There is clearly a debate as to whether all publicity is good publicity. We won’t get into that here, but I lean on the side of usually, with exceptions. “Silence is Not Golden”. As I’ve written about the situation in the Congo here many times I’m going to stand on what’s been written. I am however going to pass on a initiative soaring throughout the blogesphere, in what appears to be mostly science blogs. The “oh wow rape is occurring everywhere maybe we should tell someone about it” initiative called Silence is the Enemy.

For those who cared enough over the last 4 years to delve into some of the individual situations where conflict rape is occurring and have taken up the cause, by donating time, money, or words, don’t move on yet. Many of the participating blogs are revenue producing blogs, and they are donating their June proceeds to Doctors Without Borders. The revenue is from clicks so it would be a nice thing for you to mosey on over via the links and give some of those blogs on that list some click thru.

We should not look at the Congo, or similar places where brutal conflict rape occurs, and think OMG how can this happen, without first examining what happens here in a developed, technologically advanced, highly educated and well fed country, and how our own attitudes and policies regarding rape contribute to what has been a very slow, at times seemingly useless, campaign by those such as the United Nations. We should be bothered by it. With that in mind, and remembering that in many of the countries in the world where conflict rape occurs the foreign policy in regards to the offending country is always about securing either the business interests, other best interests, or security of the country from which the policy comes, and this is often a deterrent to any change. We also shouldn’t forget that poverty, lack of opportunity and education, and the resultant lack of power, is a significant part of the problem. To that end, after working to provide basic health care, food and the necessities for existence, we need to work to provide opportunities for sustainable living, education, i.e. opportunity for socioeconomic growth to those who suffer most, and to those who want nothing more than to help themselves, as this is likely the best way to fight this scourge.

So go do some clicking, Doctors Without Borders does some fine work.

Feel free to spread the word too.

Also of possible of interest:

You can also read the recent report by Physicians for Human Rights, in partnership with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, the report documents “the ongoing abuse of women who fled the civil war in Darfur but continue to face the threat of rape as residents of refugee camps in neighboring Chad”. The report can be found at Darfuri Women dot Org in Nowhere to Turn: Failure to Protect, Support and Assure Justice for Darfuri Women.

You can read more about it in James F. Smiths pieces at the Boston Globe, and Boston dot com.
Tracking the war on women in Darfur
Boston team produces Darfur rape study

You can also view a video interview with Dr Sondra Cosby, medical services director for the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights at Boston Medical Center, she traveled to Darfur with the Cambridge based Physicians for Human Rights.

New! TEN REASONS WHY Eastern Congo is the Most Dangerous Place on Earth for Women

War on Women in the Congo – Eve Ensler

Should you just want just to donate without clicking … some suggestions:

IRC/Congo
IRC/Chad
Women for Women
Doctors Without Borders
Healing Trauma in DR Congo
Heal Africa

Once again a comments off, for your information posting.

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women – Statement from the Executive Director

The first year-long phase of UNIFEM’S Say NO to Violence against Women campaign concluded today, when signatures collected worldwide were presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a high level UN event.

In December 1999, at their 54th Session, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring November 25th the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. This was in recognition of the magnitude of the problem and the urgent need for serious commitment by the world community to make finding solutions a key priority.

The origins of November 25th go back to 1960, when the Mirabal sisters, activists from the Dominican Republic, were violently assassinated for their political activism. The sisters, known as the ‘Unforgettable Butterflies,’ became a symbol of the crisis of violence against women in Latin America. November 25th was the date chosen to commemorate their lives and promote global recognition of gender-based violence, and has been observed in Latin America since the 1980s.

With the UN’S growing understanding of the link between gender and violence, the gender-based nature of violence against women and its linkage to subordination, inequality between women and men, and discrimination, rape as an act of war, violence against women finally became a matter of Human Rights in 2006 with a published report classifying violence against women — whether it happens in the home or elsewhere — as a human rights violation the report argued that states are obliged by international human rights standards to hold perpetrators accountable. “This report acknowledged for the first time from the highest levels of the United Nations what human and women’s rights advocates had documented for decades: violence against women is a massive human rights violation that is both a cause and a consequence of deeply ingrained inequality between men and women”.

In the fall of 2007 The Security Council

stressing the importance of women in conflict prevention and resolution and in peacebuilding, and the need for their full and equal participation in peace processes at all levels. And concern about the low number of women appointed as Special Representatives or Special Envoys of the Secretary-General to peace missions.

and a fall 2008 Security Council meeting in which

Sarah Taylor, Coordinator, NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security drew attention to the fact that women were “dramatically” underrepresented in the United Nations’ 30 missions and should be appointed to more leadership positions.

Women remain underrepresented as functionaries of the United Nations.

With women continuing to be affected by the tool of rape as an act of war — most notably and viciously at this time in The Congo — it is evident we have a long way to go.

For More on Violence Against Women, Violence Women during conflict and information on how you can get involved:

Gender and
Armed Conflict (pdf)

Women, war, and international law: The historical treatment of gender-based war crimes

To Watch For: A book by Dr Nicola Henry on “mass rape” in contexts of war focusing particularly on processes of collective memory (or forgetting) of sexual violence that respectively acknowledge or omit women’s experience of sexual violence in war and conflict. Wartime rape Collective memory and the law: Interview with Dr Nicola Henry

Links
Stop Rape Now
UNIFEM
V-Day
Women War Peace
Women to Women International
Congo Crisis: More Help is Needed for Women and Girls in North Kivu as Sexual Violence Escalates
When Women are the Spoils of War
UNHCR ( where the search term violence against women will bring you to volumes of reports)
Volunteer UN

Books:

The European Women’s History Reader where you’ll find
Hsu-Ming Teo’s, The Continuum of sexual violence in occupied Germany, 1945-49.

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Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape

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A Selected Socio-Legal Bibliography On Ethnic Cleansing, Wartime Rape And Genocide In The Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda

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Violence against women is not inevitable, and is never acceptable.