The 25-year old Deputy Director of the youth movement escaped death at the outbreak of the war in Liberia and became an active advocate against all forms of violence.
This morning, while sitting in the car to the office, the discussion on the radio also caught my attention as it was question of gender-based violence (GBV). I asked the driver first: "Do you know what it means?" I explained him that 'gender-based' often means that it is against girls and women. I went on to ask him if there is a lot of such violence in Liberia. He replied a definitive "yes".
Weapon of war and impunity for perpetrators unless…
An in-depth analysis in 2004 by IRIN, Our Bodies - Their Battle Ground: GBV in Conflict Zones, that won an award at the first United Nations Documentary Film Festival, looked at GBV.
An article gives some definitions. When involving women, GBV is violence that is directed against a woman or girl because she is female, or that affects women disproportionately.
The term 'sexual violence' is used to denote sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. It refers to any act, attempt, or threat of a sexual nature that results, or is likely to result in, physical, psychological and emotional harm. Sexual violence is therefore a form of gender-based violence. (IRIN)
Gender-based violence (GBV) is a scourge in conflict and post-conflict societies. Statistics are appalling. "An estimated half a million women were raped during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. A staggering 50% of all women in Sierra Leone were subjected to sexual violence, including rape, torture and sexual slavery, according to a 2002 report by Physicians for Human Rights. In Liberia, an estimated 40 percent of all girls and women have fallen victim to abuse. During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, between 20,000 and 50,000 women were raped."
Everywhere in the world, children, women and men raise their voice against GBV. Some fear that talking about it makes it worse. An example: Lyn Lusi, founder of a clinic for sexually abused women in Goma, eastern DRC, feels the constant publicity of the failure of the government to apprehend those who commit the violations only fuels the problem. "Unfortunately I don't think the problem is reduced despite all the publicity it's getting," she told IRIN, "…all that publicity is saying 'there's impunity, there's impunity'. There's nothing to frighten people … now they know they can do it without paying the consequences".
In Liberia it is not rare to see along the roads billboards who read "Stop rape", "rape is a crime", and carry images of a woman being raped by a man with a cross on it. But is awareness raising on the issue enough? The Government of Liberia has formulated a GBV National Action Plan but many regret worldwide inaction.
The international law only addressed the issue recently. (…) the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998 marked a turning point: it declared for the first time that "rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilisation, and other forms of sexual violence of comparative gravity" are to be considered war crimes. If these acts are knowingly committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population, they constitute "crimes against humanity", it said. (IRIN)
However there is doubt about the capability of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as "Jeune Afrique" told that the ICC had not held a trial over five years.
GBV takes its toll
The World Health Organization says gender-based violence accounts for more death and disability among women aged 15-44 years than cancer, malaria, traffic injuries and war combined. As long as there is no real progress on addressing the culture of impunity that surrounds sexual violence, the number of women medically and psychologically scarred for life will increase as the epidemic continues unrestrained. (IRIN)
GBV provokes consternation, and compares with a practice characterised as 'cultural', female genital mutilation (FGM). According to the World Health Organization, FGM is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. It reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. Same underlying cause in brief...
