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UN: Protect women in wartime
24/10/2007 12:10 - (SA)
New York - UN member states were on Tuesday urged to do more to protect women from pervasive sexual violence in armed conflict and to give them a greater voice in matters of war and peace.
The occasion was a Security Council debate to review implementation of special measures called for in a resolution adopted seven years ago to protect women and girls from rape and other forms of sexual abuse in situations of armed conflict.
'Bodies were a battleground'
"Violence against women has reached hideous and pandemic proportions in some societies attempting to recover from conflict," UN chief Ban Ki-moon told the council, apparently referring to the Democratic Republic of Congo Sudan's Darfur region or eastern Chad where rape is being used as a weapon of war.
Speaking on the eve of the debate, Rachel Mayanja, Ban's special adviser on gender issues and the advancement of women, lamented the fact that "women's bodies were a battleground in time of war".
"Sexual violence in conflict, particularly rape, should be named for what it is: not a private act or the unfortunate misbehaviour of a renegade soldier, but aggression, torture, war crime and genocide," she said.
'Thousands will continue to die'
Several human rights groups have recently turned the spotlight on an upsurge in horrific sexual violence in DRC's Nord-Kivu province, including gang rapes where attackers mutilate their victims' genitals until they need surgery.
Mayanja said that "sexual violence (in armed conflict) remained pervasive" despite repeated denunciations of the phenomenon by the Security Council.
"If this situation is not addressed now and with urgency, thousands of women and girls will continue to die, and tens of millions more would be sexually brutalised, traumatised, tormented, stigmatised and ostracised," she added.
- SAPA
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