Gender-Based Violence: Where are the Laws Protecting Women in War?

Gender 305 Gender and International Human Rights

This podcast discusses gender-based violence against women in war-time, using the war in Ethiopia as an example. On 4 November 2020, war erupted in the Tigray, the war in Tigray resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis. Preliminary reports have shown that Tigrayan women and girls have experienced deliberate and organized widespread war-related gender-based violence, in which some were subjected to severe violence including gang-raping, and the insertion of foreign objects to their reproductive organs. According to the report of the Human Rights Watch (HRW), 2,204 survivors sought services for sexual violence at health facilities across Tigray. More than 10 thousand women and girls were victims of gender-based violence. Gender-based violence disproportionately impacts women and girls in violent conflict. Conflict can lead to higher rates of gender-based violence, such as arbitrary executions, torture, sexual assault, and forced marriages against women and girls. Sexual violence, including using it as a weapon of war, increasingly targets women and girls as its primary targets. Conflicts and unstable conditions worsen pre-existing discrimination practices against women and girls, putting them at greater risk for human rights abuses. Increased gender-based violence is a result of the general breakdown of the rule of law, the availability of small arms, the breakdown of social and family structures, and the "normalization" of gender-based violence as an additional component of pre-existing discrimination in conflict and post-conflict zones. Following a report in March of 2021 of persistent reports of grave human rights violations in Tigray, Ethiopia, the UN called for pointed urgent action to stop violence against women in the Tigray war in December of 2021. Despite this, little action has been taken and the abuse persists. The Ethiopian human rights commission-organization of the high commissioner of human rights released a joint report on the abuses, ensuring that victims would have the full support of the Ethiopian government and perpetrators would be brought to justice, with 2,204 women reporting abuses and many more going unreported. The report described women being raped in both rural and urban areas, in places of residence and shelter for the purpose of information extraction or revenge.

This topic is linked to a history of female oppression in times of war and the fight against this, from the implementation of the Universal declaration of human rights following world war II and its evolvement as well as effectiveness to the Vienna declaration. Students explore classic feminist scholarship, such as Mackinnon’s argument that perpetrators use rape and forced reproduction with the purpose of forced ethnic cleansing due to ethnic aggression, with rape as a form of genocide projected on women. The term "violence against women" means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life. (Article 1). There are no geographic, cultural, societal, economic, or other limitations on sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls. It is a sort of violence committed because of gender disparities. Sexual and gender-based violence associated with war has a profoundly damaging impact on society both during and after a conflict. In an armed conflict situation, women are frequently the victims of widespread acts of sexual and gender-based abuse. In other words, women and girls are disproportionately targeted in conflicts, routinely raped, threatened, sexually and physically mistreated, coerced into having unwanted pregnancies, and/or killed. Globally, war-related sexual violence and violations of human rights are still common. During a conflict woman often experience violence, forced pregnancy, abduction, sexual abuse and slavery. Although the United Nation has designated Sexual and gender-based violence as war crimes in Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the situation of women in armed conflicts has been systematically neglected. Women's rights were significantly impacted by the suppression of dissent and conflicting approaches to human rights.

References:
Fisseha, G., Gebrehiwot, T. G., Gebremichael, M. W., Wahdey, S., Meles, G. G., Gezae, K. E., Legesse, A. Y., Asgedom, A. A., Tsadik, M., Woldemichael, A., Gebreyesus, A., Abebe, H. T., Haile, Y. A., Gezahegn, S., Aregawi, M., Berhane, K. T., Godefay, H., & Mulugeta, A. (2023). War-related sexual and gender-based violence in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia: a community-based
study. BMJ Global Health, 8(7), e010270–. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2022-010270

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