What we know about sexualized violence in Syria (video)

While the Geneva II talks about peace in Syria gear up to begin on January 22, I thought I’d put our latest numbers and information on sexualized violence in Syria up here for you to see. I recently laid out what we know about this at a talk at the Heirich Böll Foundation in Berlin, embedded below.

We are tracking very carefully who the perpetrators of these crimes are and what the acts consist of specifically. We are documenting and aggregating reports in order to not only show that this war is complex in its horrors and therefore will require complex resolutions, but to acknowledge the suffering of survivors. You are not alone. We are listening.

And as I said to the audience that day, in war, “rape is not just destroying one woman, it’s destroying an entire family, an entire society, communities. It’s really tearing apart the fabric of a country. And right now that’s Syria.”

For stories of the extreme brutality against women and men and statistics gleaned from our crowd-sourced map of sexualized violence, please watch.