Women, Girls and War

From the press release: 

A new study based on examination of government-collected and nationally representative data from the Democratic Republic of Congo shows that levels of rape and sexual violence against women in the country are 26 times higher than official United Nations estimates. The study, spearheaded by The Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research, Graduate Program in Public Health, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, is published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Tia M. Palermo, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine, Graduate Program in Public Health, and colleagues, found in their analysis that more than 400,000 women ages 15 to 49 in the DRC had experienced rape in a 12-month period in 2006 and 2007. That is the equivalent to 1,152 women raped every day, 48 raped every hour, or four women raped every five minutes.

Full article in the American Journal of Public Health is available for a fee: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/AJPH.2010.300045v1

"Dozens of women were arrested in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Tuesday, at a protest sparked by graphic video that appeared to show a Sudanese woman being flogged by laughing police officers.

Sudan’s judiciary announced on Sunday that it would investigate the flogging recorded on video, but 52 women were arrested as they protested outside the country’s justice ministry.  The women, part of the “No to Subjugating Women Initiative,” were sitting down and holding banners when they were arrested, Reuters reported. They shouted, “Humiliating your women is humiliating all your people,” as the police dragged them away.

As the news agency explained, 'Floggings carried out under Islamic law are almost a daily punishment in Sudan for crimes ranging from drinking alcohol to adultery. But vague laws on women’s dress and behavior are implemented inconsistently.'"

"The Service Women's Action Network (SWAN), the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Connecticut filed a lawsuit today with the U.S. District Court in New Haven, Connecticut against the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs for their failure to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests seeking government records documenting incidents of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military. Tens of thousands of service members each year are estimated to have experienced some form of military sexual trauma (MST). These acts occur nearly twice as often within military ranks as they do within civilian society.

"The government's refusal to even take the first step of providing comprehensive and accurate information about the sexual trauma inflicted upon our women and men in uniform, and the treatment and benefits MST survivors receive after service, is all too telling," said Anuradha Bhagwati, a former Marine captain and Executive Director of SWAN. 'The DOD and VA should put the interests of service members first and expose information on the extent of sexual trauma in the military to the sanitizing light of day.'"

"Prospective analyses of National Health Interview Survey and National Death Index data found an adjusted risk of suicide among male veterans twice that of nonveteran males (1). That study also examined data for 11 female veterans and 246 female nonveterans who completed suicide and found that women with past military service were more likely to complete
suicide (adjusted hazard ratio=3.62, 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.95–6.73).

This cross-sectional study used 2004–2007 data for 5,948 women (ages 18 to 64) who completed suicide in the 16 states that constitute the National Violent Death Reporting System. Denominators were from 2004–2007 veteran population data and American Community Surveys. We examined rates for female nonveterans and veterans, whose rates were computed using two denominators—female veterans and the broader military service population of veterans plus active duty,
reserve, and National Guard."