WUNRN
http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/blog/entry/infographic-rape-in-war-by-the-numbers
Rape in War, by the Numbers - Infographic
Full ranges of estimates in the chart above, with links
to sources:
Bosnia, 1992-95 |
|
Colombia, 2001-09 |
|
Democratic Republic of
Congo, 2006-07 |
|
Nanking, 1937 |
|
Rwanda, 1994 |
|
Sierra Leone, 1991-2002 |
|
WWII, 1944-45 |
“According to a 2013 global study published in the
American Journal of Epidemiology, only 7% of survivors of gender-based violence
formally reported the violence to police, medical, or social services.” This study
was carried out by Stony Brook University Professor Tia Palermo, Jennifer Bleck
of the University of South Florida, and Amber Peterman of the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
By Lauren Wolfe/Director
— January 9, 2015
We know there’s a problem but we don’t know how big it
is. That’s what governments, scholars, and others argue when trying to figure
out how to allot funds toward this problem of sexualized violence in conflict.
If we don’t know the numbers, they ask, how can we help properly? How can we
mount prosecutions? Offer reparations? Put in place proper advocacy? So the
thinking goes.
In years of documenting sexualized violence in
the Syria conflict, I’ve long maintained that we can’t know in a hot
war exactly how many women and men are being violated—but we know it is
happening. There have been too many reports, many credible
and confirmed,
to say it is not. Which means that every dollar not spent to help these
survivors, many of whom appear to have made it out of the war zone, is another
survivor left suffering without psychological, medical, or other supportive
care. (And there is next to
no money being spent on these issues in the Syria context, according
to my sources in the region who treat survivors of torture and rape. They say
that women who are escaping abduction from ISIS are returning severely
traumatized and sit languishing in temporary centers with zero psychological
treatment.)
The problem is that it is nearly
impossible to know exact—or often even ballpark—numbers of women
raped in conflict. There’s too much in the way: the murder of victims after
rape (aka the destruction of evidence), deep stigma that prevents reporting,
fear of retribution by either the perpetrators or the survivor’s family. Women
have no reason to come forward.
But over time, some have. Much of the work to count them
has been done forensically, however, through costly research efforts. Here then
are some of the numbers painstakingly gathered by researchers. Beneath the
numbers, I’ve written just a few specific reasons why we shouldn’t trust
them—why all numbers counting a problem based in trauma and fear are certainly
higher than estimated.
Numbers are crucial to quantifying any problem. But
numbers can also be a smokescreen preventing us from seeing the pain happening
around us every day. Share them with a grain of salt. Let others know that
behind each number is a human who has
suffered deeply, and that she too deserves to be counted.