The essentials From the conflict in Israel to the war in Ukraine, more and more voices are being raised against sexual violence against women in war-torn countries.
Rape in Israel, Ukraine and other war zones: More and more voices are being raised to denounce sexual violence against women in war-torn countries, an age-old crime banned by international law but rarely sanctioned.
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Israeli police announced on November 14 that they were investigating sexual violence, including rape and mutilation, suspected to have been committed by Hamas men during the bloody October 7 attack. “We attacked them as women on their genitals, this is serious,” Maya, an activist who declined to give her name, told AFP.
Yaël Mellul, spokesperson for Paroles de Femmes: “We have launched a petition to recognize the rapes and femicides committed by Hamas in Israel on October 7th. “When we touch women, we touch the humanity of a people.” #Punchline pic.twitter.com/AFmRxPrSqX
– CNEWS (@CNEWS) November 23, 2023
She will take part in a demonstration in Paris on Saturday to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women with a group that will put up signs and slogans “honoring the memory” of Israeli women, “victims of femicide.” A petition that brings together almost 20,000 signatures, including those of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo (PS) and singer and actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, calls for the October 7 attack to be recognized as a “mass murder of women.”
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“Many civilians died, but women were not killed in the same way as others,” emphasizes the text initiated by the “Paroles de femmes” association. Witnesses quoted by AFP spoke in particular of “pelvic fractures” and shots in the genitals.
“Destroy a community”
Women are the main victims of sexual violence in wartime, on different continents and at different times. Such attacks took place particularly during the colonial conquests of the 19th century and during the two world wars.
“Attacking women through rape destabilizes the entire social fabric and destroys a community,” Richard Matis, president of Gynecology Without Borders, told AFP. The association trains health professionals abroad to care for women, especially in cases of sexual violence. “The children born from these rapes also represent an imbalance problem for the society affected,” adds the gynecologist.
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In some cases, soldiers act on their own initiative. In other cases, rape is encouraged or even organized by the authorities to be used as a weapon of war. “Rape in wartime has been banned for centuries, but armies do not necessarily enforce this ban,” Fabrice Virgili, historian and research director at the CNRS, told AFP. Noting that this ban was introduced with the aim of maintaining discipline among soldiers and not to protect women.
Difficult sentence
“Since the genocide in Rwanda (1994) and the war in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995), we have paid particular attention to the facts of sexual violence in each conflict: there is the idea that it is necessary to punish the perpetrators and “To take care of the victims,” explains the co-editor of the work “Rape in Times of War.”
This idea was particularly developed by Dr. Denis Mukwege, 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner, for his action on behalf of female victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rape was used as a weapon of war. A conference organized by associations in Poland on Friday will focus in particular on supporting Ukrainian women who were victims of rape during last year’s Russian invasion.
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When it comes to dealing with violent criminals, “the law is an essential answer, but it is not yet up to the task,” lawyer Céline Bardet told AFP. Rape is defined as a “war crime” in the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, “we still have difficulty including sexual violence in charges, often due to an evidentiary problem because there are only witness statements,” this expert adds.
With her association “We are not weapons of war,” she has created an online tool to collect and store testimonies from victims. A “reporting and alarm web application” that allows photos and videos to be stored on “a highly secure server” to “document the reality on the ground.”