Women refugees face assault, exploitation and sexual harassment journeying through Europe

These women and girls have fled war in Syria and Iraq, walked for days across  hostile terrains, put their lives in the hands of ruthless traffickers, crossed seas on flimsy dinghies and finally made it to Europe.  Safe at last? No, these women and girls who have fled some of the world’s most dangerous areas, faced assault, exploitation and sexual harassment at every stage of their entire journey, including on European soil, according to a new report by Amnesty International released this week.

Amnesty interviewed 40 refugee women and girls in Germany and Norway last month. They had travelled from Turkey to Greece and then across the Balkans. All the women, who had endured the horror of war in their countries, said they felt threatened and unsafe during the journey. Many reported that in almost all of the countries they passed through, they experienced physical abuse and financial exploitation, being groped or pressured to have sex by smugglers, security staff or other refugees. 

“Nobody should have to take these dangerous routes in the first place. The best way to avoid abuses and exploitation by smugglers is for European governments to allow safe and legal routes from the outset. For those who have no other choice, it is completely unacceptable that their passage across Europe exposes them to further humiliation, uncertainty and insecurity, says Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director Tirana Hassan said:

Women and girls travelling alone and those accompanied only by their children felt particularly under threat in transit areas and camps in Hungary, Croatia and Greece, where they were forced to sleep alongside hundreds of refugee men, according to the report. In some instances women left the designated areas to sleep in the open on the beach because they felt safer there. 

Women also reported having to use the same bathroom and shower facilities as men. One woman told Amnesty that in a reception center in Germany, some refugee men would watch women as they went to the bathroom. Some women took extreme measures such as not eating or drinking to avoid having to go to the toilet where they felt unsafe. 

It is shameful that governments and aid agencies cannot give basic protection to these women and girls who have risked everything to find safety in Europe. It seems extraordinary that they cannot provide at the very least single-sex toilets and safe sleeping areas.  

Yazidi girls who escaped Islamic State are trapped by trauma

Last summer, militants from the Islamic State group attacked a small ethnic group called the Yazidis, executing men and taking thousands of women and girls as slaves. The Yazidi (or Yezidi) people are a Kurdish tribe who follow an ancient Mesopotamian pagan religion in which they worship the sun and have a spiritual connection with the land.  

Kimbal Bumstead, a young British-Dutch artist, spent some time in the Yazidi refugee camp of Batman in Turkey in October. People told him that on the 3rd August, ISIS militia came to their village and took 80 men out into the streets and told them they must convert to Islam or they will be killed. Those who refused were shot; those who accepted were also shot. They told horrific stories about their family members and friends being slaughtered and their women and girls being raped and sold into sexual slavery.  Here is his report. 

Some of the Yazidi women managed to escape from the terrorist group and are now living in huge refugee camps in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq. They are freed, but far from free, as PBS's special correspondent Marcia Biggs explains in her harrowing report. She speaks with young women in Dohuk, one of the refugee camps, about rape, violence, threats, the terrible escapes that they endured and their continuing struggles with psychological trauma and stigma - especially in a culture were rape is shameful and virginity for young women is essential.

End Sexual Violence in Conflict: #TIMETOACT – Global Summit

"Rape was a reward the leaders gave those who killed. This is why I didn't love my daughter – her father was the one who killed my family. I wanted to kill her, too,” said Levine Mukasakufu about her daughter, Josiane Nizomfura. 

Levine is one of the half a million women raped during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, when the country's ethnic Hutus tried to wipe out the minority Tutsis.

Two decades after the genocide, television journalist Lindsey Hilsum returned to hear the extraordinary testimony of women who were raped during the violence – and of the children born as a result.  It is estimated that some 20,000 children were born of rape during the genocide. 

Although rape occurs in all wars, it was especially widespread in Rwanda, and the consequences are felt to this day, Hilsum wrote in a moving, thought-provoking article in the Guardian. The International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda concluded that rape was an integral part of genocide. "Sexual violence was a step in the process of destruction of the Tutsi group … destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself," said the verdict on the Hutu leaders who organised the genocide in the Butare region.

This week's Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, hosted by the British foreign secretary, William Hague, and actress Angelina Jolie, Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, aims to put victims such as Levine and Josiane at the centre of war crimes investigations.

The summit, which opens tomorrow and runs until Friday  (10- 13 June) at ExCel London will be the largest gathering ever brought together on this subject. Over 100 countries and over 900 experts, NGOs, survivors, faith leaders, five Nobel laureates and international organisations from across the world will participate. Governments are expected to sign a new protocol for documenting wartime sexual assaults and adopt programmes to educate their soldiers that rape is a war crime rather than an inevitable consequence of conflict. The summit also aims at taking practical steps to reduce the dangers women face in conflict zones and increasing support for survivors of sexual violence and for human rights defenders.

There will also be three days of free public events taking place in the Summit Fringe. 

“For the first time in history, a world summit highlights and denounces a crime that is normally made invisible and is often silenced by the majority of States,” said journalist Jineth Bedoya Lima, a survivor of sexual violence in Colombia’s conflict. 

Alongside journalists and human rights defenders from Egypt and Mexico, Jineth will speak at a fringe event on 12 June organised by ABColombia and Peace Brigades International (PBI) looking at the risks entailed for those who speak out on the issue.

“Female reporters and activists suffer sexual abuse ranging from virginity tests conducted by the state, to group attacks on women during protests, and to the sexual violence practiced on women (and men) who are detained for protesting or opposing the state, all of which are escalating in Egypt", said Rana Allam, Editor-in-Chief at Egypt’s Daily News.

How to interview survivors of sexual violence

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The act for survivors of coming forward is crucial. That’s how we can learn about abuses all over the world and do something about it. But telling their stories can put survivors at risk for future harm. Rape in the U.S. military, female protestors attacked across Egypt, Congolese women violated while going about their everyday lives - sexual and gender-based violence happens everywhere. We learn about it from brave individuals who tell us their stories and demand accountability and justice. But, viewers, journalists and filmmakers may not fully realize that these courageous interviews have the potential to re-traumatize survivors. WITNESS has put together a simple, but useful guide on "Conducting Safe, Effective and Ethical Interviews with Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence."   The illustrated guide is aimed at human rights activists, citizen witnesses, citizen and professional journalists and anyone else who might be conducting interviews with survivors.   The tips are organized in stages: preparation for the interview, during the interview, and after the interview. Special attention is given to ensuring the safety and security of interviewees.   The guide is about video and film  interviews, but most of the advice can be used by print journalists as well.  For example, asking open-ended questions that give your interviewee some control and giving them the last word  (asking what they would like to add). The guide is part of WITNESS’ Video for Change how-to series on filming safely, effectively and ethically, based on best practices established over the organization’s 20 years of training and supporting human rights activists to use video. WITNESS uses video to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. Since 1992, WITNESS has worked to empower people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change.  The organization has worked in 90 countries and partnered with hundreds of organizations.

Stand against rape - Send a butterfly to Nicaragua

 

"The butterfly (la mariposa) for us is a symbol of the desire to realise our dreams, spread our wings... fighting with the strength of our rights." Martha Munguiá, Nicaraguan Alliance of Women's Centres

Rape and sexual abuse is widespread in Nicaragua, and two-thirds of reported rapes are against girls and young women under the age of 17.

Young survivors face extra trauma if they become pregnant because of the rape. For these women and girls the idea of giving birth may be unbearable, and the younger they are, the greater the danger to their health. But in Nicaragua they have no choice.

Since 2008, the law has made all forms of abortion in all circumstances a crime, even where the health and life of the woman is in danger or where she is the victim of rape or incest.

2,000 people created butterflies for AI's campaign at the Hay festival, UK

 

There is little or no help from the government who have failed to prevent sexual abuse and to provide care to survivors or to guarantee they receive justice and reparation. An ineffective justice system often means cases collapse and attackers walk free.

Young rape survivors need psychological, medical and legal support and help to rebuild their lives.

On 28 September 2011, women's organisations and the Nicaraguan people will be marching to demand the repeal of the country's total abortion ban and an end to widespread violence against women and girls.

Please stand in solidarity with these young women and help make their voices heard by sending a butterfly and a message of hope in time for their demonstration in September.  

You can create a butterfly online  or make a paper one, but paper versions must be sent in to AI by 19 August.

 

Your butterfly will join the march in Nicaragua .

Some 31, 414 people in the UK have already created colourful butterflies. Together we can make the government listen and act to protect the rights of girls and women. Create a butterfly today.

 

V-Day at Royal Albert Hall - Stop Sexual Violence in DRC

Today, 19th November 2009, hundreds of men and women – activists, politicians from all parties, journalists, celebrities and religious leaders – are gathering on the steps of the Royal Albert Hall in London to demonstrate against the use of sexual violence in the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The event is organized by V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.

Exactly one hundred years ago, the Great Congo Demonstration was held at the Royal Albert Hall, chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury and joined by artists and intellectuals, such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain, to campaign against the exploitation, slavery and murder of the Congolese people.

One hundred years on, violence and exploitation of a different but equivalent devastation remains. Over the last 12 years, the ongoing conflict has claimed the lives of an estimated 6 million people and sexual violence in the DRC is being used to torture and humiliate women and girls and destroy families.

V-Day Founder/Playwright Eve Ensler, who has travelled to the Congo five times in the last two years stated: “What we are seeing in the DRC is a war being enacted on the bodies of women that is conscious and intentional - it is the systematic destruction of the female population of the Congo. Today, we are hearing reports from activists on the ground that the babies born of rape are NOW being raped. What this tells us is that this vicious cycle is continuing, that we are fighting for the same human rights today that the protesters at The Great Congo Demonstration fought for 100 years ago.”

Hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped since the conflict began. In addition to the severe psychological impact, sexual violence leaves many survivors with genital lesions, traumatic fistulae, severed and broken limbs, unwanted pregnancies, and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. Survivors are regularly ostracised and abandoned by their families and communities.

V-Day UK Committee calls upon the international community to champion:

*A political – not military – solution to end the devastating, incessant conflict in the Congo.
*For prosecutions to be taken against those who are living in impunity for the sexual crimes they inflict daily upon Congolese women and girls.
*Support for a larger women’s police force in the Congo that can bring reliable security and protection to the most vulnerable members of its society.

This event is the first in a series that make up Congo Now - an international campaign that unites a coalition of more than 20 of the UK’s biggest NGOs plus UK parliamentarians. The campaign combines British and Congolese voices to demand an end to the world's worst humanitarian crisis - and action to address its underlying causes and consequences. The campaign will reach a climax in June and July 2010, when the DRC celebrates 50 years of independence.