Expert Group Meeting Organized by: UN Division for the Advancement of Women in collaboration with Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) and World Health Organization (WHO) Conducting population-based research on gender-based violence in conflict-affected settings: An overview of a multi-country research project Expert paper prepared by:Jeanne Ward IRIN (Consultant).
Background
There has been increasing concern in recent years among humanitarian aid organizations about the extent and effects of gender-based violence (GBV) in refugee, internally displaced and post-conflict settings. There has also been increasing recognition that GBV is an affront to public health, universally accepted human rights guarantees, and the restoration of refugee and internally displaced (IDP) families and communities. The list below illustrates women ís and girlsí vulnerability to violence during and following some of the more recent of the worldís conflicts.
While war may be understood as a contributing factor, all these manifestations of GBV are essentially based on long-standing attitudes and behaviors that sustain and reinforce GBV, whether in times of peace or of war.
- 20,000 to 50,000 women were raped during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990
- The vast majority of Tutsi women in Rwandaís 1994 genocide were likely exposed to some form of GBV; of those, it is estimated that a quarter to a half million survived rape
- Approximately 50,000 to 64,000 internally displaced women in Sierra Leone have histories of war-related assault
- In a 1995 survey of post-conflict Nicaragua, 50 percent of female respondents had been beaten by a husband, and 30 percent had been forced to have sex
- 76 percent of prostitutes surveyed in post-genocide Rwanda in 1998 who had undergone HIV testing were seropositive
- 66.7 percent of participants in a 1998 Sierra Leone survey on domestic violence had been beaten by an intimate partner
- According to a 1999 government survey, 37 percent of Sierra Leoneís prostitutes were less than 15 years of age, and more than 80 percent were unaccompanied or displaced children·
- An estimated forty thousand Burmese women are trafficked each year into Thailandís factories, brothels, and as domestic workers·
- Findings from a study of Palestinian refugee women indicated 29.6% of women were subjected to beating at least once during their marriage with the husband the main perpetrator and 67.9% of children had been beaten at least once almost entirely by their parents.
- 25 percent of Azeri women surveyed in 2000 by the Center ís for Disease Control acknowledged being forced to have sex: those at greatest risk were among Azerbaij an ís internally displaced, 23 percent of whom acknowledged being beaten by a husband.·
Darfur is yet another setting where history repeats itself, and where, once again, the failure to stem the explosively high incidents of GBV will have far-reaching consequences to the survivors and their families, as well as to the communities in which it is occurring.
Download the full report : www.similima.com/pdf/violence-women.pdf
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