The long struggle against systematic rape in conflict-ridden Kashmir
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— May 21, 2013
Just a few weeks ago, some 50 Kashmiri women came together to demand that police reinvestigate a well-known case of mass rape. The women—teachers, students, journalists, human rights workers, lawyers, and other professionals—filed a public interest litigation case before India’s Jammu and Kashmir high court. The alleged set of crimes, known as the Kunan Poshpora case, happened more than 20 years ago, on February 23, 1991, when armed forces allegedly raped at least 32 teenaged, adult, and elderly women. more »
The legacy of silence: Why we ignore the rape of women from Guatemala to Syria
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— May 13, 2013
Just before 2 a.m. and nearly half a world away, I watched a guilty verdict from Guatemala scroll by tweet by tweet on my phone. Former President Efrain Rios Montt was convicted on May 10 of genocide and crimes against humanity and given 80 years in prison. As the news came through, I felt a satisfied chill—17 years after the murder of 200,000 Guatemalans and the rape of 100,000 women, mostly Mayans, justice has actually come in our lifetime. more »
Q&A: A fresh look at rape during the U.S. Civil War
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— May 9, 2013
Crystal N. Feimster is no stranger to uncomfortable narratives. A feminist scholar in the department of African-American studies at Yale University, Feimster has spent much of her academic career addressing and unpacking the often-controversial stories woven through racial and sexualized violence. She has found 450 court martial cases from the Civil War related to rape and other sexualized violence, but says that, as we still find today, the crime was “overwhelmingly underreported.”
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From Morocco to Denmark: Rape survivors around the world are forced to marry attackers
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— May 2, 2013
In March 2012, a 16-year-old girl named Amina Filali killed herself by drinking rat poison. She had been raped and forced—by Moroccan law—to marry the man who had raped her. more »
Lack of clean water tied to rape in the Solomon Islands
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— April 26, 2013
On any given day, women around the world will find themselves in danger of rape while performing the most basic acts of survival. Acts borne of necessity, such as fetching clean water for cooking or washing, or gathering firewood, often leave women vulnerable to rape and gender-based violence as they are forced to venture to remote areas. In the Solomon Islands, the problem is severe. more »