World Fails to Treat Rape as Crime - UN Agencies
07 Mar 2007
Source: Reuters
By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS, March 7 (Reuters) - Rape is weapon of war and the world
fails to treat it as a crime, two U.N. agencies said on Wednesday as the
Security Council called for justice for women and girls who are victims of
violence.
The U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the U.N. Children's Fund
(UNICEF) said that while 104 out of 192 countries in the world had made rape a
crime, these laws were poorly enforced.
"The violence that women experience in times of peace is exacerbated
during conflict: rape is being used as a weapon of war on a large scale," UNIFEM
Executive Director Noeleen Heyzer told a news conference. "Women's and girls'
bodies have become the battleground."
The Security Council called for an end to impunity for gender-based
violence during armed conflict and the inclusion of sexual and other violent
acts against women and girls in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes
prosecutions.
Rima Salah, deputy executive director of UNICEF, said the indictments by
the Hague-based International Criminal Court last month of a Sudanese minister
and a militia commander for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including
sexual violence, was a good start.
"Sexual violence is a weapon of war with the strategic intent to
humiliate communities ... to really disintegrate the fabric of society," Salah
said. "I saw it being done in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo and in Darfur.
"No one, including the U.N. itself, is doing enough to end this terrible
situation. We fail to treat it as a crime."
To mark International Women's Day on Thursday, Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon said in a statement that violence against women and girls continued in
every continent, country and culture.
"Most societies prohibit such violence -- yet the reality is that, too
often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned," he said. "That is why
International Women's Day is so important."