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http://blog.theirc.org/2007/11/28/16-days-day-4-targeting-women/

 Targeting Women

Voices from the Field - Africa

Posted by Ann Jones on 28 November, 2007

Young women and old alike, like these villagers, are targets of violence during and after conflict. Photo: Ann Jones

The International Rescue Committee is working with writer, photographer and long-time women’s advocate Ann Jones to give women in war zones an opportunity document their own lives with digital cameras and make their voices heard.

Ann is blogging from West Africa, posting new photos and stories each day for 16 days, starting November 25 — the kick-off of “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.” You can catch her earlier posts here and sign up to get e-mail alerts about new posts at theIRC.org/join16days.

Yamoussoukro, Cote d’Ivoire I borrow the title from an Amnesty International report on Cote d’Ivoire, issued last March.  It says:

The scale of rape and sexual violence in Cote d’Ivoire in the course of the armed conflict has been largely underestimated.  Many women have been gang raped or have been abducted and reduced to sexual slavery by fighters.  Rape has often been accompanied by the beating or torture (including torture of a sexual nature) of the victim . . . . All armed factions have perpetrated and continue to perpetrate sexual violence with impunity.

Human Rights Watch reports that “cases of sexual abuse may be significantly underreported” because women fear “the possibility of reprisals by perpetrators, . . . ostracism by families and communities, and cultural taboos.”

Human Rights Watch reports that girls as young as three were
raped during the conflict.

The Amnesty report documents case after case of girls and women, aged “under 12” to 63, assaulted by armed men.  The more recent and thoroughgoing report by Human Rights Watch records the rape of children as young as three.  Women and girls are seized in their village homes or at military roadblocks.  They are discovered hiding in the bush. They are too young or too old to run fast.  Some are raped in public.  Some are raped in front of their husbands and their children.  Some are forced to witness the murder of their husband or parents.  Then they are taken away to soldiers’ camps where they are held, along with many other women. They are forced to cook for the soldiers and repeatedly gang raped, in some cases by 30 or 40 men.  They are beaten and tortured.  They see women who resist beaten and murdered, their throats slit.

Women taking part in the GBV Global Crescendo project took these photographs
of violence in their villages. These photos are not staged.  They document real attacks
against women as they took place.  Men routinely use violence against women
with complete impunity.

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