Jul 22nd 2011, 7:22:43
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/...-abuse-of-men/?hpt=hp_bn2
LOL, wtf? um, get rid of war so we don't have to worry about the sexual abuse that occurs during it. dowt!
Stopping wartime sexual abuse - of men
Editor's Note: Stewart M. Patrick is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (where he writes the blog The Internationalist) and Director of the Program on International Institutions and Global Governance. This post comes originally from the blog The Internationalist.
By Stewart M. Patrick
Today, I would like to draw your attention to a disturbing phenomenon ignored by the foreign policy community but all too common in global conflict zones: The pervasive sexual abuse of men in war.
Women, of course, bear the main brunt of wartime sexual violence—as they always have. Last December, my CFR colleague Mark Lagon hosted a sobering meeting with the eminent legal scholar and activist Catharine MacKinnon. Now the special gender adviser to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Mackinnon in 2000 argued the path-breaking legal case Kadic vs. Karadzic — about mass Serbian rape of Bosnian women — which for the first time established mass rape as an act of genocide.
Over the past two decades, international attention to rape as a weapon of war has been growing. Documentary filmmakers have often been in the forefront.
In 2006 Lisa F. Jackson traveled to DRC to interview thousands of rape victims, and their perpetrators. Her resulting film, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008 and subsequently inspired a UN resolution condemning rape as a weapon of war. Several of my CFR colleagues — including Laurie Garrett, Isobel Coleman, and Matthew Waxman — have spoken and written eloquently on the scope of such atrocities and the need to hold perpetrators accountable.
At the same time, as the Guardian reported on Sunday, the United Nations (UN) and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) “barely acknowledge” the pervasive sexual violence against men that occurs in modern war.
The article documents the terrible suffering of a Congolese refugee who was captured by rebels and raped multiple times per day, and watched countless other men be similarly brutalized. 22% of men in Eastern Congo reported being victims of sexual violence, compared to 30% of women. One victim reported the crime to police, and was laughed at. A doctor in whom he confided merely gave him Panadol (a local equivalent of Tylenol). He described:
“Everybody has heard the women’s stories. But nobody has heard the men’s.”
The violence, and the disregard, is global. 80% of Bosnian males imprisoned in concentration camps and 76% of El Salvadoran male political prisoners report sexual abuse. Yet, of roughly 4,000 NGOs addressing wartime sexual violence, only 3% mentioned male victims (and usually only in passing).
Editor's Note: Stewart M. Patrick is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (where he writes the blog The Internationalist) and Director of the Program on International Institutions and Global Governance. This post comes originally from the blog The Internationalist.
By Stewart M. Patrick
Today, I would like to draw your attention to a disturbing phenomenon ignored by the foreign policy community but all too common in global conflict zones: The pervasive sexual abuse of men in war.
Women, of course, bear the main brunt of wartime sexual violence—as they always have. Last December, my CFR colleague Mark Lagon hosted a sobering meeting with the eminent legal scholar and activist Catharine MacKinnon. Now the special gender adviser to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Mackinnon in 2000 argued the path-breaking legal case Kadic vs. Karadzic — about mass Serbian rape of Bosnian women — which for the first time established mass rape as an act of genocide.
Over the past two decades, international attention to rape as a weapon of war has been growing. Documentary filmmakers have often been in the forefront.
In 2006 Lisa F. Jackson traveled to DRC to interview thousands of rape victims, and their perpetrators. Her resulting film, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008 and subsequently inspired a UN resolution condemning rape as a weapon of war. Several of my CFR colleagues — including Laurie Garrett, Isobel Coleman, and Matthew Waxman — have spoken and written eloquently on the scope of such atrocities and the need to hold perpetrators accountable.
At the same time, as the Guardian reported on Sunday, the United Nations (UN) and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) “barely acknowledge” the pervasive sexual violence against men that occurs in modern war.
The article documents the terrible suffering of a Congolese refugee who was captured by rebels and raped multiple times per day, and watched countless other men be similarly brutalized. 22% of men in Eastern Congo reported being victims of sexual violence, compared to 30% of women. One victim reported the crime to police, and was laughed at. A doctor in whom he confided merely gave him Panadol (a local equivalent of Tylenol). He described:
“Everybody has heard the women’s stories. But nobody has heard the men’s.”
The violence, and the disregard, is global. 80% of Bosnian males imprisoned in concentration camps and 76% of El Salvadoran male political prisoners report sexual abuse. Yet, of roughly 4,000 NGOs addressing wartime sexual violence, only 3% mentioned male victims (and usually only in passing).
LOL, wtf? um, get rid of war so we don't have to worry about the sexual abuse that occurs during it. dowt!
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