Conflicts in Africa Exacerbate Gender-Based Atrocities

03 August 2009

By Jane Morse
Staff Writer

Documents & Texts from America.gov

Washington — When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton heads for Africa August 4, she will focus a spotlight on the widespread problem of violence against women.

Clinton is visiting seven countries in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where violence against women has been horrific. Accompanying her will be Melanne Verveer, a longtime advocate of women's rights and human rights who is the first U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues.

In the DRC, ongoing fighting between factions has subjected women to unprecedented savagery. Some 1,100 rapes are reported each month, with an average of 36 women and children raped every day. Many of the victims are mutilated in the process, according to Verveer.

"The victims of these crimes are stripped of every shred of their humanity," Verveer told U.S. senators in a recent hearing. "To the perpetrators, they are nothing more than vessels for carrying out a war strategy — a war these women do not perpetrate and in which they play no voluntary military role."

A WIDESPREAD PROBLEM

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in three women around the world will experience violence in her lifetime. In some countries, that rate can be up to 70 percent.

The violence women suffer can range from domestic and sexual abuse to mutilation and murder. About 5,000 women, WHO found, are murdered each year by family members in the name of "honor."

The United Nations defines violence against women as "any act of gender-based violence that results in — or is likely to result in — physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering." The U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights says women and men alike have the right to "security of person" and that no one should be subjected to "inhuman or degrading treatment."

So why does one-half of humanity live under fear of this kind of threat?

According to one study by the United Nations, the roots of violence against women "lie in historically unequal power relations" between men and women both at home and in public life. "Patriarchal disparities of power, discriminatory cultural norms and economic inequalities serve to deny women’s human rights and perpetuate violence," the study said.

LEADERSHIP IS IMPORTANT

To help stop violence against women both in the United States and around the world, the Obama administration has taken a number of steps to establish the necessary leadership to deal with such an intractable problem.

The Obama White House created a new position — the White House adviser on violence against women — charged with advising the president and vice president on domestic violence and sexual assault issues in the United States. In June, Vice President Joe Biden, the author of the landmark Violence against Women Act, announced that Lynn Rosenthal, one of the foremost experts on gender-based violence issues in the United States, would fill that position.

President Obama also created the position at the U.S. Department of State now held by Verveer. Verveer’s job is to mobilize concrete support for women’s rights and political and economic empowerment and combat violence against women and girls in all its forms.

And Hillary Clinton — the third female secretary of state in U.S. history — long has championed respect for women and their full participation in economic, political and social life. Her famous speech in Beijing in 1995, when she declared that "human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights," inspired women worldwide.

CULTURE OF IMPUNITY MUST END

President Obama, during his visit to Ghana in July, condemned the violence inflicted on women in Africa, especially in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"We must stand up to inhumanity in our midst," Obama told the Ghanaian parliament July 11. "It is the ultimate mark of criminality and cowardice to condemn women to relentless and systematic rape. We must bear witness to the value of every child in Darfur and the dignity of every woman in the Congo. No faith or culture should condone the outrages against them."

In her May testimony to the U.S. Senate, Verveer said rape has become trivialized and accepted as routine. In the DRC, for example, of the more than 14,000 rape cases registered in provincial health centers between 2005 and 1007, only 287 were taken to trial.

"The culture of impunity must end," Verveer said.

U.S. SUPPORT FOR VICTIMS

The U.S. Department of State works with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa and funds special programs for the prevention of gender-based violence and to help refugees. In 2008, the State Department provided more than $6 million for programs seeking to draw attention to and prevent gender-based violence in Africa and around the world, and more than $2 million for 10 women’s centers in Darfur that help victims of gender-based violence receive psychosocial counseling and referrals for medical services.

In December 2008, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) signed a $5 million, three-year cooperative agreement with the international NGO Cooperazione Internazionale to work with women victims of violence in the DRC.

The United States has sponsored U.N. resolutions to encourage other members of the United Nations to more aggressively tackle gender violence issues by punishing perpetrators, helping victims and preventing further violence.

The text of Verveer’s congressional testimony is available on the State Department Web site.