Women, young girls and children are high risk targets in any conflicts and war. Their vulnerability makes them easy targets. They are scarred for life. Their suffering doesn’t end with the end of war, their lives stands totally devastated and mutilated. They are shunned by their community for being victims of rape, and often they have to fend for themselves and their young children. Plan, an international child aid agency has drafted a report, Because I am a Girl , to document atrocities and the affect war and continuing conflicts have on the girls and children.

According to the report:

a)38 countries have used girl soldiers in armed conflict in the last two decades
b)200 million girls live in countries that are at risk of, in the midst of or emerging from armed conflict
c)90 per cent of victims of modern warfare are civilian with more and more women and children
d)About 20 million girls are out of school in war zone

These figures are shocking. Stories of survivors in the report are very disturbing but they show rare courage to emerge from the shadows of their trauma. Conflicts are ruining many countries. They are ruining life of small girls, their families and the communities. These refugees of war need to be healed and rehabilitated in life.

The report suggests that the focus of aid agencies should include education and rehabilitation of women, girls and children to bring them back to mainstream life. Mental scars of agony and atrocities of war will never heal. But the numbers of women are children affected are large and without proper educational aid the future of communities and the world will remain forever at risk. They’ll be forever trapped in circle of poverty, abuse, displacement, hunger, high mortality and more conflicts.

If we have the target to address the true issue of eradicating poverty this could be one of the important ways. Educating women and girls will ensure their children and families are educated, which in turn will help communities to help themselves. After all wars and conflicts snatch away a way of life and livelihood.

Survivors of conflicts show extraordinary courage. Only education can equip them with skills to overcome the trauma and tragedy and live a dignified life. Knowledge aid is the best aid.

Source: TheAge

Ann Robinson particularly holds women responsible for their own plight for the ones who succeed see the gender battle as won, but they do not realize that they need to fight for women as a whole and it is not an individual fight! Rita Pullen, on the other hand, brought to notice the difference between girlification and pornification. She also made us realize that there is no need to take pride in the fact that you are educating girls for it is no favour, it is simply what they deserve.
This discussion reminds me of the classic John Lenon song, Woman is the nigger of the world, I wonder, when will she stop being that?

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Via: guardian

She is not abiding by the stereotypical norms of Indian society which ought to be followed by all girls especially that of the rural region. As a girl enters the stage of adulthood, she steps across the threshold of her new phase of married life however life is not same for the girls of Bedia tribe in the interiors of Rajasthan.

Girls as young as 13 years of age are forced to earn their livelihood by prostitution and just for a mere sum of Rs.100 (Indian currency). Bid can go for Rs.20,000 if the girl is virgin, and if, the girl happens to be ‘pretty’, well the price can soar up to Rs. 40,000.

Once a girl has lost her virginity she cannot marry. The choice has been made and the community celebrates it - this is her non-wedding night.

A girl’s ‘first earnings’ is observed with a huge round of celebrations ‘an extravagant party’, they say where ‘jewellery is bought for her and for her relatives, goats are slaughtered and alcohol runs freely. There is dancing, and offerings are made to the gods’.

Upon questioning, the girls replied that they do not mind entering into the flesh trade business as it would mean ‘money’ and ‘not doing housework’. But shirking the house work implies signing up to a life in where, they would have to deal with 20 to 30 clients per day until she reaches her forties. And after that the women would have to depend on children she may have for support.

For these girls/women, many of whom have chosen this profession, it is not the stigma of being a prostitute alone that is damning. In addition, they have to put up with physical and mental torture and absolutely no help from the police. The Bedia men on the other hand are the most parasitic members of their family since economy of the Bedias, insofar as it is dependent on prostitution.

Irony of the situation is that women who resort to this seldom receive a sympathetic word and hence their life is frittered away in the bottomless pit of sludge selling momentary pleasures. Their condition is wretched, leading a life of happiness with an air of respect is nothing more than a far fetched dream.

Have you ever witnessed a “human zoo”, a place where humans, more specifically women are exhibited in lieu of just £4? I know it sounds absurd but it ain’t. Women of the Kayan tribal community in Northern Thailand come under the paraphernalia of such an exhibition, why? well because of their “Long Necks” and hence they are also termed as “Giraffe Women”.

The age old tradition - of winding coil around the neck of a girl till the adulthood is still carried out by the people which happen to become a tourist attraction - has actually sealed the fate of women which compels them not to think about education, housing, full citizenship and, above all, peace.

Burmese migrants especially the Kayan ethnic group, who entered the neighboring province Thailand so as to escape from the 58-year-long civil war that tormented the lives of the natives, discovered no solace in the new region as well. No doubt the opportunities came to them but were nothing more than a mere mirage. For instance, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and foreign governments have put pressure on the Thai authorities to allow 20 Kayan to take up the opportunity of resettlement in New Zealand and Finland but the authorities did not pay any heed to the said verdict. Rather the Thailand Government is working very hard to keep these women a tourist attraction after all, at least one Thai village head collects tens of thousands of pounds a year from tourists visiting their village to see the spectacle of the “Long Necks”.

Nearly ten thousand tourists visit the village per year to see as many as 50 long-neck women and girls who pose for photographs and sell postcards, bracelets and souvenirs. Out of this the women and their families are supplied rice, chilli and cooking oil. The refugees have no other option than to accept what is being offered to them since they are living without hope or any positive prospects coming from anywhere that could provide them with a helping hand.

What is it behind winding coil around the neck?

There are two beliefs supporting the said notion, first, it was carried because of its personification with the feminine beauty, later the coils also became symbols of wealth and status and were worn as jewels. Secondly it also hints at the society which is saturated with chauvinism where men put the rings on their women to deter slave traders.

This reminds me of the age old custom of Foot Binding which was carried out in China, can’t say whether it still persists today or not but what ever the case the maybe one thing is sure, we have never witnessed any such weird tradition, like that of body modification being carried out by men … or is there any?

This is the condition despite the fact that 185 UN countries had pledged to outlaw the laws favoring men by 2005. The report prepared for UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour sheds light on the fact that 70 per cent of the world’s poor population comprised of women and that women held only 1 per cent of the world’s titled land. The report compiled by Fareda Banda, the law professor at London’s school of Oriental and African studies (SOAS) says that rape within marriage is still not considered as a crime by the law in about 53 nations and is one of the major exploitations against women. The other discriminating aspects are the divorce statuses, maternity benefits and pensions where the men held an upper hand always thus leading to bias against women. Speaking on the report, Fareda Banda stressed on the fact that even subtle looking laws such as the prescribed age for marriages can bring about a big change in a girl’s life. Explaining this she said,

Many states still have different ages of marriage for young women then they have for young men, and the age for girls is always lower then the age for boys which leads to violations, for example of a girls’ right education, if she has to leave school at 14 to get married, and this impacts upon her life chances. It ends up being a life-long violation of her rights in terms of forfeiting education, having children too early, possibly being damaged her.

The explanation is apt keeping in account the harsh treatment a girl child receives when she gets married off at an early age in the form of doing the household chores and begetting children which harms her not only physically but also psychologically. To fight this, the report recommends the introduction of a new and separate mechanism as the existing UN and International Human Rights Commission are not being upheld. It also calls for a new UN expert to focus specifically on laws which damage women’s chances in life. These laws should ensure better conditions for women in all the countries bringing them at par with the rest of the world in all aspects of life.

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Via: BBC

According to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), women fall short in many of the main indicators that measure progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment. Two-thirds of the 960 million illiterate adults in the world are women. Worldwide women employed in industries and services earn 78% of what men earn in the same sectors. Women’s share in decision-making positions stood at 30% in only 28 countries in the 1990s. Additional 70% of the global poor are women. If a woman’s race is taken as an additional factor then it doubles the burden of gender and racial discrimination depending on the part of the globe she belongs. For an aboriginal woman living in Australia or a Dalit woman living in India or a female asylum seeker living in UK their woes are no different.

Source: Independent
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Sexual violence, vulnerability, fear and parochial outlook is what women all over the world are experiencing, whether in their households or at workplace. The situation worsens when a woman leaves her nationality for serving in an insurgency and war afflicted area like Iraq. This situation seems reminiscent of the US women who serve in the Iraq war either as contractors or soldiers in the army. Abuses relating to women are either shoved away, negated and are usually jettisoned. And women raising voice especially against sexual abuse find themselves helpless in face of the obdurate administration of men of the higher authorities.

Such cases are frequent in Iraq war where US women are frequently becoming victims of war, facing explicit sexual exploitation and abuse. KBR Company, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown and Root, which provided logistical support to the US armed forces, has turned a deaf ear to these cases and the women employees are increasingly facing violence such as rapes and assaults. But the firm does not intend to formulate any laws and preventive actions against these crimes which have become a regular feature. Raising these issues entail a threat to the employment and bearing them becomes a crisis in turn for these women.

The main criticism signals to the Bush administrative policies in these areas which have amounted to a serious neglect of issues concerning safety and protection for women employed in Iraq. What seemed to be progressive developed nation has failed to protect its women from the clutches of exploitation and violence, and where testifying for the crimes inflicted has also become a sheer impossibility.

Source: IHT

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Argentina is recovering from an economic recession. The annual growth rate is now 8% and Al Jazeera English points out the need for the new President to maintain this growth rate during her tenure. Her allies include Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, Evo Morales, the Bolivian president and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. All are Left leaning ideologues. They are naturally antipathetic to President Bush’s regime in the US. Cristina Fernandez on the other hand, unlike her friends and husband is softer on her stand regarding the US. So she comes as a relief to both the US and her allied. The US would be backing her for it needs at least one person to count on for its presence in Latin America. The allies there need her to pass on their demands to the US. Crisitina Fernandez is thus a stabilising factor in chaotic South America.

She, along with other Latin American leaders has called for the release of Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian presidential candidate who was kidnapped in 2002 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). Betancourt is thought to be very ill and dying. Fidel Castro is seen as reluctant to free her. The machismo of the aged Castro is threatened by Ingrid Betancourt.

Image Credit: Alsumaria

Via: Al Jazeera

I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting is my object.

My Last Duchess These lines tell us more about dowry than any drier article ever can.

There are a few axioms of Indian marriages.

If the groom is a government official, doctor or lawyer, then he can ask for greater dowry than a private worker. If the bride happens to be pretty and working, then the dowry goes down. If the guy is a high paid techie, then he can demand the moon from the girls’ parents whether she be working or studying.

Dowry is never disallowed in our society and pre-nuptial agreements are virtually unheard of. A 23 year old PhD student, Priyanka Verma, who is also a teacher at Vanasthali Vidyapith, has been recently left in the lurch by a highly paid software engineer at Gurgaon. Problems began at the engagement party.

The boy’s family demanded a car. Rs 10 lakh was asked for buying a flat at Gurgaon. The girl’s family tried to buy peace by giving them the car. The boy said the car was too small. And ultimately the bridegroom’s family has disappeared. The wedding was supposed to happen on Tuesday and everything had been arranged accordingly. Now the girl’s family has lost face and somewhere the boy along with his parents, is enjoying life to the hilt.

Virginia Woolf had once pointed out in her celebrated article, A Room of One’s Own, how more men wrote on women than women wrote or were allowed to write on themselves. Also the essay’s title makes us notice that often women do not even have a room of their own. Right from Aristotle to our day, women are treated as so many cattle are. Feminists have a theory called the ‘male gaze’.

It includes not merely ogling at a woman but really controlling every aspect of a woman’s life. Male dominance controls everything feminine; what a girl will wear, where she will go, and how she will express herself in love. In fact, males control what she will think or rather, what she will not. In this case, Priyanka Verma had to leave her job and studies to appease the groom’s family. They do not like either working or studying women.

This case by itself is just another regular tragedy; not being newsworthy. Yet it very clearly highlights the problems that plague Indian women. Gender biases run deep. If women fight publicly on the street they are termed crazy or plain rude. But when a guy fights another guy, they are termed macho. This line of thinking effectively prevents women from fighting back. Today if Priyanka Verma tries to protest, she will just be termed an uncouth woman disgracing the high ideals womanhood.
We respect our women as mothers, goddesses and muses to insult them in real life.

Goldprice.org

Trafficking of women and young girls is on the rise in the tiny Himalayan country of Nepal. It is of no surprise that women from the impoverished parts of the country make up the majority of the trafficked victims. Years of political uncertainty, civil war and the massive growth and influence of South Asian flesh trade mafia have contributed to the rise in trafficking. For regional governments, trafficking is a growing concern.

In Nepal, women and child trafficking is a profitable business for the traffickers. The victims are forced into the sex industry, illegal adoptions, factory labor, organ transplantations, etc. According to many unofficial estimates, around 15,000 Nepali women are trafficked each year, although some suggest that this figure has increased two-fold due to the current political and social unrest across the country.

Poverty and lack of education make the Nepali women, particularly in the rural areas, vulnerable to the problem. Due to the lucrative nature of the prostitution business in the urban areas, socially and economically deprived women find no other options but to take it as a profession.

The Maoist insurgency has played an important role in increasing the trend of trafficking. Many women were left homeless by the bloody conflict making them vulnerable to trafficking middlemen. Sexual abuses against women and girls were common during the insurgency and social restrictions in the Nepali society have made the victims easy targets for traffickers.

The porous border between Nepal and India has assisted in the alarmingly high rate of trafficking. Less than satisfying border checks, incompetence in handling trafficking suspects, and bribing have made India the hub for trafficking of Nepali girls and women. Most of the trafficked women are brought to Kolkata from where they are sold to Mumbai and Delhi.

Trafficking certainly is not helping Nepal and other South Asian states in tackling the HIV/AIDS virus. A BBC study has revealed that about 40% of the Nepali women trafficked to India have returned to their homes with HIV positive. If trafficking is not controlled, it would be very difficult for an impoverished country like Nepal to handle a HIV epidemic.

Nevertheless, the situation is not totally out of control. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has taken some useful steps in combating the evil of trafficking. Various NGOs and governmental organizations are working tirelessly to raise awareness among the rural poor. Organizations such as Maiti Nepal, ABC/Nepal, SAATHI, etc, are actively working in preventing violence and exploitation against women and children.

With some sort of political stability around the corner for Nepal, one can hope for the best but having said that, this is by no means an easy task which would require the active participation of all sections of the society.

Link: Kantipuronline

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Recent U.S. report highlighted the barbaric behavior of the most notorious Congolese rebels mutilating the innocent bodies of women and raping some of the minors.

UN crisis expert Kathleen Cravero said, it is about time to be more vigilant in protecting women in all nations against the abusive acts of violence and free them from the bondage of helplessness.

Cravero, who serves as chairman of the UN Development Programme Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, led a new campaign that will help women and children who have been victims of conflicts and natural disasters to recover. But to sustain this project, Cravero said, the funding should be set to at least $10 million dollars for its global operations, particularly in depressed and remote areas.

This new campaign, she noted, aims to empower women by protecting their rights as individuals, secure them in crises, ensure that justice prevail as they are given guidance and protection from those who harmed them and give them the opportunity to be involved in all means of peace and recovery process in their community.

The UN expert said the heightening of brutality against women was caused by civil war within countries and no longer between countries. The problems of abuse springs from the households of a particular nation or even within the groups in the community, which make it difficult to solve when the victims are hesitant to be open of what are happening to them.

She emphasized sexual and physical violence against women is more prevalent after natural disasters subsided, especially to those who have become homeless and stayed in relocation sites.

Based on her observation, she found that as more people become frustrated of what life is waiting for them after being homeless. Social mores of communal living and healthy interaction are shattered causing most men to look for outlets of their anger and desperation as they rape women.

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Despite many efforts of United Nations and human right organizations in Africa, plenty of cases related to forced sexual intercourse still hits headlines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It had proved to become the biggest epicenter of one of the world’s major humanitarian crises.

In Congo, men of an ethnic group uses rape as weapon to take revenge from other rival group. It is the country where the national army is battling local and foreign militias in a struggle involving unresolved ethnic conflicts.

Congo’s rich mineral resources could make the country rich and prosperous but unfortunately regional power dynamics and greed of leaders of different ethnic society have never let them put full stop on current bloodshed in Congo. It is brutal reality that rape has been used to terrorise and punish civilians.

In Congo, many women are not able to access medical facilities within the 72 hours after being raped due to poor transportation facilities. So, many women are suffering from HIV and other sexual transmitted diseases.

In most of the countries Rape is considered as crime against humanity, but in Congo the rapists are unpunished and roaming free to repeat their crime again and again. Here Congolese authorities need to strengthen the judicial and penal systems to punish rapists.

The leader of the national and provincial governments, military commanders, the Catholic Church and other religious authorities should come forward to create small units which start sexual awareness training programme in remote places in Congo.

Via
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She has to keep her mouth shut on molestation, harassment, and eve teasing incidents; she hardly goes legal way against the crimes like domestic violence, kidnapping etc. committed by men in Muslim society. This needs very urgent attention of Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.

The valley, which is still trying hard to live peacefully is hitting headlines not for terrorist activities but for degrading condition of women, live there. In spite of the fact that the violations of human rights in Kashmir are in direct disregard of the principles of international human rights and humanitarian law, no attention has paid towards the these women who have been victim of such inhuman crimes.

Role of police!
A common complaint often reported against police is that they evade registering cases. It is true that in most of the case Police play the role of villain while registering the cases of rape, molestation dowry deaths and harassment. Sometimes if police has logged FIR due to pressure of people or media against accuse, they hardly investigate the matter seriously.

The numbers of cases of dowry or divorce are increasing. An advocate Mubeeda says that in the valley, normally, matrimonial cases outnumber other cases. Kashmir valley might be getting tourist attractions but People continue to suffer while the much-hyped slogan of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh proclaiming ‘Zero Tolerance’ towards human rights abuse!

Via

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Ashaiman women have vowed to march nude and sleep with the Deputy Prime Minster of Local Government & Rural Development, Maxwell Kofi Jumah. This is in protest of the Ashaiman-Adenta municipality’s decision to make Adenta the capital of Ashaiman. Yaa Asantewah, Queen Mother of Ejisu had once resisted white rule with her band of Ghanaian women. Now Madam K. K. Agogoe, Acting Queen Mother of the Ashaiman Market, has stated that since Ashaiman has been in existence for over 100 years, it is unfair to think of making Adenta the new capital. All Africa reports that at a recent hastily called meeting of Ashaiman elders the women unanimously demanded that the government decision be reversed. They pointed out that Ashaiman is logistically better suited for being the area’s capital. The meeting was attended by a veritable who’s who of the Ashaiman people. The importance of this protest is not in the meetings or even the location of the capital. Rather it is in the chutzpah of the women. One wishes that Bihar’s women would teach a similar lesson to the strongman Bahubali who has recently been accused of raping and murdering a woman.
African women have been a neglected lot. The international community has well nigh forgotten them. Africa is in the news whenever there is civil war in any one of the continent’s nations. White supremacists immediately point out why they should have never left Africa in the first place. The African people are barbarians who need whites to keep them in check. Only a few days back, Watson of DNA structure fame has unabashedly declared that whites are intellectually superior to blacks for the genes have so decreed. It is in this context that we ought to analyze this women’s uprising. They can manage their own and rightfully claim what belongs to them. And such women’s solidarity is to be seen together with such African female peer-groups like Empowering Hands. The latter is an organization started by escapee warlord-abused children. Here we must also remember that in Manipur women stripped to protest the Indian Army’s atrocities. It is these courageous women throughout the world, marginalized and ignored who are fast becoming beacons to a lost world. At least some where, some people have not yet become spineless. White supremacists of this world better beware black girl-power.

Why do women have to take these extreme measures to convince a hardened patriarchy? Are men losing the battle-of-the-sexes? Vengefully, only when women demean themselves, they will deign to hear. Sociologists need to study this issue in the above-mentioned global context.

Via: All Africa

Image: Painetworks

Women the symbol of love, kindness, mercy and spend her life in coping with sexual and mental abuses done by one or more men in countries dealing with war like situation. Whether it is Congo, Iraq, or Sierra Leone that has civil war like situation, thousands of women and girl are the victims of rapes, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and other crimes of sexual violence.

According to a thirty five page report prepared on the Sierra Leone’s woman and girl revealed that up to a third of the female population are suffering the aftermath of the sexual violence during the 11-year conflict in Sierra Leone. During the war these women have been used as a weapon. Among these victims, only few have been able to get the help from government or other sources (NGOs).

Shame and Stigma:

Most of the time it is seen that women had never spoken to anyone about their experiences due to the fear of stigma; others, with children complained of being ridiculed, ostracized, and were shunned by other people, even relatives behave likewise. The victims of rape have always been in fear of being rejected by family and community.

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