Shazdeh Omari
Bio:
Shazdeh Omari is the former associate editor of WMC's Women Under Siege. She works as the senior program officer of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Before that, she was the copy chief at The Village Voice for four years. She has worked as a reporter, writer, editor, medical editor, and copy editor in the United States and Greece. Prior to her career in publishing, she taught English at Western Connecticut State University and reported, wrote, and produced radio features as an intern at United Nations Radio. Omari was born in Saudi Arabia and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, where she learned to read, speak, and write Urdu.
For women, the world might feel like it’s slowly becoming worse. Earlier this month, the UN announced that four peacekeepers in the Central African Republic have been accused of raping two women and an underage girl, as well as a 12-year-old girl. Last month, four women were raped and killed in Mexico City. And then there’s Syria, where reports keep emerging of how Islamic State militants justify raping women and children.
We began 2015 by looking at underreported stories of rape and sexualized violence around the world. Cases involving sexualized violence against women—its aftermath, its consequences—were falling below the public’s radar. Now, six months in, we thought we’d take a look at some of the good things that have happened—the steps forward in the march to end sexualized violence globally.
On Monday, a report from the UN was made public by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that highlights sexualized violence in war. The report covers attacks conducted in 2014 and describes violence against women in 19 countries—13 conflict zones, five countries that are recovering from conflict, and one “additional situation of concern” (Nigeria).
On February 24, a friend of mine posted an editorial on social media about a bill passed in the Pakistani Senate four days earlier, which punishes individuals who hinder prosecutions in rape cases or stigmatize the survivor. My friend asked: “How was this story not all over the news?”
While the news cycle in January was dominated by reports on Japanese hostages held by the militant group Islamic State and the Paris attacks on the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, some stories didn’t receive as much attention.
Recently, the Obama administration announced a decision to allow 2,000 Syrian refugees to settle permanently in the United States. The refugees would include the most vulnerable—women and children who had been “exposed to everything from torture to gender-based violence to serious medical conditions,” Foreign Policy reported.
