Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

Uprisings espousing principles of democracy, participation and human rights have spread across the Arab world. Arab women have been both on the frontlines and in the background of these struggles –in fact, they have been involved in every nationalist struggle where gender equality might have been a positive result.

Armed violence continues to affect large numbers of Iraqis, with minorities, women and children suffering disproportionately, torture widely reported and impunity rife, according to a United Nations report released today.

“The human rights situation throughout Iraq remains fragile,” the report notes, also citing so-called “silent” human rights violations, such as entrenched poverty.

We all know that women and girls living in areas of armed conflict and disaster suffer the worst consequences of crises due to their heightened vulnerability. We also know dozens of initiatives, conferences, reports, and guidelines have been elaborated with the aim of mainstreaming gender-sensitive approaches in responses to humanitarian crises.

The supposed sanctuary of Kenyan refugee camps can't protect Somali women from the horrors of a growing rape epidemic.

Women fleeing conflict and famine in Somalia are facing another threat to their lives, sexual assault. As they make the long journey from what was once their home to the world's largest refugee complex at Dadaab, Kenya, women have to contend with being attacked and raped by armed militants and bandits, often times repeatedly.

DADAAB, Kenya (AP) — Refugee Barwago Mohamud huddles silently beneath a few blankets stretched over sticks at night, fearing for her life after a neighbor was raped, and a naked woman who had been kidnapped and gang-raped for three days in front of her terrified children was delivered to the medical tent next door.

Men must play their part in breaking the cycle of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a Bristol detective has said.

Det Ch Insp Dave McCallum, who leads the public protection unit of Avon and Somerset Police, said men from communities that practise it "have tended to stay silent on this subject".

More than 120 million women around the world are thought to have undergone FGM, also known as female circumcision.

In Leon, a department in northwest Nicaragua, we visited the Centro Mary Barreda. Here they do amazing work supporting and protecting girls and women survivors of sexual violence and that have contracted HIV, as well as running educational prevention programmes in schools for children and teachers.

More than 500 Iranian women's rights activists and their supporters have issued a statement calling on authorities to put an end to "systematic violence against women" as the sixth gang rape in recent months was reported, RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports.

On 25 July the Khartoum Media Court, headed by the judge Mudathir Al-Rashid, sentenced the female journalist Amal Habani to pay a fine of 2000 Sudanese Pounds (about 660 US dollars). If she did not pay this sum, she knew she would face one month of imprisonment. Amal Habani decided to be sent to prison rather than pay the fine, and she has now been sent to Omdurman Women's Prison.