Taking away their guns: A move toward protecting women and girls?

Rape turns bodies into weapons. But in many cases, literal weapons facilitate the act itself.

As one Congolese woman told Amnesty International in 2011: “A guy with a machete in a village can rape one woman. Two guys with a machine gun can rape the whole village.” Guns not only facilitate rape but also heighten its danger. With guns, women are shot in the vaginas, leading to death or debilitating injuries such as fistula. With guns, and other weapons, rape “is often used as a predecessor to murder.”

According to survivors of wartime rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Syria, rapes are by and large perpetrated by armed men. In some conflicts, weapons have been used in the great majority—up to 90 percent—of rapes. Even in peacetime, when weapons are generally less pervasive, rapes were found to have been committed with weapons in 20 percent of the cases, according to a report issued by the New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, a U.S. nonprofit created to help victims of sexual abuse.

Recently, there was a major international move to stop all this. In April, the United Nations began to tackle the pervasive use of guns by armed groups and militias to facilitate rape and to mutilate and kill victims of rape when the General Assembly adopted the international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Women’s groups say that it is the first treaty of its kind to “recognize the links between the international arms trade and gender-based violence.”

The ATT aims to regulate the international transfer of conventional weapons, including small arms such as guns, to countries and armed groups who would use them to commit “genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949,” or other serious crimes. If enacted and well enforced, it could keep guns out of the hands of those who commit sexualized violence in armed conflict and could altogether reduce the prevalence of sexual violence in conflict, thereby saving the lives of countless women and girls.

By early November, the United States was among the 114 states that signed the ATT. But it has not yet ratified it.

One group wants to make sure it never does.

The National Rifle Association in the U.S., which has lobbied to block various national and local gun control measures designed to protect domestic violence victims, has set its sights on obstructing U.S. ratification of the ATT.

In an October 8 article in the online Daily Caller, Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the NRA, said that by signing the treaty, “our government will be placing a ticking time bomb at every American gun owners’ front door.”

“No human right known to mankind,” LaPierre said, “is more essential to a free and just society than the individual right of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves and their loved ones in the face of criminal violence.”

But LaPierre sounds like he isn’t looking at the numbers. Beyond the stats that show that small arms are used to facilitate rape in war, guns in non-conflict areas such as the U.S., even those whose ostensible purpose is to protect loved ones, are “more likely to be used  to threaten and inflict harm on family members than to protect the home from intruders,” according to a February 2012 report by Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based research project that compiles information on armed violence.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition of U.S. mayors formed in 2006, says that every month in the United States, almost 50 women are shot to death by “current or former intimate partners.” One 2001 study on homicide among intimate partners in the United States found that “female partners are more likely to be murdered with a firearm than all other means combined.” These homicides are so frequent because domestic abusers are usually able to acquire or keep their guns, despite law enforcement being aware that they abuse their partners—thanks in large part to the lobbying of the NRA.

Because of the ATT’s promise to regulate guns, the NRA has started using its clout to build opposition to U.S. ratification of the treaty. Without the ratification of 50 states, the treaty will be unable to take effect. The NRA claims that the treaty threatens the Second Amendment rights of U.S. citizens, but this is simply not true: The ATT addresses only international import and export of weapons and “has no impact on the American domestic market.” Further, according to Secretary of State John Kerry, the language of the treaty lines up with the Second Amendment because it “recognizes the freedom of both individuals and states to obtain, possess, and use arms for legitimate purposes.”

Nevertheless, the treaty, NRA criticisms aside, is not without its flaws.

According to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the treaty fails to sufficiently emphasize the issues of gender-based violence and violence against women. Further, according to WILPF, as well as several countries involved in drafting the treaty, the national risk assessment prescribed by the ATT—directing states not to transfer arms where there is an “overriding risk” that they will be used to commit serious violations—allows states too much leeway to prioritize other interests above stopping such violations.

Still, despite the weaknesses and challenges of the ATT, it is a substantial international move toward protecting women and girls from sexualized violence in conflict zones such as Syria, DRC, and elsewhere. Yes, people commit rape, guns don’t. But as the numbers show, guns circulating among militant groups warring for political or other reasons aren’t helping the problem—and women are being caught in the crossfire.