War stories are often framed by convenient lines, two clear-cut sides, campaigns and directives. Partition in India reads very differently. In the aftermath of the 1947 declaration of Indian independence, the roughly drawn new state boundaries triggered what may have been the biggest migration in human history.
Alma Abdulrahman is lying gaunt and unable to move anything below her diaphragm in a hospital bed in Amman. Some bedsores have become so deep she’s having surgery tomorrow. Screws hold together her upper vertebrae, and cigarette burns pock her right shoulder. Her voice fades in and out, hoarse from either weakness or morphine.
On the same day in April that I listened to the harrowing stories of Syrian women over endless glasses of tea in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp, leaders of the world’s eight richest countries promised to take action against rape as a weapon of war. But the high-profile statement failed to offer a deadline, measurable metric, or concrete plan for a single recommendation it put forward.
In June 2012, a Nicaraguan law aimed at protecting women from gender-based violence took effect. Called Law 779, it “stipulates that the state and its institutions have a duty to guarantee the physical, psychic, moral, sexual, patrimonial, and economic integrity of women,” Inter Press Service reports. But since last year, the law has been jeopardized by opponents, including the vice president of the country’s Supreme Court.
U.S. legislators voted Wednesday to help stanch the overwhelming problem of sexualized violence in the armed forces, Reuters reports. The idea is to make it easier for victims of sexualized violence to come forward while decreasing the threat of retaliation from superiors in the chain of command.
Saran Keïta Diakité painted a dismal reality for women in Mali in a speech she gave to the UN Security Council in April. “They carry out a form of ‘marriage’ so that, at night, you can be treated as a sexual slave,” Diakité said. “During the day, you are there to serve tea to the men and attend to their every need. This is why I always say that what’s happened in Mali is unprecedented."