Sexual violence in conflict and terrorism

[davidbfpo]

A short RUSI commentary, added here as it is an update on the theme and sub-titled:

The use of rape and abuse as psychological weapons by ISIS forces has raised questions on how best to protect vulnerable civilians in warzones

Link:https://www.rusi.org/analysis/commen.../#.VH8U9Wet0dV

[davidbfpo]

IISS is advertising a speaker next week on The Road to Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict

The blurb states:

In recent years there has been growing international recognition of the critical need to address sexual violence in armed conflict. For too long, deliberate sexual targeting, especially of women, has been used as a tactic of war in conflicts across the world. It destroys lives, fuels conflicts, creates refugees and internal displacement, jeopardises ceasefires and undermines the long-term prospects of reconciliation. But despite being strictly prohibited under international law, sexual violence in armed conflict has continued to occur, often reaching appalling and frequent levels of brutality.
In February this year, an academic centre to combat the brutality faced by women in war zones was launched in London. The LSE's Centre for Women, Peace and Security is designed to improve academic knowledge concerning sexual violence in conflict and to contribute to global efforts to address the culture of impunity.

Link to LSE Centre:http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/ne...WPSCentre.aspx

[davidbfpo]

Recently the topic of what happened to the women - from all sides in the Bosnian War - who were the victims of rape and later gave birth to a child. So I asked two people's help, both are Muslims so their focus is on those victims.

In my experience (supported by reports on this) is that there is very little information because of the ‘culture of silence’ that has surrounded the issue since the war. Women tended to try to avoid the awareness of their neighbours that children were a product of rape (they may have moved away for example). There are inevitably some children who were resultant from the assaults but there would not be an open conversation of this. Hence the children would be ‘accepted’ but this would most likely be in tandem with silence on how they were conceived. There are, of course, exceptions but I would not know of any myself.

This is what I would say was the case in the Bosniak Communities which were the primary victims.

There is an excellent book on the topic of children born from rape, with a focus on Bosnia. As you will have imagined, the statistics and data is extremely elusive on this topic, and families affected by rape will have vastly different experiences:http://cup.columbia.edu/book/forgett.../9780231151306

[davidbfpo]

The full title of a short article 'Sexual violence is​ a tool of war, but we have the weapons to end that' takes IMHO an optimistic tone:http://www.theguardian.com/global-de...ns-to-end-that