NEWS
World Is Simply Not Doing Enough
Violence towards Women Remains an Issue that Globe Can't Dent
Daily Herald-Tribune (Canada)
3 November 2004 *****************************

Sexual violence against women is taking place on a massive scale in wars and in countries emerging from conflict and the international response remains inadequate, one of the UN's highest-ranking women has told the UN Security Council.

It's been four years since the council adopted a landmark resolution committing governments to protect women from the abuses of war, but Thoraya Obaid who heads the UN Population Fund, says most women in conflict and post-conflict situations continue to experience little peace and little security. She was backed by Canada's Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, who told the council that ''women do not seek a special kind of justice ... however, historically they have been and continue to be on the receiving end of a special kind of oppression and abuse.'' She urged the Security Council to use all its influence to generate the political will, as well as the financial support, to protect women's rights and ensure women's access to justice.

Obaid scolded world leaders for adopting standards and guidelines to protect women but doing little to turn words into action. ''From Afghanistan to Liberia, from Colombia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from Burundi to Darfur - the list goes on and on - women and girls, and even men and boys, are being subject to sexual violence, torture and slavery that defy the imagination and bring into sharp focus the cruelty that human beings can inflict on each other,'' she says.

Gender-based and sexual violence occurring on a massive scale in conflict and post-conflict situations around the world is unspeakable. Rape and other violence against women are used as weapons of war, to punish wives and female sympathizers of the enemy, to infect them with HIV/AIDS, to force them into sexual slavery, to destroy their ability to revitalize their communities. It extends far beyond man's inhumanity to man. It is shocking that the response so far remains completely inadequate.

Source: Daily Herald-Tribune
Via The Push Journal www.pushjournal.org

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