A father holds hands with his daughter, a survivor of sexualized violence during Kosovo’s 1998-1999 war for independence. Twenty-two years later, she is among thousands of survivors of systemic rape still awaiting justice.
Last August, India's Hindu nationalist government scrapped Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution, stripping the state of Jammu & Kashmir of its special constitutional status. What followed is only the latest chapter in a documented history of sexualized violence by security forces as a means to quell dissent in Muslim-majority Kashmir.
It's tempting for Western audiences to believe that cell phones beget rape in Congo, but the real root causes of mass sexualized violence in the country require more nuance than that.
A multi-pronged approach that encourages Kenyan magistrates, prosecutors, doctors, clinicians, and government chemists to work together in pursuit of justice has helped fast track sexualized violence cases and bring justice closer to survivors.
“Women in Somaliland, especially younger women and girls, are now beginning to have hope for a better future,” 25-year-old Ahmed said of the bill, which is the country’s first piece of legislation to address sexualized violence.
This is the first time a mastermind of mass rape has been held legally responsible in DRC. But the story doesn’t end here. There are still a few major issues to watch.
Today a historic conviction came down in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was the first time an official or commander has been convicted of masterminding rape in the country.
In India, it’s now illegal for a man to have sex with his wife if she is under the age of 18. But anti-rape activists in India are looking at the next fight ahead of them: making the rape of adult women in marriage illegal.
It is 9 a.m. on November 9, and hundreds—maybe 1,000—people have gathered to watch something many believed would never happen: the trial of a group of men who allegedly gang-raped approximately 50 little girls, aged 18 months to 11 years, in a village called Kavumu. Justice has been four years in the making.
Unlike many other post-conflict African nations, Rwanda is working to support women widowed by the country’s 1994 genocide. With the establishment of care homes and other initiatives, the country’s elderly widows can finally find peace.
On computer screens thousands of miles away from one another, some of the world’s leading feminist figures joined in solidarity with women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the country’s first-ever women’s summit on September 14.
Rahaf feared going home. Her clothes had been torn, making visible the painful red welts that would turn into eggplant-colored bruises. On her arms and legs, her family and fiance would be able to see the round burn marks where they put out cigarettes on her skin.
In the violence that rocked Kenya following the disputed elections of 2007, the media reported hundreds of cases of sexualized violence. Jane’s was one of them. Today, Jane grapples with HIV, trauma, and empty promises of reparation. Her husband was killed in the violence, but his body has never been found.
With Trump dominating nearly every bit of news across the country and in many parts of the world, reports of major human rights violations against women are being overshadowed.
Anneke Lucas survived being trafficked for sex not once, but twice. “I was 9 years old when an elderly English-speaking man took me to the United States in his jet and sex-trafficked me in a luxurious hotel,” says Lucas, an anti-trafficking advocate and the founder of the nonprofit organization Liberation Prison Yoga.
Every Wednesday at half-past one, in the narrow lanes of the southern Delhi slum of Dakshinpuri, a group of local women congregate in a windowless room. They are members of the “Mahila Panchayat,” or “female village council.” They are bound by a common cause—justice for women who suffer violence and harassment in their homes.
This is meant as an informal guide for journalists who cover sexualized violence or want to, mainly in an international context.
With Tuesday’s gruesome chemical attack in Syria all over the news, attention has suddenly turned toward the crimes of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime—and away, for a moment, from those of the Islamic State. It is about time.
Grace sits staring vacantly ahead, her hands tightly clasped in her lap. She is 16 years old but has a tiny frame that makes her look no older than 13. Underneath her checkered school dress, a small bump sticks out. In four months’ time, she is due to give birth to her stepfather’s child.
Thirteen-year-old Jane* lived in Melito Porto Salvo, a village in Calabria, a region that is commonly referred to as Italy’s toe. She was young, confused, and lonely after her parents decided to separate. Like many children in this situation, she struggled to make sense of her new world. All of that changed when she met 19-year-old Davide Schimizzi in the summer of 2013. Their romance filled an emotional void in her life.
On December 14, 2016, 23-year-old feminist activist Débora Soriano de Melo was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat in a bar in São Paulo, Brazil. There was evidence that the young activist suffered sexual abuse that same night. Detectives suspected Willy Gorayeb Liger, a manager of the bar, in the assault and called for his arrest on rape charges.
After her husband died, Margaret, 55, saw no alternative but to sell her body in order to feed her four children. She would walk down to Lake Victoria every day to buy fish to sell in the market. But first she had to have sex with a fisherman. For at least the past two decades, fishermen at Lake Victoria have demanded sex before selling their catch to female fish traders.
Throughout the conflict in DRC, children have been abducted and made to serve as soldiers. While most are male, it is estimated over a third are female, used mainly as domestic and sexual servants, but sometimes as fighters. Now an NGO has released a report showing that many of the girls weren’t enlisted by force.
When Luna Watfa refused to reveal any information to her interrogators, they took her son, 17, and threatened to torture him. “They put my son’s hands behind his back, his T-shirt over his head and they took him,” she says.
Wars fought because of ethnic hatred often seem to be more brutal than others. This is just a personal observation, having studied many. Just look at Rwanda, whose 1994 war saw between 250,000 and half a million women raped, often with objects and often publicly, in order to spread maximum humiliation and terror.