Women, Girls and War

"After Republicans raised concerns about access to abortion services and other issues, House leaders on Monday postponed debate on a bill (HR 5953) that would require Department of Veterans Affairs facilities to display a "Women Veterans Bill of Rights," CQ Today reports. A senior Democratic aide said the bill is likely to be considered today. The bill, sponsored by Veterans' Affairs Committee Chair Bob Filner (D-Calif.), would direct VA facilities to prominently display a list of 24 rights guaranteed to female veterans. The list includes "the right to request and get treatment by clinicians with specific training and expertise in women's health issues." Republicans opposed to the bill argue that the statement could establish a legal basis for mandating abortion coverage and would require the department to hire abortion providers.

The measure was scheduled for floor consideration on Monday under suspension of the rules, which expedites the process by limiting debate on amendments. The procedure also allows the bill's floor manager to call up an amended version of the bill. The House was expected to consider a modified version of the bill that would include language from a separate measure (HR 5428) -- also sponsored by Filner -- that would require VA to also display an 'Injured Amputee Veterans Bill of Rights.'"

"Many women fear that if the Taliban return to power it will also mean a return to harsh Islamic law. And now that the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai has said he'll consider negotiating with the Taliban - in return for ending the war - they're even more fearful.

'History tells us what they want. They don't want women in the workplace, they want girls to stay home, they want absolutely no education for girls,' said Manizha Naderi, Executive Director, Women for Afghan Women. 'They're not going to back out of their demands.' The shelter is one of a handful in the country that offers women a safe haven from physical abuse or rape. Recent statistics are grim - domestic violence is up 54 percent - over 60 percent of marriages are forced.

The shelter tries to help women begin a new life. But the odds are stacked against them.

There are over two million girls going to school today in Afghanistan. That's a huge leap forward. Under the Taliban in the 1990s, there were almost none. Girls were forced to stay home. Now the Taliban is trying to turn back the clock. Attacks on schools have almost doubled in the last year."

"More than 600 women and girls were recently raped along the Congo-Angola border during a mass expulsion of illegal immigrants, according to the United Nations. Many of the victims said they were locked in dungeon-like conditions for several weeks while they were raped repeatedly by security forces.

Maurizio Giuliano, a United Nations spokesman in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Friday that it was unclear on which side of the Congo-Angola border the women had been attacked, and that the United Nations was calling on both countries to investigate promptly.

'What worries us is that rape seems to be becoming endemic in several parts of Congo,” Mr. Giuliano said, also referring to recent rapes in the eastern Kivu provinces. “We fear it’s becoming part of the routine.'

United Nations officials call Congo the worst place in the world for sexual violence, and even the longstanding presence of internationalpeacekeepers has not been able to stop it.  According to United Nations officials, the women along the border were raped in September and October at several locations during an expulsion of more than 6,000 illegal Congolese and other immigrants from Angola."

 "A senior United Nations official has urged the national authorities in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to investigate reports that women were raped when large numbers of people were expelled from Angola and forced to return to the DRC recently.

'I call upon the authorities of both countries to investigate these allegations and to proceed in compliance with relevant legislation,' said Margot Wallström, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict, in a statement issued yesterday.  'I expect the authorities of Angola and the DRC to respect human rights and to do everything in their power to prevent abuses of all kinds during any further expulsions,' she said.

She said that although it was not clear where the alleged rapes took place and who the perpetrators were, it is of utmost importance that the allegations of abuse be followed up immediately and those found responsible brought to justice by the national authorities of the countries concerned."

"Margot Wallstrom, the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, returned last week from the scene of a recent mass rape attack in the Democratic Republic of Congo sounding resolved to change the way U.N. peacekeepers are trained.

Following the attacks, U.N. authorities have faulted peacekeepers for not investigating warning signs, such as village roadways that perpetrators had blocked off to entrap the victims and prevent peacekeepers from reaching them. To avoid repeating such errors, Wallstrom said in a recent interview that next year the U.N. will start providing something called scenario-based training on sexual violence for U.N. peacekeepers.

The practice, now being developed, is designed to prepare thousands of peacekeepers in police units for the increasing use of sexual violence as a tactic of war. The peacekeepers will participate in full-fledged role playing, responding to actors playing the part of victims of sexual or gender-based violence."
 

"Margot Wallstrom, the U.N.'s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, flew to the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday for a weeklong visit to a region where women suffered mass rape attacks two months ago. The same day, Justine Masika Bihamba, a leading Congolese anti-rape activist, toured New York and U.N. offices with a plan for preventing rapes in her war-torn country.

The two criss-crossed in more ways than who was going to and coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

On the eve of Wallstrom's visit to meet with several hundred women who were raped between the July 30 and Aug. 3 attacks, she told a press gathering "we still have a window of opportunity to apprehend perpetrators." She spoke on Monday following a U.N. Human Rights Council hearing in Geneva.

But Bihamba, the visiting Congolese activist, doesn't think focusing on apprehending perpetrators will go far enough to prevent the problem.

'Wallstrom seems very committed, but the problem is that she deals more with the consequences of rape than with the causes,' said Bihamba, founder of the Synergy of Women for the Victims of Sexual Violence, a coalition of 34 women's organizations in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo."
 

"The drive to bring Afghan security forces up to a reasonable fighting standard has taken on added urgency; their role is considered central to the U.S. exit strategy. Western officials hope that in three years, Afghan soldiers and police officers will assume the lead role in safeguarding the country.

For that, women are badly needed, not only for culturally sensitive tasks such as entering homes and dealing directly with the women present, or carrying out body searches on other women. They also are expected to fill out the ranks as the armed forces embark on a concerted expansion.

Women account for a tiny fraction of both the police and army, even after almost a decade of intensive nurturing by U.S. and other foreign forces. Only a few hundred women serve in the army. But the goal that women eventually will make up 10% of a force that is slated to grow to nearly 300,000.  Many of the women who have joined the security forces, particularly those from rural areas, face intense opposition from family, community elders and sometimes from the men they serve alongside.

A new facility is being constructed for them at the main Kabul Military Training Center, and the next women's officer-candidate class is expected to be five times the size of this one.  As so often happens in Afghanistan, what appears to be an advance for women is simply a matter of regaining rights once freely enjoyed.  Twenty years ago, it was not uncommon for women to hold top ranks in the Afghan military. But during the ferocious civil war of the early 1990s, followed by the five-year reign of the Taliban movement, women could barely leave home, let alone hold positions of authority outside it."

"A new study from the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, and Stanford University examines mental illness and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in returning veterans from Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Their research highlights that veterans suffering from PTSD also suffer more medical illnesses than do those with no mental health condition. This effect is even more pronounced in women than in men. The authors analyzed data for over 90,000 men and women who use Veterans Health Administration (VHA) services to compare the number of diagnosed medical conditions suffered by returning soldiers with PTSD and by those with no mental health condition.

The majority of both men and women had a diagnosed mental health condition. The burden of medical illness was greater for those with post-traumatic stress disorder than for those with no mental health issues, with women worse off than men. Women with PTSD suffered more medical conditions than did those with no mental health condition -- a median value of 7 conditions versus 4.5, the most frequent of which were lower spine disorders, headache and lower extremity joint disorders."

"U.N. officials on Tuesday put the number of rapes and other sexual attacks in eastern Congo since late July at more than 500, more than double the previous estimate.

In remarks prepared for delivery to the Security Council after returning from a fact-finding trip to the region, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Atul Khare cited 267 rapes or other sexual attacks in the town of Uvira -- on the eastern edge of the country -- and other nearby regions of North and South Kivu, in addition to the 242 rapes that had already been reported in and near the village of Luvungi.

U.N. officials have said they will toughen efforts to stop rapes in the region.

"The women of eastern DRC deserve better," said Margot Wallstrom, a U.N. special representative for sexual violence in conflict who sent a senior member of her staff with Khare on his fact-finding mission to the region. "For them, there is no safe place. They are raped when harvesting crops; when going to market; when fetching water and firewood; when carrying their babies; when in their homes at night, among their loved ones."

She added that the rape is becoming a weapon of choice in eastern DRC. "The sad reality is that incidents of rape have become so commonplace that they do not trigger our most urgent interventions," she said."

"The footprint of the United States occupation of Iraq is embedded in the country’s rocky political sojourn, and the status of women marks the nation’s arrested progress. After the invasion, Washington thought Iraqi women would find American-style freedom irresistible. Today, they’re left holding up half the sky in the midst of a ravaged political and economic landscape.

The Associated Press reports that many Iraqi women feel increasingly alienated from civil society and face traditional pressures to find a husband in a bombed-out marriage market.

Women’s advocates may on the one hand lament the inequality that makes women economically dependent on marriage. But there’s also justifiable frustration that women bear so much of the burden of their unraveling social fabric.

While Iraq’s struggles for gender justice go beyond just the U.S. presence there, will the White House at least redress some of the violence done by the occupation by helping resettle trafficking survivors as refugees? At this point, further abandonment by Washington would prove that despite the glossy public-relations schemes, the “liberation” of Iraqi women was from the start a doomed affair."