Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

The United Nations (UN) is surprised at the continued incidents of rape and other gender-targeted violence in Liberia, despite the restoration of peace, a visiting UN official said last week while on a tour of Liberia.

Noa Raz, a young woman waiting to board a bus, was recently attacked by a man because her arm bore the imprints of tefillin straps, which Jewish men wrap around their arms during morning prayers. "You're an abomination," the man shouted while kicking her.

The 22-year-old woman, wearing a gauzy blue dress that she had changed into after her release, spoke in a whispery voice.

Perhaps the worst part of the whole ordeal, she said, was the place where her kidnappers had chosen to imprison her. That they abducted her was terrifying. That they raped her, repeatedly, was too horrendous to absorb just yet.

Five months after the earthquake, security in Haiti's refugee camps remains dire. In some camps, gangs and opportunists have hijacked the aid distribution system, charging high prices for food or demanding sex in exchange for access to aid.

Mankind first settled in what is now South Africa more than 100,000 years ago. A product of our wandering ways and curious nature that spread the species through Europe, Asia, and the America's, the settling of the South represented our ability to conquer virtually any terrain. Fighting prehistoric predators cave paintings

Before the start of their 2006 World Cup semi-final, players for Brazil and France stood together and held a banner declaring "Say no to racism". The gesture was part of a Fifa campaign – each of the 64 matches included a visible statement against the racist abuse directed especially at black players in Europe.

The stories coming from Burmese and ethnic minority women along the border with Thailand are difficult to listen to. A woman describes being gang-raped while pregnant. When she begged for mercy the first soldier raped her anyway “and slapped my face.” Then he threatened to harm her unborn baby. Then there were more soldiers, “one after another, up to four.”

UAMBA, 27 February 2003 (IRIN) - "I came here to the quartering area to try and find my husband, the father of my children," Celita Vasco says. "But when I arrived here I heard that my husband had died in the war. My children have no father." She indicates the baby on her lap: "The father of this child here, also went away.

Counseling a rape victim more than 40 years ago, Dr. Sonnet Ehlers got an idea for an anti-rape female condom that South Africa is now testing during the mostly male and sometimes raucous, alcohol-fueled celebrations for the World Cup.

Many South African men do not respect the constitutionally conferred rights of women citizens. Every year thousands of women are raped in South Africa - one every seven seconds, an average of 1,300 every day.(2) These frightening statistics suggest that rape is a part of a culture of violence in which acts such as rape have become normative in the lives of many men and women.