the five-year-old, her absence went unnoticed for hours whereas the search for the missing boy accompanying her had begun much earlier.

Simultaneously, there are efforts to persuade the government to change school syllabi to ensure a positive portrayal of women. The Pakistani parliament passed seven pro-women laws between 2004 and 2011. But the government has failed to provide a safer environment for Pakistani women.

“It really all depends on convictions,” says Minallah. “Unless the main culprit in a rape case is tried and punished, there is not much hope.” The lack of convictions and unaccountability convey the impression that such issues are ‘private matters’.

Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel. Credit: DoD photo by Glenn Fawcett

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 15 2013 (IPS)

The U.S. secretary of defence has unveiled a series of new directives aimed at cracking down on an epidemic of sexual assaults in the armed forces, an issue that has seized the very top levels of the military brass in recent months.

According to the Pentagon’s most recent estimates, some 26,000 sexual assaults took place within the military ranks last year. That number represented a 35-percent increase over similar estimates for 2010, and fuelled a growing sense of outrage that some say could result in legislative action in coming months.“Small-scale military sexual assault solutions will not stem the cultural tide created by years of victim-blaming and retaliation." -- Former Marine Corps captain Anu Bhagwati

On Thursday, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel described the elimination of sexual assault among the armed forces as one of his agency’s “top priorities”, requiring “absolute and sustained commitment”.

Building on a series of actions announced in May, Hagel has now ordered the Defence Department to create a victim’s advocacy programme. Critically, such units would ensure that those alleging assault are given their own legally trained representation, long a key demand by some lawmakers and advocates.

The directives will also move oversight for investigations up the chain of command and outside of victims’ own military units, strengthen prohibitions on “inappropriate relations” involving trainers or recruiters, and allow for those accused of assault (rather than victims) to be reassigned to other units.

The announcement received immediate response, despite the fact that both Congress and the president are currently out of Washington on summer breaks. While most lauded the actions as moving in the right direction, there was broad agreement that they did not go far enough.

“The initiatives announced today are substantial, but only a step along a path toward eliminating this crime from our military ranks,” a White House press secretary said Thursday on behalf of President Barack Obama, who in May sharply directed the Defence Department to take extraordinary steps to curb military sexual abuse.

“The president expects this level of effort to be sustained not only in the coming weeks and months, but as far into the future as necessary.”

Advocates reacted even more strongly, referring to most of the new mandates as mere tweaks.

“Small-scale military sexual assault solutions will not stem the cultural tide created by years of victim-blaming and retaliation,” Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps captain and currently executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), an advocacy group, told IPS in a statement.

“The solutions announced today demonstrate that the U.S. Department of Defence is still only wading in the shallow end on these issues, unable to create the deeper, large-scale solutions our service members and veterans need.”

Chilling effect

At issue for many is a decision that Defence Secretary Hagel, who took over his current position in February, has already indicated he would not willingly take: moving the responsibility for investigating and prosecuting sexual assaults outside of the military command structure altogether.

“The [Defence Department] order falls short of reform that would protect victims from the outset – by keeping the decision to prosecute within the chain of command,” Taryn Meeks, a former U.S. Navy lawyer and now executive director of Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group, said Thursday in response.

“Prosecutors – and not commanders – must be given the authority to decide whether to proceed to trial … The new policies leave commanders, who are not legal experts, and may have inherent biases and conflicts of interest, with the authority to decide whether to go to trial, pick juries and reduce sentences. This is not a solution.”

While several pieces of legislation are currently pending in the U.S. Congress to address various parts of the assault crisis, just one would take the step of requiring completely independent prosecution.

The sponsor of that bill, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, stated Thursday that the Pentagon’s actions were “positive steps” but not the “leap forward” required.

“As we have heard over and over again from the victims, and the top military leadership themselves, there is a lack of trust in the system that has a chilling effect on reporting,” she said.

“Three hundred and two prosecutions out of an estimated 26,000 cases just isn’t good enough under any metric. It is time for Congress to seize the opportunity.”

According to Protect Our Defenders’ Meeks, 46 senators have publicly supported Gillibrand’s amendment.

“[W]e are very close to this fundamental reform of the system,” Meeks says. “We are at a historic moment and we hope that all lawmakers will see this as the tipping point.”

Restoring trust

For years, critics have lambasted the military for allowing commanding officers the final say in assault cases. Indeed, the current flurry of action on this issue was in large part sparked off by a sexual assault case in which a commanding officer overturned a guilty verdict.

More broadly, such an environment has been widely seen as coercive, resulting in toxic situations for those who file cases and, as Gillibrand notes, intimidating countless other victims into silence.

Of those who did report an assault last year, nearly two-thirds said they experienced retaliation, according to an official report. A quarter of military assault victims identified their offender as within their chain of command, the report found, while half of victims said they decided not to report the attack because they believed there would be no response.

On Thursday, Pentagon officials admitted that the new measures were necessary in order to restore the trust of service members.

“Frankly, we want increased unrestricted reporting and we can only get that if we can work with the trust of the victim,” Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, director of the Joint Staff, told reporters.

Yet he also noted that his office has been and will continue working “very closely” with Senator Gillibrand and other lawmakers, and suggested that additional changes could be on the horizon.

“We believe there’s merit in many of the legislative issues,” Scaparrotti said. “So we’re going to look at this and, frankly, if we believe we can make a difference in this problem set, we’ll look strongly at enacting other initiatives that perhaps aren’t in this group here today.”

Members of Congress, meanwhile, are clear that they will continue legislative pushes regardless of Pentagon actions.

“Today’s announcement has little bearing on the fact that Congress will soon mandate a host of historic reforms,” Senator Claire McCaskill, the sponsor of currently pending legislation on military assault, told IPS in a statement, “but it’s evidence that the Defence Department is now treating this problem with the seriousness that we expect, and that survivors deserve.”

Working Singaporean women are forced to conform to strict gender roles, taking care of children and household chores on top of their 9-5 jobs. Credit: epSos.de/CC-BY-2.0

By Kalinga Seneviratne
SINGAPORE, Jul 17 2013 (IPS)

The play opens with a man and his mother waiting impatiently at the dining table in the family home. A woman rushes in after a busy day at the office with takeaway dinner packets, followed by her son and daughter who walk in expecting their mother to serve them a meal.

The scene continues with the grandmother chastising her daughter-in-law for coming home late and failing to prepare the meal herself, a refrain quickly taken up by the husband. The young daughter is meanwhile pulled up for wearing a short skirt, though she is quick to retort that the grandmother is simply “old-fashioned”.

An undercurrent of tension that threatens to give way to violence runs through the play, which is exactly what the writers and producers intended.

‘Just a Bad Day’, a forum theatre piece designed to explore the struggles of ordinary Singaporean women against stereotyping and gender violence, is quickly making the rounds of this affluent Southeast Asian city-state, highlighting the hunger for dialogue around an issue that often gets swept under the rug.

As Director Li Xie told IPS, “Physical violence is very visible but subtle violence is hard to detect.” Yet it is exactly this latter form of violence that women in Singapore confront on a daily basis.

The 2013 Human Development Report, published annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), puts Singapore at 13^th place in the gender development index, above Western countries such as the U.S., UK, Ireland and Austria, and fellow neighbours Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Over 71 percent of women in Singapore have at least a secondary education and 57 percent participate in the labour force.

With such an impressive track record, one would believe that women here enjoy a high social status, but the reality is very different.

Entering the labour force has been both a blessing and a curse, as women are now expected to play the dual role of working mother and traditional housewife, who must cook the family meal and attend to all the domestic chores after putting in long hours on the job.

“We wanted to address these gender stereotypes, prejudices and biases [because] that’s where change starts,” argues Kokila Annamalai, communications executive at the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), the co-producer of the play.

She added that social conditioning of both men and women must be stopped at “an early stage” so as to prevent psychological violence in the future.

AWARE, the leading women’s lobby group in Singapore, has fought for over three decades for equal rights for women in the workplace and at home.

Now, the NGO is taking its campaign to a new level through the use of community forum theatre, a form that allows the audience to actively participate in the outcome of the play.

“Through this intimate performance, we hope to provoke thought and discussion on the less tangible forms of violence against women that continue to be a reality in Singapore,” Annamalai told IPS.

‘Just A Bad Day’, produced in collaboration with the community theatre company Drama Box, is a flagship project of the ‘We Can’ campaign, a global initiative involving 3.9 million people who have pledged not to “tolerate violence against women”.

As the 16^th country to join the movement, Singapore has adopted the mantra “Change starts with me”, and hopes to reach 10,000 people by the end of the year.

A crucial tool in that plan is the performance piece, devised by a team of “change makers” who will spend the rest of this year taking the play to community centres, schools and universities around the country.

First staged on Jun. 26, the play was recently presented at a youth festival called Scape where over 100 youth between the ages of 16 and 25 attended the show and participated actively in formulating a new outcome.

One audience member intervened in the first scene and got into the role of the working mother-housewife by explaining to the grandmother that women today have to work to maintain a family’s standard of living.

The original actress had portrayed a subdued and frustrated character, but the young girl in the audience injected a more aggressive quality into the mother’s role, pushing the grandmother to take a different view of the situation.

Rachel Chung, who originally played the role of the mother, told IPS after the show that she herself has experienced the kind of psychological violence depicted in the scene.

“Violence in my life started with verbal tirades, insults and put-downs from my partner,” Chung said in a recent interview. “He then assaulted me with profanities. Soon, he started shoving me when I ‘stepped out of line’ and this escalated into more physical abuse like slapping and punching.”

Stressing that violence is not “always black and blue”, Chung insisted that the “damage to my morale and self worth caused by the emotional abuse was no less than the physical injuries.”

She pointed out that one in 10 women in Singapore have experienced psychological abuse, and surveys have shown that eight in 10 Singaporeans will not interfere in domestic disputes, even if they know that a friend, relative or neighbour is being abused.

Chung called the campaign a “movement to make change” and invited men and boys to join in, citing their support as crucial for success.

Lupin Tan, who acted as the father in ‘Just a Bad Day’, told IPS that he joined the cast because of a personal connection to the role, having been what he called a “male chauvinistic father”.

He was one among 70 people who responded to a Facebook post calling for volunteers. Twenty were eventually chosen to go through a month-long exercise with Drama Theatre and come up with three scenes that would then be incorporated into the final play.

“It was important for me to reach out to people with [similar] experiences, who are unaware of this type of violence towards women,” Tan told IPS.

According to Xie, the point of the play is to force audience members to ask themselves: “What would I have done?”

Provoking spontaneity and action is important in a society where many perceive calls for help as women “making mountains out of molehills.”

In fact, a survey of over 655 men, conducted by the Ngee Ann Polytechnic School of Business and Accountancy, found that 13 percent of respondents believe women who are raped “asked for it”, while 29 percent of men believe that most women make “false” claims of rape.

It is for this very reason that Annamalai believes theatre can be useful, since it offers a non-threatening opening to a conversation and “shows rather than tells” a way forward, to a more equitable society.

The village of rape survivor Angeline Mwarusena in DRC continues to be threatened by militia. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 2013 (IPS)

Despite the United Nations’ “zero tolerance” policy against sexual violence, there has been a rash of gender-based crimes in several of the world’s conflict zones, including South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Northern Uganda, Somalia, the Central African Republic – and, more recently, in politically-troubled Egypt and Syria.

Describing rape as “a weapon of war”, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council last month that sexual violence occurred wherever conflicts raged, “devastating survivors and destroying the social fabric of whole communities”.

“It was a crime under international human rights law and a threat to international peace and security,” he said.

Since most of the heinous crimes are taking place in conflict zones overseen by U.N. peacekeeping missions, the United Nations is unleashing an army of Women Protection Advisers (WPAs) to specifically curb sexual violence in war zones.

For starters, they will be deployed with peacekeeping missions in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Mali and Somalia.

Asked if these WPAs will be confined to Africa, Andre-Michel Essoungou of the Public Affairs Division at the U.N.’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support told IPS, “There is no restriction to a region of the world in this regard. But the process is starting with these missions for the time being.

“The recruitment procedures are currently underway,” he added.

Marcy Hersh, a senior advocate for women and girls’ rights at Refugees International, told IPS her organisation insists that prior to the further deployment of WPAs to peacekeeping and political missions, the United Nations should take urgent action to ensure that WPAs are trained before their deployment and encouraged to work collaboratively with already operational humanitarian structures.

Additionally, they should be held accountable to fundamental and non-negotiable ethical and safety criteria for investigating sexual violence in conflict, which preserves the safety and dignity of survivors.

She said the recently unanimously passed Security Council Resolution 2106 includes language that is in accordance with these recommendations in its calls for the timely deployment of WPAs, their adequate training, and their coordination across multiple sectors.

Given this strong language, combined with the statements from multiple member states that WPAs should be deployed to all peacekeeping and political missions, Hersh said, “I am confident that the United Nations will work urgently to improve the rollout of WPAs.”

She said she is also hopeful that the United Nations will ensure that WPAs collect timely, objective, accurate and reliable information as a basis for prevention and response programming and preserve the safety and dignity of sexual violence survivors.
The secretary-general said that U.N. Women and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) have developed, on behalf of the U.N. Action Network, the “first-ever scenario-based training programme for peacekeepers”, some of whom, along with aid workers, have been accused of sexual violence – specifically in South Sudan, DRC, Cote d’Ivoire and Haiti.

The United Nations will also set up a team of experts on “the rule of law and sexual violence in conflict”, described as an important tool for strengthening national justice systems and legal frameworks.

The team has already provided technical advice to governments in the Central African Republic, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Guinea, Liberia, Somalia and South Sudan.

Zainab Hawa Bangura, the U.N.’s special representative on sexual violence in armed conflict, points out that 20 years ago, the United Nations had provided “irrefutable evidence” of widespread and systematic rape in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

She said that during a recent visit to Bosnia – where an estimated 50,000 women had been raped or been victims of sexual violence – she discovered that, to date, only a handful of prosecutions had occurred.

“Thus the victims of those crimes continue to walk in shadow and shame, unable to lay the past to rest and move forward.”

More recently, in late June, the United Nations described as “unacceptable” several cases of rape of young girls in DRC.

Nine young girls, aged between 18 months and 12 years, were admitted to a hospital in South Kivu with marks of violence on their bodies and very serious internal wounds, resulting in the death of two.

“Such violence and abuse is unacceptable and must be brought to an end,” said Roger Meece, head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in DRC (MONUSCO).

“These abuses are said to be related to harmful traditional practices perpetrated by individuals who kidnap young children from their communities,” he said.

There have also been widespread reports of 135 women and girls allegedly raped by government soldiers in Minova in eastern DRC back in 2012.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France’s minister for women’s rights, told reporters at a U.N. press briefing last month that condemnation of such crimes was not enough and that perpetrators should be prosecuted.

“France was very disturbed by such atrocities, whether committed by a rebel group or by government troops,” she added.

Last year, as rebels captured the main towns in Northern Mali, UN Women registered a sudden and dramatic increase of rapes in the first week of the takeover of Gao and Kidal, in places where most women never report this violence to anyone, not even health practitioners.

Lakshmi Puri. UN Photo/Devra Berkowitz

We heard stories of girls as young as 12 being taken from their homes to military camps, gang-raped for days and subsequently abandoned; of surgery and delivery rooms invaded by armed men enforcing dress codes and occupying health facilities; of young women being punished, flogged, and tortured for bearing children outside of marriage.

This week, the United Nations Security Council heard similar atrocities from other parts of the globe, and adopted its fourth resolution in only five years exclusively devoted to the issue of sexual violence in armed conflict. A crime that was until recently invisible, ignored, or dismissed as an inevitable consequence of war is now routinely addressed by the world body in charge of the maintenance of international peace and security.

And this is not the only policy gain achieved in the last few months to turn violence against women from a pandemic into an aberration.

In March, the Commission on the Status of Women, the principal global policy-making body dedicated to furthering the rights of women, reached a historic agreement on violence against women. This forward-looking declaration commits member states to actions that were never before so explicitly articulated in international documents, including in conflict and post-conflict situations.

In April, a new Arms Trade Treaty was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, requiring exporting state parties to consider the risks of arms being used “to commit or facilitate serious acts of gender-based violence or violence against women.”

That same month, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence against Conflict named and shamed perpetrators of this crime in her annual report to the Security Council. In addition, the world’s eight richest nations reached a historic agreement to work together to end sexual violence in conflict. Under the presidency of the United Kingdom, the G8 agreed on six major steps to tackle impunity and pledged over 35 million dollars in new funding.

This sample of policy developments parallels rising demands to advance women’s empowerment and gender equality and say no to violence against women. This year began with mass protests in every major city in India in the wake of a brutal gang-rape in Delhi, replicated later in public revolts against sexual assault in Brazil, South Africa and other countries.

Such levels of global popular mobilisation in the wake of individual incidents of violence against women have not been seen before.

More strikingly, this is happening at a time when rising fundamentalism, widespread austerity, and continued militarism threaten to roll back women’s rights and push aside gender equality demands. Today women’s rights activists have to risk their lives to denounce rape in Mali, refugees fleeing Syria are experiencing forced and early marriage in refugee communities in neighbouring countries, and revolting attacks are being carried out against girls that simply want an education in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

The facts about what the World Health Organisation has recently called “a global health problem of epidemic proportions” remain basically unchanged. More than a third of all women and girls, in countries rich or poor and in peace or at war, will experience violence in their lifetimes, the overwhelming majority of them at the hands of their intimate partner.

The latest resolution of the Security Council and other recent policy gains are signs of progress. Now their inspiring words must be turned into action by investing in women’s empowerment and leadership as the most effective prevention strategy to end violence against women.

It is no coincidence that the majority of advances in recent international jurisprudence on war crimes against women have come from trailblazing women at the helm of international courts or leading international prosecutions. By the same token, laws and police action are not enough to help a battered woman escape an abuse situation and restart her life – only greater equality between the sexes will turn the tide to prevent and end violence against women and girls.

These positive steps must be built upon through decisive action by national governments. They must ensure that violence against women and girls does not happen in the first place and a swift and appropriate response when it does, including effective access to justice. It requires strong international cooperation, among multilateral and regional entities, including UN Women, to empower women and girls and put an end to the atrocities.

And it requires strong efforts by civil society organisations and the global women’s movement to remind both national governments and international organisations that words are not enough, that a few actions are not enough, that we must aim high and keep on moving forward.

*Lakshmi Puri is Acting Head of UN Women and Assistant Secretary-General.

Little girls play outside in India's West Bengal state. Credit: Sujoy Dhar/IPS

By Sujoy Dhar
NEW DELHI, May 21 2013 (IPS)

When a five-year-old was rescued from the basement of a building in the eastern part of India’s capital, New Delhi, the doctors treating her were horrified to find the little girl had not only been raped by two men several times, but the perpetrators had also inflicted severe perineal injuries by inserting foreign objects into her body.

Tied to a bed for nearly two days, the girl was raped and brutalised by a young neighbour and his friend, even while the police ignored her parents’ repeated requests to trace their missing child.

“Violence against a child, even if it occurs inside (his or her) own home, must not be seen as a private issue. It is violence and it is a public issue." -- Shantha Sinha
“We pleaded with the police. We called the (hotlines). But they did not act instantly and when she was rescued in such a horrible state, cops offered me some money to keep quiet and said I am fortunate that she is still alive,” the girl’s father told IPS.

Coming after a season of anti-rape protests in New Delhi over last December’s fatal gang-rape of a young medical student inside a bus, this latest incident, coupled with police inaction, triggered fresh agitation in the national capital.

In the same month, another five-year-old girl in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh succumbed to her injuries after enduring similarly unspeakable horrors.

Stories of rape and abuse, often involving fatalities, are pouring in every day now, with the latest figures showing that child rapes in India have risen 336 percent between 2001 and 2011.

Human rights activists lament that these figures represent only reported cases, while the actual number may be much higher.

Many of these rapes occur in the confines of the victim’s own household, sometimes by family members or other known assailants, other times by unknown attackers.

According to a recent report by the New Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), sexual offences against children in India have reached an “epidemic proportion”.

The 56-page report, citing National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB) statistics, stated that rape cases increased from 2,113 cases in 2001 to 7,112 cases in 2011, with a total of 48,338 cases in that period.

ACHR Director Suhas Chakma told IPS these numbers represent “only the tip of the iceberg, as the large majority of child rape cases are not reported to the police”, while other forms of sexual assault against children pass largely under the radar of the authorities.

Chakma attributes the increase partly to the “tremendous rural-urban migration” of the last 15 years that has resulted in a clash of cultures, as migrant workers from India’s remote agricultural belts come face to face with an urban lifestyle.

“Pornography is now at everyone’s fingertips,” he noted, adding that India’s socio-economic upheaval of the last decade and a half have “impacted behaviours”.

The state of Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of child rapes, with 9,465 cases from 2001 to 2011; the western state Maharashtra came a close second, with 6,868 cases; while Uttar Pradesh, located on the northern border, reported 5,949 cases.

The report found that every single Indian state reported high numbers and experienced an increase in cases.

Not a private matter

When it comes to child abuse, said Shantha Sinha, chairperson of India’s National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), there cannot be any distinction between private and public space.

“Violence against a child, even if it occurs inside (his or her) own home, must not be seen as a private issue. It is violence and it is a public issue,” Sinha told IPS.

She stressed the need for citizens to report as many details as possible about such cases to the proper authorities – maintaining anonymity if necessary – such as the countrywide Child Welfare Committee (CWC).

Homes of horror

According to the ACHR, rape is especially rampant in juvenile homes established under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act of 2000.

The government of India supports at least 733 juvenile homes under the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) of the ministry of women and child development; but government oversight has been unable to stem abuse.

“All juvenile homes are centres of sexual abuse,” said Chakma. “There is no supervision whatsoever and the offenders are mostly staff members.”

He alleged that the government has failed to establish proper “inspection committees”, charging that the issue is not even on the agenda for minister-level discussions. Chakam also blasted the NCPCR for being “useless.”

According to a report by NCPCR member Vinod Kumar Tikoo, who visited three such homes in the Ambala district of India’s northern Haryana state after reports of physical and sexual abuse, the conditions of the facilities are “shocking.”

In one of the homes, Tikoo found girls and boys living together but could see “no evidence” of a professional staff, trained caretakers or security measures. The operation seemed to be an “entirely family affair.”

“The husband–wife duo managing one of the other homes seemed unaware of the roles, responsibilities and…the jurisprudence governing child protection in an official child care institution,” he said.

Conditions are particularly threatening to girl children. In one of the homes, the only toilet facility available for girls was located on the terrace, surrounded by water.

According to the report, many of the managers of these homes simply bring in abandoned or runaway children from hospitals, railway stations and bus-stands, without presenting them to the concerned Child Welfare Committee, which exist in every state.

According to Sinha, security in juvenile homes is a complex issue and calls for rigorous government monitoring and intervention. She recommended that the state “redefine” the meaning of these homes, and run them instead as training and resource centres, thereby offering these kids the chance for a more independent future.

Poor legal infrastructure

Other experts believe the answer lies in amending the Juvenile Justice Act, which does not currently provide an adequate support system for families too poor to embark on lengthy legal battles.

Chakma said it is “essential” that the government create a victim assistance fund, which aggrieved parties can utilise to seek justice and punitive measures through the courts.

“India enacts laws without any judicial impact assessments. So the judicial infrastructure has to be upgraded too,” he said.

A woman is attacked by police at an anti-rape protest in New Delhi. Credit: Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, May 8 2013 (IPS)

Harsh police handling of public protests erupting across India over a spate of sensational rapes since December has resulted in renewed demands to reform a force that retains the repressive features of its colonial origins.

Last month a bench of the Supreme Court, angered by police brutality on women protesting against rapes in the capital, New Delhi, and other north Indian states, demanded to know the status of compliance with rulings the apex court had made on police reforms six years ago.

“Even an animal won’t do what the police officers are doing everyday in different parts of the country,” the bench said, referring, among other things, to the beating up by police of a 65-year-old woman who had joined protests against rape in Aligarh, a city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. “How can police officers beat an unarmed lady?”

Justice G.S. Singhvi, leading the bench, singled out the case of a police officer slapping a young woman participating in protests on Apr. 19 outside a Delhi hospital where a five-year-old girl was being treated for serious injuries inflicted on her by her rapist in the Gandhi Nagar area of the capital.

“The police can do little to reduce crimes like rape, but they should be judged by how they react to such crimes,” said Jyotiswaroop Pandey, who retired last year as director-general of police in the northern Uttarakhand state and is currently a member of the police reforms commission.

Pandey told IPS that it was “unacceptable” that police failed to react to complaints of misbehaviour against a bus driver on Dec. 16, 2012.  Hours later, the driver and his crew were arrested for the gang rape and brutalisation of a 23-year-old woman passenger.

The victim and her male companion were flung off the bus and left lying in a busy Delhi street naked and bleeding for almost an hour with no passer-by daring to intervene for fear of getting embroiled in a lengthy police case.

As public protests grew, authorities moved the young woman to a Singapore hospital where she succumbed to her grievous injuries on Dec. 29. In Delhi, police resorted to water cannons, baton charges and mass arrests as protesters surged towards parliament.

Commenting on the rough treatment of protesters, Pandey said the police had “forgotten that their primary focus should have been on maintaining peace and order without resorting to force or behaviour likely to exacerbate tensions when an empathetic attitude could have quietened tempers.”

Even more than the brutal repression on the streets, rights activists are concerned with the way rape victims are treated at police stations, starting with refusals to record complaints.

In December, the victim of a gang rape in Patiala, Punjab state, committed suicide by consuming poison after leaving behind a note charging police with failing to act on her complaint and, instead, intimidating her.

Soon after she was raped by three men, the victim had appeared on television channels describing her ordeal, but that failed to rouse the police. Even after the suicide it took intervention by the Punjab high court before authorities moved to sack three policemen and initiate criminal proceedings against them.

In a press note released on Apr. 23, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), a major non-government organisation that is pushing for police reforms, expressed “serious concern at the continuing lack of response to victims of rape.”

CHRI said evidence of this failure could be seen in the way police handled the case of a five-year-old girl who was kidnapped and raped in Delhi last month.

Instead of registering the missing person complaint, police “simply drove the distraught parents away,” the CHRI press note said, adding that policemen even offered a bribe to prevent the family from taking their story to the media.

Even the new rape laws, which threaten police officers who refuse to record a complaint of rape with a two-year jail sentence, seem to have done nothing to change attitudes and behaviours, said CHRI Director Maja Daruwala.

The new law, drawn up after wide consultations with civil society, takes into consideration current thinking on gender issues and existing patriarchal attitudes in society to modify ideas ingrained in the Indian Penal Code that was introduced by the British colonial regime in 1860.

Recent events show that the law, passed by parliament on Mar. 20, is yet to kick in. “Changes in law brought about after the Dec.16 rape have little meaning if the police continue to defeat justice through their…subversive practices,” Daruwala said.

Also, while the changes provide for quicker trials and harsher punishments for rapists, they have been criticised for completely overlooking the burning need to modernise the police force to make it service-oriented rather than repressive, as desired by the Supreme Court.

“If the 2006 directives of the Supreme Court were adopted and implemented they could have transformed the police from a feared and distrusted force into an essential service upholding the law,” says Navaz Kotwal, coordinator of CHRI’s police reforms programme.

On Mar. 6, alerted by reports in the media of the police’s repeated high-handedness in dealing with anti-rape protests, the Supreme Court issued notices to the provinces to report on progress in implementing reforms.

But senior police officers are sceptical. “Even though the apex court has not given up its monitoring, the present bunch of police reforms is already a futile exercise,” says Vikash Narain Rai, former director-general of police in the northern Haryana state.

Rai told IPS that if police reforms are to be successful they need to be accompanied by “judicial reforms, an overhaul of correctional services and real empowerment of society.”

Rai regrets that the emphasis remains on “flexing state muscles through increased retribution and protectionism, essentially by-products of male chauvinism, rather than on sensitising criminal justice functionaries and empowering women.”

The U.S. Department of Defence is announcing that reported cases of sexual assault in the U.S. military last year rose again to 3,374, a six percent increase over 2011 and a record high.

Yet the figure that is causing widespread anger here is the estimated number of unreported cases – some 26,000 incidents of rape or assault. That’s a significant rise even over last year’s estimated figure of 19,000, an astonishingly high number that constituted the first time that the U.S. military had released estimates for unreported incidents.“Unless Congress removes the institutional bias from the military judicial system, sexual predators will continue to wreak havoc on our Armed Forces." -- Former Marine Corps Captain Anu Bhagwati

In a new annual report released Tuesday, the Pentagon says some 70 sexual assaults may be taking place within the U.S. military every day, affecting more than six percent of all women in active service and around 1.2 percent of men over the past year. Other official figures suggest that one in five servicewomen could be experiencing such assaults.

“Sexual assault is a crime that undermines trust within military units and is an affront to the basic values our Service members defend,” the report, available here and here, states. “While the Department has taken a multifaceted approach to fundamentally change the way the Department confronts sexual assault, there is still much work to do.”

Such figures constitute an increase of more than a third during just the past half-decade, and have clearly exasperated the top military leadership.

“[S]exual assault is an outrage; it is a crime … And if it’s happening inside our military, then whoever carries it out is betraying the uniform that they’re wearing,” President Barack Obama told reporters Tuesday.

“So I don’t want just more speeches or awareness programmes or training but, ultimately, folks look the other way. If we find out somebody is engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable – prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonourably discharged. Period.”

The Pentagon’s new report was given an inadvertent curtain-raiser on Monday, when the Air Force’s head officer in charge of sexual assault prevention was himself arrested on charges of sexual assault.

On Tuesday, President Obama noted that he had spoken with Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel earlier in the day and told him to “exponentially step up our game”. He also said that he wanted military members who have experienced sexual assault “to hear directly from their commander-in-chief that I’ve got their backs.”

Hours later, Secretary Hagel unveiled a new “prevention and response” plan aimed at increasing accountability, stepping up punishment and, ultimately, trying to end military sexual assault outright. The strategy includes the formation of a new nine-person panel, appointed by both the Pentagon and Congress, tasked with coming up with concrete recommendations within a year.

“This department may be nearing a stage where the frequency of this crime and the perception that there is tolerance of it could very well undermine our ability to effectively carry out the mission and to recruit and retain the good people we need,” Hagel told reporters Tuesday.

“We need cultural change where every service member is treated with dignity and respect, where all allegations of inappropriate behavior are treated with seriousness, where victims’ privacy is protected, where bystanders are motivated to intervene, and where offenders know that they will be held accountable by strong and effective systems of justice.”

62 percent retaliation

While the new Pentagon panel will be tasked with making recommendations on the full gamut of military sexual assault, one element that probably won’t be included is the possibility of removing responsibility for related investigation and punishment from the military structure itself.

This despite Secretary’s Hagel’s own contention on Tuesday that much of the problem has to do with the military’s “culture”. And despite critics’ contentions that assault victims are far less likely to report their experiences if they have to do so to a commanding officer.

Indeed, according to U.S. Senator Patty Murray, co-author of new legislation on the issue, some 62 percent of military personnel who have reported sexual abuse have experienced some form of retaliation.

“Every American should be outraged by the disturbing numbers from this year’s Defense Department sexual assault report, but no one should surprised,” Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps Captain and the executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), an advocacy group, told IPS in an e-mail.

“Today we still have a military justice system in which commanding officers are granted the authority over the entire criminal justice process – instead of trained, impartial attorneys and judges.”

Although last month Hagel received plaudits for putting forth a policy recommendation that would weaken or do away with commanding officers’ abilities to overturn courts-martial decisions in cases of sexual assault, on Tuesday he nonetheless stated that he did not believe that the panel should look into taking this power outside of the military chain of command.

“It is my strong belief … that the ultimate authority has to remain within the command structure,” Hagel said. “We do have to go back and review every aspect of that chain of command, of that accountability … [but] taking the ultimate responsibility away from the military – I think that would just weaken the system.”

Yet according to SWAN’s Bhagwati, more may need to be done to regularise investigation and accountability procedures.

“Unless Congress removes the institutional bias from the military judicial system,” she says, “sexual predators will continue to wreak havoc on our Armed Forces, and our troops will continue to face a well-founded fear of reporting, institutional retaliation, and career jeopardy.”

In recent weeks, the U.S. Congress has focused increasingly on military sexual assault, and on Tuesday senators put forward a bill aimed at combating the issue. According to a release, the 380,000 members of the Military Officers Association of America have already “strongly endorsed” the bill, which is slated to be introduced in the House in coming weeks.

Among other elements, the legislation “would create a new category of legal advocates, called Special Victims’ Counsels, who would be responsible for advocating on behalf of the interests of the victim,” Senator Murray, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

“These SVCs would also advise the victim on the range of legal issues they may face. For example, when a young Private First Class is intimidated into not reporting a sexual assault by threatening her with unrelated legal charges – like underage drinking – this new advocate would be there to protect her and tell her the truth.”

By Rousbeh Legatis
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 17 2013 (IPS)

Rape is often perceived as an individual trauma, but in reality its impact extends far beyond a single person and instead affects entire communities, complicating the already challenging task of helping victims of sexual violence.

Thérèse Mema Mapenzi, who works with rape victims in South Kivu of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), adds that in order for victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence to move on, they must have someone to listen to them.

Thérese Mema Mapenzi, who works with rape victims in South Kivu. Photo courtsey of Thérese Mapenzi.

Listening is also important to help devise solutions to deal with rape’s consequences on communities as a whole, explains the social assistant, who works directly with affected populations for the Justice and Peace Commission in Bukavu.

“I give them neither money nor food, but I listen to them and sympathise with them,” says Mapenzi. “What makes me proud is to see that soft words can help to cure the trauma of victims.”

In a conversation with IPS U.N. correspondent Rousbeh Legatis, Mapenzi discusses how rape is used as a tool of war to destroy people, families and communities. Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: Could you explain the destructive consequences of sexual violence on both individuals and communities?

A: In DRC, rape has been and is used as a weapon of war. Rebels know that in our culture, women are those who protect the culture in their communities. To destabilise the country and help actors of violence reach their goals, they are destroying families and thereby local communities, weakening social cohesion. They raped our sisters, mums, killed our brothers before our very eyes, humiliating and threatening us.

This violence comes with an atmosphere of silence on rape. It is not easy for a survivor of rape to say that he or she has been raped, because in our communities people do not easily speak about sex-related topics, so rape is treated as a taboo.

Many families were and are separated as a result of these experiences; raped women find themselves isolated, the harmony within families broken. Entire communities are weakened and divided, leading to an atmosphere of fear where the rebels become more powerful.If a victim does not speak, the process of healing the trauma cannot proceed.

Q: Often survivors of rape are re-victimised at a community level. Can you explain how that happens?

A: These people suffer terrible treatment from rebel groups. When they return to their communities, they are discriminated against. Until 2010, many victims of rape were not even considered in their communities and discriminated against by their families and neighbours.

Men were often forced to watch their wives being raped and threatened with being killed if they tried to help. Afterwards, it is difficult for men to talk about this experience, because they were supposed to protect the women, so they feel powerless and ashamed.

It also happens that men who were not with their wives when the rapes took place then consider them collaborators with the rebels.

Q: You work with 16 listening centres (trauma centres) in different villages of South Kivu. Why is listening so important?

A: Only by actively listening to people’s problems can one understand them or know what kind of assistance to provide. That is why it is so crucial to listen. By doing so, we contribute to their healing by showing compassion and sympathy. Most of the time, trauma-related secrets that we have to hold back destroy us from within without our even knowing.

For example, many people, especially women, here suffer from stomachaches, tension and headaches because they do not know to whom they can reveal their problems and associated emotions.

Q: Should victims be speaking out as well?

A: Victims must talk about their trauma in order to be healed. In the healing process, one of our goals is to enable traumatised victims to speak out about their situation and where and why they have problems in their daily lives, so they can feel relief. If he or she does not speak, the process of healing the trauma cannot proceed.

Q: What are you concretely doing there to help and support women, children and men?

A: To find survivors of rape, we enter communities to inform people about and make them more sensitive to the physical and psychological consequences of rape. We do that to remind everybody that sexual violence is a community problem.

We also ask them to not stigmatise victims of rape and explain what help our listening centres provide, so they also can tell others about our programmes.

How we then assist them differs from person to person. Sometimes it requires legal assistance, medical care, psychological or economical support. We provide counselling by showing that he or she is not responsible for the rape. If they have never been to a hospital for medical care, we refer them to one.

We also do family mediation, which aims to restore peace within families destroyed by rape. And if the rapist is known or if a child is born from rape – often the most mistreated among victims – we help bring them to justice.

Q: What support does your work need so that you can continue to help others?

A: The first thing I need is security. Sometimes we help a survivor of rape and she reintegrates well. After a while, however, the rebels come back to the village and rape her and others again. This disappoints me so much and makes me feel discouraged.

Another thing is the lack of sufficient financial means. Sometimes we listen to survivors of rape who have gone two days without eating, or to a refugee with children, a pregnant woman or an orphan of three years. Without the financial means to help them, it is difficult to cure their trauma.

Excerpt:

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. Credit: DoD Photo By Glenn Fawcett

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 9 2013 (IPS)

The new U.S. secretary of defence, Chuck Hagel, pushed Monday for reforms of the armed forces’ judicial code that would roll back an archaic provision allowing high-ranking commanders to overturn military court verdicts, a move that would particularly impact on cases involving sexual assaults.

The move comes in direct response to a major recent scandal. Last month, a three-star lieutenant-general overturned the November conviction of a lieutenant-colonel for aggravated sexual assault involving a civilian employee at a NATO air base in Italy.There are thousands of victims in the department, male and female, whose lives and careers have been upended, and that is unacceptable.

The general, Craig Franklin, had not participated in the trial and gave no explanation for his decision to overturn the conviction and one-year sentence. Thereafter, the accused, Lieutenant-Colonel James Wilkerson, was reportedly released from prison and put back on active duty.

The case enraged Pentagon officials, politicians and the public alike, but effectively highlighted the decision’s legality under current military law. Not only does Article 60 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) allow high-ranking officers to lessen or eliminate punishment following court-martial decisions, but it also precludes the possibility of any appeal.

Though the Department of Defence says that guilty verdicts are overturned in only around one percent of cases, sentences are reportedly modified far more often.

Shortly after he took over as secretary of defence, Hagel ordered an inquiry into the issue. On Monday, he announced that he would be forwarding proposed legislation to the U.S. Congress that would make two changes to Article 60.

“First, eliminating the discretion for a [commander] to change the findings of a court-martial, except for certain minor offenses,” Hagel explained, admitting that the proposal would not completely do away with these powers.

“Second, requiring the [commander] to explain in writing any changes made to court-martial sentences … to justify – in an open, transparent and recorded manner – any decision to modify a court-martial sentence.”

Hagel noted that the proposed changes have the “full support” of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the heads of each of the major arms of the U.S. military.

“This is the beginning of a long process to ensure that victims of military sexual assault – whether they are women or men – get justice,” Barbara Boxer, a senator from California, said following Hagel’s announcement. Several legislative proposals to tweak Article 60 are already underway.

While the new regulations, if passed by Congress, would affect all types of major infractions, both the timing and the content of Hagel’s remarks make clear that the focus is on a current spate of assaults within the armed forces. The U.S. military is in the midst of what has been widely described as a sexual assault epidemic, reeling from what was estimated in 2012 by top Pentagon officials to be some 19,000 cases per year.

Relatively few of those are actually reported. However, even of those that are reported, recent studies have found that less than 10 percent of the accused are actually held accountable.

“[I]t is clear the Department [of Defence] still has much more work to do to fully address the problem of sexual assault in the ranks – this crime is damaging this institution,” Hagel said Monday.

“There are thousands of victims in the department, male and female, whose lives and careers have been upended, and that is unacceptable. The current situation should offend every single service member and civilian.”

Systemic bias

The UCMJ was created around the same time as the founding of the United States, and part of the rationale for Article 60 was both to encourage plea bargains and to allow for an appeals process that otherwise did not exist. Yet a senior defence official here on Monday told reporters that “the world had changed”.

Indeed, while the U.S. system was originally based on the United Kingdom’s, the latter’s was changed in the mid-1990s after the European Court of Human Rights found it gave too much power to top commanders. Canada, Israel and New Zealand have reportedly made similar decisions.

Advocates and campaigners are applauding Hagel’s move. Yet many are also stepping up calls for the Pentagon to make more substantive changes, particularly to deal with what some have called systemic bias within the military against victims of sexual assault.

“Defence Secretary Hagel’s move toward disallowing generals to overturn convictions within the military is a step in the right direction, but only one step,” Helen Benedict, a journalism professor at Columbia University and the author of “The Lonely Soldier”, on the experiences of U.S. women soldiers in Iraq, told IPS.

“He still needs to end the inherent conflict of interest built into the military criminal justice system by taking the decisions to investigate and prosecute those accused of sexual assault out of military hands altogether.”

A group working on the issue of military rape, the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), commended the proposed changes, noting the proposal is encouraging in the aftermath of the “travesty of justice” surrounding the Wilkerson case.

“However, post-trial review is only one component of the command-driven system that currently governs how military crimes are handled,” Anu Bhagwati, SWAN executive director and a former Marine Corps captain, said in a statement sent to IPS.

“Unless pre-trial decision-making around investigation and prosecution of offenses is also removed from the hands of commanders and given to impartial prosecutors, military criminal justice will remain a lesser form of justice, both for victims and defendants.”

Hagel appears to be aware that additional reform measures will be necessary, noting Monday that he will soon announce new actions to strengthen the Pentagon’s “prevention and response efforts”.

He also unveiled the formation of several new independent panels that will be tasked with reviewing “the systems used to investigate, prosecute and adjudicate crimes involving sexual assault, and judicial proceedings of sexual assault cases.”

Today is International Women’s Day, and the issue of gender-based violence is topic A. Sadly, it has been a newsworthy topic in the global media, as well.

Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

However short the news cycle in this social media age, the world has certainly not forgotten the case of the 23-year-old physiotherapist who was brutally raped and murdered three months ago on a bus in Delhi, India. Although her name has been kept private, the horrible details of her victimisation have scalded the public consciousness and sparked outrage among people everywhere.

As the wheels of justice turn in Delhi, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, convening this week in New York, has listed violence against women as the lead topic at its annual conference. This issue has not been addressed as the main theme by the Commission for 13 years and is unlikely to be addressed again for another decade or more, so the timing, at least with regard to the tragic incident in India, is apt.

But the sad fact is that the issue of violence against women would be an appropriate topic at any time, in any year, because the problem has, to a large extent, been swept under the carpet in the nations of both the developed and the developing world.

In part, this is because women still do not enjoy full political and human rights in many societies, and in part it’s because we have too often allowed cultural norms and customs to serve as an excuse for violence against women.

The United Nations, as the world’s collective voice on these matters, must tackle the issue of gender-based violence head on. The time has long passed when men can or should be allowed to dictate the rights of women. Young girls should not be forced into marriage. And every woman should have the right to choose when and how many children she will have.

Finally, the U.N. must reaffirm that no cultural argument can ever justify violence against women.

The good news is that momentum is building for a strong statement by the Commission on the Status of Women. The challenge, then, will be to get the nations of the world to endorse the statement, and commit to the concrete actions it mandates.

Inevitably, there will be pushback from representatives of some of the United Nations Member States, who may argue that majority position on this critical issue does not accord with the religious or cultural values of their societies. But where violence against women is concerned, there can be no compromise. These women are our very wives, sisters, daughters and grand-daughters.

At UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, we have long advocated the human rights of women and girls, based on global conventions that these rights are fundamental and universal. To that end, we have supported programmes that seek to eliminate forced marriages, discourage adolescent pregnancy, put an end to harmful practices, such as female genital mutilation/cutting, and combat the scourge of violence against women.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, UNFPA is committed to strengthening and expanding its efforts to do everything it can to bring an end to gender-based violence. Gender-based violence remains a major health and human rights concern and no human development can be achieved fully as long as women and girls continue to suffer from violence or live in fear of it.

We will, therefore, support a strong statement from the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women, and we will urge its adoption by the Member States. The horrific rape and murder in Delhi should remind us that the women of the world cannot wait another decade for the international community to address this issue. The time to act is now.

*Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.

Women protest insecurity and living conditions at a tent camp in central Port-au-Prince, January 2011. Credit: Ansel Herz/IPS

By Ansel Herz
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Mar 7 2013 (IPS)

Haiti is poised to enact major reforms to its penal code to make it easier for victims of rape to prosecute their attackers.

The amendments to the penal code would precisely define sexual assault in accordance with international law, legalise certain types of post-rape abortions, and criminalise marital rape.

The changes also mandate state-funded legal aid to victims who cannot pay for counsel. Discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” would be banned in limited circumstances, in a first for Haitian law.When someone beats you, rapes you, and it's all over - you just keep it inside you? That would make me crazy.

“I think it’s an exciting time,” Rashida Manjoo, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, said in February at a conference on the reforms. “It’s a small start with the penal code, but it’s a good start.”

Lawyers and activists at the conference pored over a three-page draft of the reforms. They’re optimistic that Haiti’s parliament will approve them within the year. Haiti’s prime minister and the ministry of justice have indicated they support the amendments.

But Manjoo warned that the law won’t be fully implemented or enforced without adequate funding from donors and participation by the public.

In the three years since the 2010 earthquake, the issue of sexual violence has gained an increasingly high profile. Foreign media reports referred to a “rape epidemic” in the tent camps scattered throughout Port-au-Prince.

A January 2012 study by a coalition of legal and women’s groups found that at least one member of 14 percent of all households displaced by the quake had been sexually assaulted.

Some experts, notably anthropologist and author Timothy Schwartz, cite a lack of independent data and question whether the prevalence of rape has been exaggerated by some of the advocacy organisations mentioned in this report.

But even Schwartz applauds the effort to reform the penal code by these same groups. He said it represents a welcome departure from the usual approach to structural problems in Haiti, where non-governmental organisations stage piecemeal interventions instead of bolstering the state.

Improvements at the grassroots

In the meantime, Haitian citizens, the police, and lawyers have attempted to address the violence at the grassroots.

In some tent camps, internally displaced Haitians formed brigades to safeguard against criminal threats, including rapists. A report by Poto Fanm+Fi found that these brigades, because of their strong community bonds, were usually more effective than patrols by United Nations peacekeeping troops at stopping sexual violence.

At police stations throughout the capital city, there are now officers trained to receive and assist female victims, Marie Gauthier, the Haitian National Police’s Coordinator for Women’s Affairs, told IPS.

“Carrefour, Fort National, Kenscoff, Port-au-Prince, Cite Soleil, Delmas, Croix de Bouquet. . .” Gauthier listed off the different stations in city districts. Still, “now we need vehicles,” she said, “to go quickly and arrest the perpetrator.”

Survivors of sexual violence often turn to KOFAVIV, a Haitian women’s group, for moral and humanitarian support. The quake destroyed the group’s headquarters, displacing its founders into a tent camp.

But the group secured funding from international donors, including the U.S. government, allowing it to move from the camp into a two-storey office and expand its programmes. Women come from every corner of Port-au-Prince for bi-weekly gatherings where survivors can bond and share information with one another.

In the courts, significantly more rape cases are going to trial, according to lawyers for Bureaus des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), a prominent Haitian law firm. Nearly a third of criminal trials during last summer’s court session in Port-au-Prince were for rape charges.

Thirteen convicted rapists were sentenced – a majority of those to maximum jail time. More prosecutions followed in the fall.

“It’s extremely significant, considering that a mere 10 years ago, barely any cases were being prosecuted,” Nicole Phillips, an attorney with the BAI, told IPS. She called the prosecutions and reforms to the penal code “a massive step forward.”

In the past, judges would demand victims present medical certificates obtained within 48 to 72 hours demonstrating they were raped. But it was difficult or impossible to get them, due to stigma, trauma, and prohibitive costs.

“The trials are getting more sophisticated,” Phillips said. The courts now rely more on expert witness testimony from medical professionals. She praised judges and the police in Port-au-Prince for taking rape accusations more seriously.

More work to be done

But Haiti’s progress in combating violence against women faced a high-profile test at the beginning of the year, and arguably failed.

When Marie-Danielle Bernadin first told her close friends she was sexually assaulted by her boss, the president of Haiti’s electoral council, their advice was simple: Leave Haiti.

“Where are you going to find justice here? Don’t file a complaint,” she remembers them saying. “Just go.”

After all, “normally one wouldn’t waste time” pressing charges against a high-ranking official, she said.

“But for me, I can’t keep something like this inside,” she told IPS in an exclusive interview. “When someone beats you, rapes you, and it’s all over – you just keep it inside you? That would make me crazy.”

Bernadin went to the police in November, shortly after the incident. She alleged that the official, Josue Pierre-Louis, had violently raped her after she confronted him about pictures of naked women on his cell phone.

She had been his assistant for two months. Pierre-Louis strenuously denied the charges and accused her of “espionage”, but the case went to trial.

At a pretrial hearing in January, supporters of Pierre-Louis – one of the most powerful men in the country – muscled their way into the hallway outside the courtroom, brandishing signs and chanting in his support. It took 15 minutes for police to arrive before they removed the protesters.

Five days later, Bernadin asked her lawyers to withdraw the charges. She issued a written statement to the press, saying: “I’ve decided to abandon the charges… but I reaffirm that I was beaten and raped by Josue Pierre-Louis.”

She described the previous months as some of the most difficult in her life. Supporters of Pierre-Louis attempted to shut her up using various methods, she said: her father was offered a job overseas, violent threats were phoned in to her family members in New Jersey, and a fake image of her was circulated online.

Her lawyers asked reporters not to take her photo, but they tried anyway every time she left the courthouse. She tried in vain to cover her head with a lawyer’s vest. The reporters ripped it before she could get to the car.

In her written statement, Bernadin denounced the threats made against her, judicial corruption, and described the tumult at the courthouse as “a horrible scene”.

Prior to the experience, she didn’t know that groups supporting victims of sexual violence existed in Haiti. She told IPS the justice system should prosecute Pierre-Louis of its own volition and “shine a light on the issue.”

“This way, if someone is raped, she could feel proud,” she said. “She could feel courageous enough to press charges. And rapists would be more afraid to commit these acts.”

By Marzieh Goudarzi
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 2013 (IPS)

As the earthquake in Haiti has proven, even more important than a recognised name or robust physical presence is the quality of services delivered by humanitarian relief organisations.

Courtesy of Yifat Susskind

MADRE, a U.S.-based women’s human rights NGO, has been part of the Haiti relief effort since the earthquake and has recently focused its efforts on advocating for legal reforms addressing violence against women.

Executive Director Yifat Susskind spoke with IPS about MADRE’s work in Haiti and the principles and practices that guide their work all over the world. Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: MADRE places great focus on changing policies and systems, a practice learned from experience with political movements like the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, which identified the system of Apartheid as the enemy and not white South Africans. Explain the importance of advocacy that targets systems and not people, especially within the realm of women’s rights.

A: It is crucial to question received ideas about who our allies and enemies are. One of the tools of systems of oppression is to divide people up into “us” and “them”. Allowing someone else to tell you who is the “us” and who is the “them” is a poisonous idea. One of the goals of progressive social movements is to establish that “us” encompasses ultimately everybody; there is no “them”.

Focusing on violence against women, we want to work in a way that is inclusive of men and boys, to promote the understanding that human rights is not a zero-sum game, and to put out a vision of the world that is better for everybody so that people are moved to create change. We know that when the needs of women and girls are valued – when they are educated, when they are given economic opportunity, when they are given political rights and access – everyone benefits. The benefits begin at the local level and are ultimately felt globally.

Q: You recently launched a petition with the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence to promote legal reforms in Haiti that more strictly prohibit and punish violence against women. Discuss the significance of such legislation to your work in the country.

A: This draft law would change the conversation around violence against women, not just in Haiti but in the region and potentially around the world, because it is an extremely progressive piece of legislation.We want to work in a way that is inclusive of men and boys, to promote the understanding that human rights is not a zero-sum game.

For example, for the first time ever in Haiti, marital rape, which is not recognised in many legal systems, would be a crime. That is just one of a number of progressive provisions.

This law is the counterpart of our humanitarian aid, violence prevention strategies, rape counseling, and legal referral work, which meet the immediate needs of women who are threatened by rape and violence every day.

We know it’s not enough to be constantly treating the symptoms of the crisis of a rape culture. We also need to do the longer term work of changing the culture, and legislation is one way to do that.

Q: MADRE’s 2011 annual report states, “We accompany our partners through every step of the human rights advocacy process.” Discuss what this process looks like in Haiti and the range of actors with whom you work.

A: In the months after the earthquake, we were part of a monitoring team with our partners in Haiti, involving local grassroots groups as well as human rights professionals, international lawyers, and students.

Because we work in partnership with grassroots groups, run by the women who were themselves displaced by the earthquake and living in the camps, we are able to approach those women and ask, “What do you need?”, which is a wholly different approach than coming into a crisis, as a lot of big international aid groups do, and saying, “Here’s what you need.”

That’s a really important distinction for us. In monitoring, we find a lot of gaps, lapses, and absences of rights being protected, in particular for the most vulnerable populations and especially women and girls. The U.N. guidelines on the rights of displaced people are excellent, but they are rarely implemented.

A big part of our work has been about demanding and creating a space at the table for grassroots organisers, trying to overcome the structural barriers and attitudes that prevent them from being heard in policy-making.

We created a series of interactive workshops that brought to the same forum and on equal footing grassroots women’s groups, big international NGOs, U.N. agencies, court officials, municipal government officials, police, and hospital workers. We also conduct workshops with women in the camps about what actions need to be taken and we figure out how to implement them, because it is not enough to document and register the human rights abuses that are happening.

Q: Have you noticed a change in norms and attitudes within the international community regarding violence against women since the founding of MADRE in 1983?

A: Yes, definitely. When we started, there was not even recognition inside the human rights movement of violence against women as a human rights issue. MADRE and a lot of other organisations had to wage a global campaign under the banner of “women’s rights are human rights”, which now seems like a very obvious thing to say, but certainly was not in 1983.

Now, rape as a weapon of war is discussed at the U.N. and in the halls of government. When we can get powerful people and institutions to at least say that violence against women should be treated as a serious concern, we have leverage with which to hold them accountable.

We used to not have that at all. It used to be that people would come into an international courtroom to talk about rape as a weapon of war and there would be snickering. The work that has been done on these issues has resulted in real changes both in policy and in the lived reality of people on the ground.

Excerpt:

Protesters gather at a candlelight vigil in New Delhi to honour the 23-year-old rape victim who died last month. Credit: Sujoy Dhar/IPS

By Sujoy Dhar
NEW DELHI , Jan 21 2013 (IPS)

On a chilly Wednesday evening, exactly a month after a young woman was gang-raped and brutalised on a moving bus in New Delhi, hundreds of sombre citizens gathered at a candlelight protest in India’s national capital.

They had come to remember the victim who, 13 days after the assault on Dec. 16, succumbed to internal injuries in a hospital in Singapore – but not before igniting a nation to rise against an epidemic of sexual violence that has long plagued this South Asian country of 1.2 billion people.

Anger was palpable among the mourners assembled peacefully at the city’s iconic protest venue, known as Jantar Mantar, to pay tribute to the 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh Pandey, who is now referred to as “Braveheart” and “India’s daughter” after her valiant fight against six male attackers.

But the massive wave of protests and insistent calls for justice that followed the tragedy has not been a sufficient deterrent to violence: a series of gang-rapes, including a few inside buses, have been reported across India in the last few weeks.

The brutality of these assaults is almost directly proportional to the passion of the protests, activists and experts here say.

As a result, crowds have gone from demanding justice to demanding death: the “We Want Justice” slogan popularly printed on placards and banners has been replaced by the mantra: “Hang the Rapist”.

Following an explosion of street protests, social media exchanges and politicians’ remarks – ranging from assurances to platitudes and polemics – the primary debate now raging across the country is whether or not the death penalty can end, or at least reduce, such horrific attacks on women.

The debate does not spring from a void, but rather from intense frustration.

For the past month, Indian authorities have struggled to pacify urban protestors with promises of legal amendments and enhanced security for women; but even as politicians spoke from podiums and police poured into the streets, brutal attacks continued unabated.

In the northern state of Punjab, a woman was gang-raped inside a bus in early January, while in the northwestern Rajasthan state a young girl killed herself after police browbeat her for lodging a sexual assault complaint.

In Goa, a seven-year-old was raped inside a school toilet.

The case against the death penalty

The question of rape has forced politicians and scores of citizens to grapple with the limitations of the country’s justice system.

India’s Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath said laws should be changed to include death as a penalty for rape in the most brutal cases that leave the victim incapable of leading a normal life, while India’s leader of opposition in Parliament, Sushma Swaraj, who hails from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), pleaded with the Prime Minister for capital punishment.

Such political grandstanding has found support among many citizens who are angry with the rising number of assaults. A recent survey found that 100 percent of women respondents feel that solving the problem of women’s insecurity is India’s single greatest challenge.

“It’s absolutely rubbish to say that these people (the attackers) are human and deserve to be kept alive at the taxpayers’ expense,” New Delhi-based media professional Sanchita Guha told IPS.

“It (capital punishment) also brings a sense of closure to the victim,” she argued.

However, a majority of women’s groups are opposed to the death penalty or even chemical castration for rapists, demanding instead assurance of rigorous punishment for offenders who almost always get away scot-free owing to legal loopholes and an insensitive judiciary.

Kavita Krishnan, one of the most prominent faces of the New Delhi street uprising against rape and secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, told IPS, “All this talk of the death penalty is a big red herring to divert attention from gender crimes to severity of punishment.”

“The death penalty is no solution for a country with misogynistic laws. There is no evidence anywhere in the world to prove that the death penalty lessens rape or, for that matter, deters anyone from committing any other crime.”

If at all, the death penalty could be a deterrent to harsh sentences against offenders, “since the courts would be overcautious before passing such a verdict,” according to Krishnan.

“In India a large number of sexual assaults also take place at home, by close relations. There would be intense pressure on the victim to not file the complaint in the first place, if there is a death penalty,” she said.

“Conviction rates should go up in India and debate should be about surety of punishment and gender-sensitive laws.”

Currently, rapists face a minimum of seven years in jail under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), a sentence that can extend from ten years to life imprisonment depending on the severity of the case.

Under Section 375 of the IPC, rape is defined only as intercourse involving penile penetration but does not include forced oral sex, sodomy or penetration by a foreign object, which can cause more grievous injury, experts say.

These acts are placed under Section 354 of the IPC dealing with “criminal assault on a woman with intent to outrage her modesty” and Section 377 of the IPC, covering “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”.

According to Ranjana Kumari, director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Social Research (CSR), attaching the death penalty to rape could mean that the offender gets no punishment at all, since death row prisoners are allowed to file clemency petitions before the President who has the power to commute the sentence.

“If the death penalty is implemented, the judicial scrutiny will be very long as well. There are already about 95,000 cases pending in various courts and it is impossible to implement capital punishment in large numbers,” Kumari told IPS.

“We want severe punishment, which includes rigorous imprisonment, because otherwise it will be only a choice between no punishment or death as penalty,” she stressed.

Rape cases in India currently have a 26 percent conviction rate, she said. “We also found that no one gets more than three to four years in jail.”

Following the protests over the Delhi gang-rape, the government appointed a three-member committee of jurists to make recommendations on amending laws to increase the quantum of punishment and ensure speedier justice.

Headed by former Chief Justice of India J S Verma, the committee received suggestions from all quarters.

In its suggestion to the committee, prominent human rights group Amnesty International appealed for “penalties that reflect the gravity of the crime, but without recourse to the death penalty, or any other punishment which violates the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment, such as physical castration or non-consensual ‘chemical castration’.”

As the leading women’s rights lawyer, Flavia Agnes, argues, the death penalty could even prompt the rapist to kill his victim.

“If punishment for rape and murder is the same, many rapists may kill the victim to destroy evidence,” she told IPS.

Instead, “We should find answers from our parliamentarians and experts about how we can make our public places safe for women,” she said.

(END)