Sexism is still rife in the UK. The pitifully low number of female MPs, the lack of senior businesswomen, the number of misogynistic prats that still roam the streets, and the obsession with being thin and pretty – all of these show how common it is. And the pay gap and our pathetic rape conviction rate are even worse. Considering how far we’re supposed to have come, we still have a bit of a fight on our hands before we can sit back and feel comfortably equal.
Britain can perhaps be aligned with the US and Europe without getting anything too wildly wrong. It’s in other parts of the world where the fight can seem infinitely harder, and nothing illustrates this better than the levels of rape and sexual violence in countries affected by conflict.
Charity CARE International is trying to raise awareness of this, and its website tells of women and girls, in places like Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo, who are raped by soldiers or militia. It can be done over and over again, sometimes with objects and by gangs of men, and often in front of their families to deliberately humiliate them.
It’s done because the offenders want to create as much fear and havoc as possible, because they want to use rape as a weapon against people as a way to destabilise communities, and because violence, in the midst of a war, becomes almost normal – people seem to become less human.
Some women are kidnapped and kept for months, and are repeatedly assaulted. The offences are so violent that people can be left unable to have sex, or constantly bleeding, and they often need medical attention which they can’t afford to pay for. Husbands can be beaten or killed, and if they escape this, they feel shamed if their wives are attacked because they weren’t able to protect them. Victims are left terrified of their ordeal happening again, and are unable to play a full role in society or the economy. Wherever there is a conflict, women are disproportionately affected.
The problem is huge and is largely ignored considering how serious it is. An average of 40 women a day are raped in just one province of the DRC. Between 250,000 and 500,000 were raped during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and up to 50,000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s.
Media coverage of rapes occurring in the UK still isn’t good enough, so the newspapers are hardly going to be up to speed on what’s happening in Africa. The UN, though, has started to take notice.
Last year, Patrick Cammaert, former peacekeeping operation commander in DRC, said it is now more dangerous to be a woman than it is to be a soldier in conflict. The UN responded by adopting a resolution – basically a set of principles – to do something about it.
This summer, as long as bureaucracy doesn’t eat it, there should be an implementation plan published, which will set out what the UN plans to do and how it will do it. CARE International, the charity campaigning for change on this issue, says UN peacekeepers need training on how to support and protect women, and an emphasis needs to be put on the safety of those women who are brave enough to speak out against their attackers.
CARE is collecting signatures on a petition which they will send to the UN, to try and make sure the implementation plan is high on its agenda. Lee Webster, campaigns manager at the organisation, says the resolution could have a massive impact on the lives of women. She explains that,
“The issue is not well received in the press and there’s a huge problem with the offenders never being brought to justice. We really need to push the problem up the agenda.
“The UN process is very frustratingly slow, particularly when women are being raped and violated every day. But we have to believe that if we keep plugging away, we can make a difference.”
To sign the petition, go to careinternational.org.uk and click on their Voices against Violence section.For more information, you can also follow CARE on Twitter: @careintuk