ANALYSIS: How the Other Half Suffers

It has been 10 years since the United Nations adopted Security Council Resolution 1325, which addresses the role of women during wartime - both as victims and peacekeepers - and makes them a key part of its efforts to end conflict around the world.

During a speech last year marking the anniversary, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called for a greater leadership role for women in peace-building and an increased effort to end rape during conflict.

These are crucial goals, but the focus on women and girls leaves out a significant imperative: ending wartime sexual violence against men and boys as well.

Wartime rape is an ugly business. Meant to humiliate and traumatise the enemy, its history is as long as its impact is devastating. And for many of the same reasons that combatants rape women and girls, they also rape men and boys.

Sexual violence against men does occasionally surface in the public eye: The photographs of the sexual abuse and humiliation of male detainees at Abu Ghraib stunned the world.

Yet there are thousands of similar cases, less well publicised but well documented by researchers, in places as varied as Chile, Greece and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The United Nations reported that out of 5,000 male concentration camp detainees held near Sarajevo during the Bosnian conflict, 80 percent reported sexual victimization, including genital mutilation and forced incest. In El Salvador, 76 percent of male political prisoners told researchers they had experienced one or more instances of sexual torture.

Nevertheless, international legal documents routinely reflect the assumption that sexual violence happens only to women and girls. There are dozens of references to "violence against women" - defined to include sexual violence - in United Nations human rights resolutions, treaties and agreements, but most ignore sexual violence against men.

Ignoring male rape has a number of consequences. For one, it not only neglects men and boys, it also harms women and girls by reinforcing a viewpoint that equates "female" with "victim," thus hampering our ability to see women as leaders.

In the same way, silence about male victims reinforces unhealthy expectations about men and their supposed invulnerability. Such hypermasculine ideals encourage aggressive behaviour in men that is dangerous for the women and girls with whom they share their lives.

Sex-specific stereotypes also distort the international community's response. Women who have suffered rape in conflict have likely endured nonsexual trauma as well. But when they are treated merely as "rape victims," their other injuries get downplayed.

Conversely, when men have experienced sexual abuse and are treated solely as "torture victims," we ignore the sexual component of their suffering. Indeed, doctors and emergency aid workers are rarely trained to recognise the physical signs of male rape or to provide counselling to male survivors.

Our failure to acknowledge male rape leaves it in the shadows, compounding the humiliation that survivors experience. For instance, the majority of Tamil males in Sri Lanka who were sexually assaulted during that country's long civil war did not report it to the authorities at the time, later explaining that they were simply too ashamed.

At the ceremony marking the anniversary of Resolution 1325, Secretary Clinton announced that the United States will develop an action plan to accelerate the advancement of its goals, including $44 million for women's equality initiatives around the world. This is an important commitment, but it should also include the many international programmes working with men and boys to challenge rigid ideas about manhood and to end the cycle of violence.

The International Criminal Court, the vast majority of American states and many countries use a sex-neutral definition of sexual assault. The United Nations and the White House must likewise move beyond the shortcomings of Resolution 1325 and commit to ending wartime sexual violence against everyone.