Stop Rape Now
by Jess McCabe // 30 April 2010, 10:15
In a symbolic gesture that sexual violence is unacceptable, UN is calling on people world-over to upload photos, with arms crossed, to its Stop Rape Now map.
The UN campaign is particularly focused on conflict-related rape:
United Nations Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict (UN Action) unites the work of 13 UN system entities with the goal of ending sexual violence during and in the wake of conflict. Sexual violence in conflict is a serious, present-day emergency affecting millions of people, primarily women and girls. It is often a conscious strategy deployed on a large scale by armed groups (state and non-state actors) to humiliate opponents, destroy individuals and shred societies.200 000 persons have been raped in the ongoing war in DRC, 500 000 were raped during the war in Rwanda and every day hundreds of women are raped in Darfur.
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frank // Posted 30 April 2010 at 10:50
Conflict-related rape is a massive global issues that we seem to fail badly at addressing, but when the Uk's own rape conviction stats are so bad I hardly think that we have much to offer. Great campaign by the UN though.
frank // Posted 30 April 2010 at 10:52
ps. love the UK pic on the map of the older ladies group. Brilliant! And great to see the older generation engaging in this debate too.
Laurel Dearing // Posted 30 April 2010 at 10:56
i kind of feel like after the mother/daughter/etc comment there should have been an "it could be you" or something that didnt just make women seem the appendages of men. or maybe that is the point, to give men a reason why it should affect them, but i feel like thats quite a sad way of looking at it =/
Jennifer Drew // Posted 30 April 2010 at 13:26
ironic to say the least, given UN male Peacekeepers have an ongoing history of engaging in raping and subjecting women and girls to other forms of male sexual violence.
Or is it hypocritical for UN to call on indviduals to speak out against systemic institutionalised male sexual violence against women and girls, when these same UN authorised male peacekeepers engage in multiple rape and sexual enslavement of women and girls and such multiple acts are ignored or else carefully hidden.
Whenever male UN Peacekeepers are used to 'police' conflict zones, inevitably these same male Peacekeepers engage in subjecting the female population to multiple rapes and female sexual slavery. It is called male sex right and must not be challenged.