Click here to view the embedded video.

A great deal of attention is placed on domestic violence (or violence within the family) and its effects on women and girls. At the same time, violence against women and girls extends into the public sphere (such as sexual harassment, rape, robbery) and a great deal of good work is happening in this areas well . I suggest that violence against women and girls in the public and private spheres are not separate issues and as such, should not be treated separately in our work to eliminate violence against women and girls.

Violence against women and girls in the public sphere directly influences and reinforces attitudes about the vulnerability and objectivity of women and girls within society as a whole. These attitudes are taken into the home and enacted in personal relationships in the private context.

Simultaneously, violence against women and girls in the private sphere creates a set of norms for male-female relations in public. Thus, women and girls are more afraid in public space due to their experiences of violence at home. Violence against women and girls in public is also perceived as normal and deserved when it is a continuation of violence in the home.

For these reasons, it is important to address violence against women and girls in both the public and private spheres. How do we bridge this gap? What kind of practices and policies approach violence against women in both spaces? How can we develop a dialogue and awareness-raising strategy that encompasses all forms of violence against women?

Ongoing fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continues to take its toll on women’s health.

Throughout the conflict women have been brutalized by rape and sexual violence. An estimated 200,000 women and girls have been assaulted over the past 12 years, with more than 18,000 cases reported between January and September 2008. This past May, the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee held a hearing to address how rape is being used as a weapon of war in the DRC.

Physical Trauma

Often this rape takes on extremely violent forms and can cause injuries to a woman’s reproductive organs. For instance, it can cause a health condition called vaginal fistula, which happens when the wall between a woman’s vagina and the bladder and/or rectum tears. Also called traumatic fistula when caused by sexual violence, it’s hard to know how many women in the DRC have this condition. But it’s been estimated that thousands of Congolese girls and women have been impacted, and one assessment of six DRC provinces found that out of 432 fistula cases, around 14 percent were because of trauma.

Jim Bliss, blogging on The Quiet Road, elaborates on the situation. He says:

In the rest of the world the condition [fistula] generally occurs due to serious complications during childbirth. Most gynecologists and obstetricians will go their entire career without ever encountering a single case. In DRC, however, there’s an epidemic. And it’s not down to an increase in complicated births.

Many of the militias in DRC have adopted a deliberate policy of terror through mass rape…However rape – even violent rape – does not as a rule cause fistula. No, instead the militiamen, having already gang-raped the woman (often a huge number of times over a period of weeks or months) will deliberately inflict major damage to her genitals before sending her back to her village. More often than not this is achieved by carefully shooting the woman’s vagina at point-blank range…Knives, broken glass or just sharp sticks are [also] used to cause as much damage as possible. Girls as young as 12 months have been subjected to this violence.

Medical complications for women with fistula can include being permanently incontinent, infertility, miscarriages, and other health problems. On top of this, women with fistula often face stigma because of their status as a rape victim, as well as their chronic incontinence.

Treatment and health care

Many wounded women are unable to get treatment, but there are some medical centers that treat rape-related injuries, including fistula. One such center is the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, which was created in 1999. Surgeons at the hospital performed 540 fistula repairs in 2005, 80 percent of which were due to sexual violence. In this video, a psychologist at the Panzi Hospital shows what life is like for women seeking treatment for traumatic fistula.

Endre Vestvik visited the hospital and took a series of photos of women and girls being treated for fistula. This is a photo of 4-year-old Vitonsi, who is preparing for fistula surgery. She was raped by soldiers when trying to cross the river with her pregnant mom and her sister.

Gypsy Girl Chronicles also went to Panzi Hospital and describes her experience:

Doctors here specialize in fistula operation and women travel here from far and wide for a cure. I met one woman here who was raped and tortured at the age of 17 during the height of the war. She has been at the hospital, away from her family for over 6 years now enduring one operation after another. She said that she did not feel human anymore and had no future.

A hospital in Goma is also working to treat women who have fistula. This video shows a young woman with the condition being taken to the DOCS Hospital, where other women are recovering from treatment.

Hope for the future

Despite the positive work being done by these hospitals, Emin Pasha, blogging on Congo Resources, felt highly discouraged after learning more about sexual violence in the DRC.

Little is being done about the problem, despite the fact that rape in eastern Congo has become such a well-known and well-publicized problem. Research on the topic remains preliminary; there are still only a handful of clinics and hospitals addressing the needs of the women; police and local authorities still don’t have any capacity or willingness to protect the population; and overall it appears that the problem is getting worse not better.

Still, Brad MacIntosh, blogging on A wide-angle view of the DRC conflict, says his visit to the Panzi Hospital in June gave him a glimmer of hope.

It is hard to describe all the emotions as I walked through the open corridors of the hospital complex on a warm and sunny day. I headed towards the operating theatres and found that the second building is now fully operational. This operating theater is for surgical repair of women who have survived rape. Surgeries are performed by the head fistula surgeon, a gentle and wise doctor named Dr Yunga who I met previously. Beyond this building is a beautiful courtyard where survivors of rape have a place to call their own, where they have workshops, sing, cook and learn skills…I have seen evidence of remarkable progress at Panzi Hospital. Layers of progress in fact, which leads me to conclude it is a place of immense potential and optimism in city that has seen too much despair.

Photo of Waiting for Treatment by Endre Vestvik (cyclopsr) on Flickr.

This blog-post was originally published at Global Voices Online on July 29, 2009.

Many refugees from Darfur cross the border into Chad seeking shelter from war-torn Sudan. But often they find themselves in an equally hostile setting.

Rape occurs in the refugee camps or at the hands of family members, other refugees, and even teachers or staff of humanitarian organizations. In addition to the physical and emotional trauma, survivors faces stigma associate, as rape victims are often seen, unfairly, as complicit in their own abuse.

Fatimé’s story

Take the case of Fatimé Ismaïl Moussa, a seventeen-year-old living in Chad.  Fatimé was a victim both of rape and of the strong societal stigma against sexual assault victims.

She and her family left the Sudan in 2001 when she was nine for Chad. They settled just outside of the city of Abeche, which in 2006 was the site of fighting when rebel groups attempting to depose the president.

Fatimé married so young that her mother decided to keep her at home for five years until she joined her husband. Soon after, her husband left to find work in the capital city. During his absence, her uncle tried to sexually abuse her. When she attempted to defend herself by bludgeoning him with a sharp iron, he was killed and she and her entire family were jailed.

Imprisoned and violated

Her family was released after they swore on the Koran to prove their innocence. Fatimé, however, remained in jail for over a year and a half, where she was raped again. She was put on trial and given a five-year suspended sentence, as well as a fine of 250,000 francs (11,000 USD).

Fatimé was victimized, both by her uncle and by the system. She discusses her experiences after being imprisoned:

Throughout my imprisonment at the Chef de Canton’s [the traditional ruler of the district] his bodyguard often used to come and rape me in my room, with his gun to scare me. As a result, I found myself with an unwanted pregnancy; I am in the ninth month of this pregnancy right now. When this news reached my husband, he divorced me, to keep to the precepts of the Koran, he argued.

After she was released from jail, her mother and the Social Welfare officials took Fatima to live with her maternal uncle. When they arrived, however, he and his entire family abandoned her and her mother.

The government ignores the problem

That Fatimé was unable to seek justice for the crimes committed against her and that she was alienated both from her family and husband, while tragic, is typical. Punishing those who commit violent acts against women and girls is not considered a high priority by local government or leaders, even when the perpetrator is known in both Chad and the Sudan. The president of Sudan Omar al-Bashir in 2007 remarked in an interview with NBC in March: “”It is not in the Sudanese culture or people of Darfur to rape. It doesn’t exist. We don’t have it.”

Due to the humanitarian work of Social Welfare officials and a MINURCAT (United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad), she found herself living in a kindergarten classroom. “I do not know what the future holds in store for me,” she says.

Women in Fatimé’s position also face the added risk of birth complications. According to an Amnesty International report on rape:

Women who have become pregnant as a result of rape often suffer complications before, during and after giving birth, because of the physical injuries resulting from assault. When giving birth, women who have been raped are prone to the problem of fistula and lose control of the bladder or bowel functions. They become isolated as a result of their incontinence.

Working to improve the situation

Fatimé’s story needs to be told. Though the situation is improving, there are still many more like her whose stories are never heard. Fatimé is a victim on two levels: she was sexually victimized and she was stigmatized and punished by her society. UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is working with governments and other organizations to ensure that girls and women like Fatimé are no longer overlooked.

Robert Dijksterhuis, Jac SM Kee, Monia Azzalini,Paula Fray, Thenjiwe Mtintso and Laila Al-Shaik. Credit:Miren Gutierrez/IPS

Violence against women was discussed at a conference held in Rome in November, where many talked about the importance of raising awareness of the issue through the media.

ROME, Nov 26 , 2009 (IPS) – “You don’t need to go far, it is all around us,” said Robert Dijksterhuis, head of the gender division in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to a room mostly full of women. “Up to one in three women around the world has been abused in some way – most often by someone she knows,” he added, quoting UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) numbers.

The audience, a group of committed women – and men -, had gathered in Rome to discuss this widespread emergency and the role media have in relation to it in a conference organised by the IPS news agency and supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the city of Rome.

The U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) reports in the paper “Violence against women worldwide” that up to 70 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime – the majority from husbands, partners or someone they know. Among women aged 15–44, acts of violence cause more death and disability than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.

And violence against women is pervasive.

In South Africa, a woman is killed every six hours by someone she knows; in Guatemala, two women are murdered, on average, each day. In São Paulo, Brazil, a woman is assaulted every 15 seconds. Rape of women is widespread in armed conflicts such as those of Colombia and Darfur, Sudan.

This phenomenon affects not only developing countries, but also the developed world. In the U.S., 83 percent of girls aged 12–16 experienced some form of sexual harassment in public schools, and one-third of women murdered each year are killed by partners; in the European Union between 40 and 50 percent of women experience unwanted sexual advancements, physical contact or other forms of sexual harassment at their workplace.

However, according to UNFPA, civil society, media and politicians have begun only recently to join their efforts to change the perception of the phenomenon of violence against women, trying to knock down the wall of indifference and misconstruction that has always surrounded it.

And this is where the media comes in.

According to the Italian Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Vincenzo Scotti, “communication can be one of the most powerful tools” in the fight against this type of violence.

In “Changing cultural and social norms that support violence”, the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirms that media – which have been successful in addressing a wide range of health issues – could play a bigger role in fighting violence.

Meanwhile papers like “The influence of media violence on youth”, published by the American Physiological Society, show how female victimisation in storylines reduces the perceptions of violence in the reality.

This problem is exacerbated by the under-representation of women in media and misrepresentation of their role. Media Monitoring Africa – a watchdog organisation that promotes fair journalism – denounces the scarcity of women working in the media and the marginalised way in which they are portrayed, often limited to victims or someone’s relative.

“The influence of women in journalism is one of the most central problem areas in feminist media research,” acknowledges a report entitled “The Gender of Journalism”, authored by Monika Djerf-Pierre.

Djerf-Pierre’s study shows that even in a female-friendly nation such as Sweden, “journalism as a field has remained male-dominated.” (Sweden ranks number four in the Global Gender Gap [GGG] published by the World Economic Forum.) Today, almost half of Swedish journalists are women, the study shows. However, three out of four leaders in the media industry are men. In other countries the situation is worse.

According to Dijksterhuis, some of the ways communication can be used in a changing landscape with new technologies are trying to set the agenda; forging stronger linkages with NGOs, media and other actors (an issue that was highlighted by many speakers in this conference); and monitoring the results, since “most information is biased towards men.”

Communications rights should be part of these efforts, said Jac SM Kee, coordinator of Women’s Rights Advocacy in the Association for Progressive Communications. Her organisation is involved in an effort to “reclaim ICTs” (Information Communication Technologies) to end violence and address the intersections between communication rights and women’s human rights, especially in relation to violence against women.

Meanwhile, Mona Azzalini, of the Global Media Monitoring Project in Italy, talked about the biggest global survey about women’s participation in the media, to be released in 2010.

The initiative “promotes a change in the way women are portrayed” and creates a “network of advocacy groups” fighting discrimination and stereotypes in the media. The last monitoring – done in 2005 – was focused on four issues: the representation of women as subjects of information, the journalists, the content of the news including cases of stereotypes and discrimination, and journalistic practices.

The results of the 2010 survey will be compared with the 2005 report, which showed that only 21 percent of the sources are women, and most experts quoted (83 percent) are men. The point of view of women is nowhere to be seen: in politics only 14 percent of the sources were women; while in economic issues, 20 percent were women. Even when the issue is violence against women, most of the voices (64 percent) are men’s.

And how do media talk about these issues?

“Victim means weakness; weakness means violence… Media love violence,” said Laila Al Shaikhli, anchorwoman of Al Jazeera, who spoke about the difficulty of getting the real story, when women are reluctant to speak out and carry on a social stigma, when they themselves participate in the cycle of discrimination, educating children with the same paradigms.

The result is that the image of women comes out distorted.

In Italy, for example, “80 percent of people form their opinions based on TV,” said Emma Bonino, vice president of the Italian Senate. “And I am not satisfied with how women’s images are transmitted in our media. It is a humiliating image… Working women do not exist. The role of media is an important part of whichever strategy you want in place when fighting against violence. It is not marginal or complementary, it is essential to forming the idea of women.”

In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi controls about 90 percent of the TV audience through his private media empire Mediaset and the state television RAI.

Thenjiwe Mtintso, South Africa’s ambassador to Italy, spoke from the point of view of a gender activist and a former journalist during apartheid about the definition of what is news and its ownership, and who transmits it. Not women, she said. And this is something that has to change if violence against women is to end.

This blog post was originally published on ipsnews.net on November 26, 2009.

A moving report titled Gender Violence in India by Prajnya shows that violence against women is on the rise in India.

An underreported problem

One important issue that the report discusses are flaws in the annual reports produced by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) about violence against women. For example, the NCRB often reports honor killings as torture or caste violence rather than gender violence because of the existing legal system. For this reason, the rate of violence against women may seem much lower than they actually are.

Prajnya’s report, however, uses new methodology and a variety of reports to provide a more accurate depiction of the crimes being committed against women in India. It draws attention to six kinds of violence: pre‐natal sex selection, child marriage and forced marriage, honor killings, dowry death, domestic violence, and rape.

Pre-natal sex selection

The report finds that pre-natal sex selection practices have resulted in at least 10 million missing girls, since ultrasounds and other sex‐selection tests became available two decades ago-‐a striking example of modern technology facilitating age‐old prejudices.

Child and forced marriage

According to the report, South Asia has the highest rate of marriages involving girls under the age of eighteen. Girls and women are often forced into marriage for a variety of reasons. Some include bringng families together for business reasons. Others involve family honor.

Honor killing

Honor killings or crime is committed in India (particularly in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) in order to salvage the “honor” of a clan, community or family that has somehow been “violated.” Usually the violation occurs through the actions of a woman in the community choosing a husband, lover or boyfriend, against her family’s wishes. Breach of caste rules also lead to violence.

Dowry deaths

Dowry deaths occur when a woman is either murdered or driven to suicide because the family that she has married into demands a higher dowry (or money given by a woman’s family to her husband and in-laws). Since 2006, there has been an increase of 6.2 percent in dowry deaths in India. Nearly 25.7 percent of total such cases reported in the country were reported from Uttar Pradesh (2,076) and Bihar followed next with 14.5 percent (1,172).

Domestic abuse

Indian women are equally vulnerable to domestic violence. A total of 75,930 cases were reported in the country in 2007 with an increase of 20.3% over 2006 and 35.8% over the average of the previous 5 years (2002-2006).

Rape

Madhya Pradesh has reported the highest number of rape cases (3,010) accounting for 14.5% of total such cases reported in the country. Nearly 9.5% (1,972) of the total victims of rape were girls under 15 years of age, while 15.2% (3,152) were teenage girls (15-18 years). Nearly two-third were women in the age-group 18-30 years. Rapists were known to the victims in as many as 19,188 (92.5%) cases according to NCRB statistics for 2007. Neighbors figured as the most common of perpetrators: in 36 percent of the cases a neighbor was involved.

Further readings

Prajnya 16 Days Campaign Against Gender Violence Facebook Notes

Prajnya 16 Days Campaign Against Gender Violence

An anniversary of violence by Kalpana Sharma, The Hindu, 13 December, 2009

Photo by Rudy Girón of Antigue Daily Photo and used under a Creative Commons license.

In Guatemala, the Multi-Annual Campaign (extended from 2008 to 2015) of the Regional Chapter, “JOIN together to put an End to Violence against Women” was recently launched, and Radio Feminista is reporting on the event at the collaborative space Fin a la Violencia (End to Violence). In addition, the organization Take Back the Tech is promoting a 16-day blogathon by taking over the blogosphere to discuss topics related to violence against women and ways to prevent it through the use of technology. Anyone can join the network and blog about the subject, from any place, in any language.

Honduras

When a crisis arises across the world, it often leaves women more vulnerable as a target for violence. For example, the blog Género con Clase [in Spanish] from Honduras republishes an article written by Tacuazina Morales, who writes that there was an increase of violence and brutality against women just after the coup. This was due in part to the “state of non-protection that victims found themselves and the weakening of the institutions responsible for the protection of the human rights of the women.” According to Feministas en Resistencia, there were approximately 400 cases of violence against women during the demostrations against the coup, including 23 sexual assaults, some of which had the involvement of state security forces.

Guatemala

In neighboring Guatemala, impunity, which is the non-prosecution or punishment of perpetrators, is the most serious consequence of this phenomenon. Up to 97% of the cases of violence against Guatemalan women are not prosecuted according to the blog Género con Clase [in Spanish]. Journalist Montserrat Boix features several organizations working on the issue in the country, and also highlights the recent Law Against Femicide passed in 2009 [in Spanish].

Guatemalan blogger Ixmucane of Cine Sobre Todo writes about migrant women, who are especially vulnerable to violence [in Spanish]:

One of the situations in which women are the most defenseless is migration, because they are far from the family circle that protects them, they do not know the laws, and many times they do not know the language. When I write about migration, I mean migration within the country, as well as abroad. What even worse, is that they do not want to let down the family that were left behind, because many of the family members depend economically on the women.

Rejection of violence

In the Catholic Church, a novena is a devotion consisting of prayer typically said on nine successive days, asking to obtain special graces, so Julio Serrano of the blog Fellinada [in Spanish] wrote a series of nine articles or “a novena” to unveil the complexities of violence against women. He also asks for the grace to replace violence with words of love: he used as his prayers, nine real stories of different kinds of violence against women and he ends with these thoughts:

Finally, it is not a low blow to talk about love these days, it is a radical and political position, to love is a social act. From my masculinity and vindicating the woman in me and the woman in others, and to those women close and far away from me, my mother, my girlfriend, my friends, my brothers, my father, my friends, and for those three sisters and what they mean for us today, for all of you, my words full of love

Photo by Rudy Girón of Antigua Daily Photo and used under a Creative Commons license

Rudy Girón of the blog Antigua Daily Photo made a statement about why we should reject violence as something normal, and why we should take that as a starting point to be part of the solution to solve the problem of violence against women:

I do not want to hear gun shots as normal. I refuse to take violent acts as normal. I do not want to be desensitized towards all the manifestations of violence. I do not want to see naked guns on the streets; at the entrance of banks; with every delivery truck; at shops and every tiendita (store) in the country. I do not want to be part of the problem. I will not yield to words that belittle women or other people. I will not. I want to be part of the solution.

The world has changed again, bringing more complex problems to the forefront to be solved, but because of the internet there are also more voices to join the conversation who add their ideas for solutions. Even the most marginalized in society, poor, indigenous women are fighting for their rights as described by the blog of Guatemala Solidarity so it is time to say no to violence and say yes to a more equal society.

This blog-post was originally published at Global Voices Online on November 26, 2009.

The international community has just finished Violence Against Women Awareness month (October). It is crucial that the topic stays on the international agenda. This is why the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is teaming up with WomenWatch, a project of the United Nations Inter-agency Network on Women and Gender Equality to host a dialogue for those affected, interested or working on violence against women issues.

‘Conversation starters’ answered the question: “What role does culture play in perpetuating the prevalence of female genital mutilation, cutting and fistula?” Below is a brief summary of the thoughts shared at Conversations for a Better World.

A small number of participants wrote in from Africa, Europe and North America, and 33% were male, 66% female. By joining the conversation, contributors hope to engage others. Click here to read some of the contributions.

Culture

Every contributor to this week’s question agrees that culture is the primary or only reason why female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C/C) is practiced.

A woman from Norway feels the culture(s) at which FGM/C/C is prevalent are predominantly oppressive to women and girls. Another contributor felt strongly that these cultures are not any more oppressive to women than Western cultures.

Only one participant thinks that religion is a more accurate reason for FGM/C/C. Another contributor feels that religion is blamed for why it is observed despite evidence to the contrary.

A woman from Gambia describes the influence as something that takes place because women and girls want to be a part of the mainstream culture. Young women and girls do not want to be left out of the community circle. The pain of the procedure and the consequences of trauma and health problems are better than being an outcast.

Eliminating FGM/C

Several contributors speak about how to eradicate FGM/C/C.  In order to eradicate FGM/C, a contributor said, a connection with community members would help access leaders. Educators from outside of the community will have little because they will be seen as irrelevant.

A man from the USA argues that the approach of Positive Deviance, or “social change model” where practitioners are engaging with those members of the community who are marginalized by rejecting FGM/C, would help attract others to those making social. Practitioners such as local community leaders, NGOs and multilateral organizations would have to engage with those members who are already deviating from the norm, or not participating in FGM/C practices, within the community. Positive Deviance helped create FGM/C-free communities in Egypt.

A man from the USA also feels that change could come from within the community. In this case there is the option for people working against FGM/C to use religious language to explain why FGM/C would not be in agreement with the faith. Another participant agrees that the community itself should take part, and in this case, communicate about the disadvantages of FGM/C.

One participant from Switzerland asserted that there is another way to approach FGM/C as a problem where it is difficult to change behaviors. We do not need to do away with FGM/C. Instead, actors could provide medical supplies for a safe FGM/C/C.

Genital Cosmetic Surgery

It is important also to bring attention to genital cosmetic surgery. FGM/C is an issue that attracts a lot of opposition from groups that do not pay attention to genital cosmetic surgery as a form of mutilation. According to the World Health Organization, FGM/C includes “procedures that intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” Genital cosmetic surgery could qualify and complicate matters for activists.

A special thank you to those of you who have contributed with your blog-posts and comments for the last four weeks of violence against women themed conversation. Please click here for previous posts pertaining to this conversation.

“At least one woman a week dies in Hungary as a result of domestic violence,” said Krisztina Morvai to the Central Europe Review in 2001, when she had published her book “Terror in the Family,” while working as the director of the office of the Hungarian Women’s and Children’s Rights Foundation (now she is an MEP delegated by Jobbik party). The mentioned fact has been announced several times in Hungarian media, but it seems as if nothing has changed about the situation by 2009.

In January this year, at the time of a debate on introducing a new law against domestic violence, the Hungarian Spectrum blogged:

President Sólyom doesn’t seem to be too concerned, although according to Hungarian sociologists every week at least one woman dies as a result of domestic violence. And that statistic doesn’t include old people and children who are abused or even killed. There was something on the books allegedly dealing with the issue, but it was totally ineffectual. Police couldn’t act on the spot and weeks might go by before the case ended up in court. By that time, the plaintiff could be dead. Moreover, the police rarely acted. They simply didn’t want to get involved in “family squabbles.” It was, for example, totally useless to call the police and report threats. The answer was: as long as there is no blood no action can be taken. I remember one specific case when such threats were uttered by a young boy against a young girl. The girl’s family reported the situation. The police did nothing. A few days later the girl was dead. [...]

Legal protection: Enough?

Because of the refusal of the law in January by László Sólyom, the Hungarian president, the law was changed and the Hungarian Parliament voted on it in June again, and it came into force in October. The law, which has changed the regulation of limiting the freedom of movement to the person accused of committing violent acts, is still criticized (HUN) as not being effective enough.

This month, Hungarian NGOs joined (HUN) the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign. Amnesty International Hungary started a Facebook event where they published their two campaign videos from 2005.

Giving the title of a Hungarian singer Zséda’s new song dealing with domestic violence (”Behind Doors”) to his post, tegla07 wrote this (HUN) on his blog:

[...] You’re walking on the street and you have no other possibility: you are either one of them, or not. You can’t do anything else. You can’t be independent – you are among them, or next to them. But a lot of people, and among the lot there are more and more, who try to live as if all this didn’t exist. Until it turns out that their best friend, a friend of a friend, a colleague, a cleaning lady or a secretary, a female director, teacher, CEO, is beaten at home…

And why? Every situation is different, every fate is unique, but. But there are rules, there are limits which are impossible to step across. There are situations when the “why” fades, and you can’t ponder over it – and mostly, you can’t judge.

You can’t judge somebody because of her “weakness” (weakness? she stands up to something that you, probably, would never be able to), because of her “powerlessness” (powerlessness? she re-builds herself every morning from nothing)… If somebody’s hurt, there’s no question there. You must get there, from anywhere you are. You must hug her, to let her know that she’s valuable. To let her know that she deserves something different. [...]

Nobody, nobody deserves those slaps. Nobody, nobody can think that he has club-law in his family. Nobody, nobody can just pass by a humiliated woman. Nobody, never has the right to speak in another person’s ear about a woman hurt… When will we understand this?

This blog-post was originally published at Global Voices Online on November 29, 2009.

Ongoing fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continues to take its toll on women’s health.

Throughout the conflict women have been brutalized by rape and sexual violence. An estimated 200,000 women and girls have been assaulted over the past 12 years, with more than 18,000 cases reported between January and September 2008. This past May, the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee held a hearing to address how rape is being used as a weapon of war in the DRC.

Physical Trauma

Often this rape takes on extremely violent forms and can cause injuries to a woman’s reproductive organs. For instance, it can cause a health condition called vaginal fistula, which happens when the wall between a woman’s vagina and the bladder and/or rectum tears. Also called traumatic fistula when caused by sexual violence, it’s hard to know how many women in the DRC have this condition. But it’s been estimated that thousands of Congolese girls and women have been impacted, and one assessment of six DRC provinces found that out of 432 fistula cases, around 14 percent were because of trauma.

Jim Bliss, blogging on The Quiet Road, elaborates on the situation. He says:

In the rest of the world the condition [fistula] generally occurs due to serious complications during childbirth. Most gynecologists and obstetricians will go their entire career without ever encountering a single case. In DRC, however, there’s an epidemic. And it’s not down to an increase in complicated births.

Many of the militias in DRC have adopted a deliberate policy of terror through mass rape…However rape – even violent rape – does not as a rule cause fistula. No, instead the militiamen, having already gang-raped the woman (often a huge number of times over a period of weeks or months) will deliberately inflict major damage to her genitals before sending her back to her village. More often than not this is achieved by carefully shooting the woman’s vagina at point-blank range…Knives, broken glass or just sharp sticks are [also] used to cause as much damage as possible. Girls as young as 12 months have been subjected to this violence.

Medical complications for women with fistula can include being permanently incontinent, infertility, miscarriages, and other health problems. On top of this, women with fistula often face stigma because of their status as a rape victim, as well as their chronic incontinence.

Treatment and health care

Many wounded women are unable to get treatment, but there are some medical centers that treat rape-related injuries, including fistula. One such center is the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, which was created in 1999. Surgeons at the hospital performed 540 fistula repairs in 2005, 80 percent of which were due to sexual violence. In this video, a psychologist at the Panzi Hospital shows what life is like for women seeking treatment for traumatic fistula.

Endre Vestvik visited the hospital and took a series of photos of women and girls being treated for fistula. This is a photo of 4-year-old Vitonsi, who is preparing for fistula surgery. She was raped by soldiers when trying to cross the river with her pregnant mom and her sister.

Gypsy Girl Chronicles also went to Panzi Hospital and describes her experience:

Doctors here specialize in fistula operation and women travel here from far and wide for a cure. I met one woman here who was raped and tortured at the age of 17 during the height of the war. She has been at the hospital, away from her family for over 6 years now enduring one operation after another. She said that she did not feel human anymore and had no future.

A hospital in Goma is also working to treat women who have fistula. This video shows a young woman with the condition being taken to the DOCS Hospital, where other women are recovering from treatment.

Hope for the future

Despite the positive work being done by these hospitals, Emin Pasha, blogging on Congo Resources, felt highly discouraged after learning more about sexual violence in the DRC.

Little is being done about the problem, despite the fact that rape in eastern Congo has become such a well-known and well-publicized problem. Research on the topic remains preliminary; there are still only a handful of clinics and hospitals addressing the needs of the women; police and local authorities still don’t have any capacity or willingness to protect the population; and overall it appears that the problem is getting worse not better.

Still, Brad MacIntosh, blogging on A wide-angle view of the DRC conflict, says his visit to the Panzi Hospital in June gave him a glimmer of hope.

It is hard to describe all the emotions as I walked through the open corridors of the hospital complex on a warm and sunny day. I headed towards the operating theatres and found that the second building is now fully operational. This operating theater is for surgical repair of women who have survived rape. Surgeries are performed by the head fistula surgeon, a gentle and wise doctor named Dr Yunga who I met previously. Beyond this building is a beautiful courtyard where survivors of rape have a place to call their own, where they have workshops, sing, cook and learn skills…I have seen evidence of remarkable progress at Panzi Hospital. Layers of progress in fact, which leads me to conclude it is a place of immense potential and optimism in city that has seen too much despair.

Photo of Waiting for Treatment by Endre Vestvik (cyclopsr) on Flickr.

This blog-post was originally published at Global Voices Online on July 29, 2009.