At a recent Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing, health and human rights experts urged lawmakers to support legislation that would make preventing violence against women a top priority in US foreign assistance programs.
The International Violence Against Women Act is sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Richard Lugar (Ind.), the top-ranking Republican on that committee.
Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, has witnessed wartime sexual violence. "Generally, the victims are raped by several men at a time, one after another, in public, in front of parents, husbands, children or neighbors. Rape is followed by mutilations, or other corporal torture," he said.
Ethnic cleansing and the domination of target populations are just two of the reasons for wartime rape, said Karin Wachter, a senior technical advisor with the nonprofit International Rescue Committee. "This form of warfare is tragically effective," she told lawmakers. "It destroys the fabric of a community in a way that few weapons can. It produces unwanted children, it spreads disease, and it leaves an imprint on the individual and collective psyche that is difficult to erase."
"In addition to the physical, psychological and sexual harm inflicted by rapes, sex crime survivors often face severe ostracism, HIV/AIDS or other [STDs], and serious reproductive harms," concurred Kelly Dawn Askin of the Open Society Justice Initiative.
Congress should strengthen US laws to provide more protection to victims of sex crimes and to ensure that perpetrators neither escape justice nor seek safe haven in the United States, said Askin.
04/01/08
US Lawmakers Consider Proposals to Curb Rape as Weapon of War
Source: Voice of America:: Deborah Tate; Courtesy of the CDC National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention