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South Sudan: Recent scourge of sexual violence is not new and will continue unless there is justice for survivors
18 December 2018 By: Alicia Luedke The irony is stark. Just as UN bodies, humanitarian agencies and civil society organizations started to “orange the world” with various activities commemorating the ‘16 Days of GBV [gender-based violence] activism’ in South Sudan, young men in both civilian clothing and military uniforms brutally attacked and raped an estimated […]
Missing Peace Initiative’s Young Scholars Workshop 2018
By Grace Ndirangu and Pearl Atuhaire The Missing Peace Young Scholars Network (MPSN) is an initiative of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Women in International Security (WIIS), the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), and the University of California, Berkley Human Rights Center. The MPSN is a platform for scholars to discuss, learn, […]
How to Deal With the Risk of Rape and Sexual Assault When Doing Fieldwork?
By Alicia Luedke The incident at Terrain Hotel in the capital of South Sudan, Juba in July of this year, in which a number of aid workers were raped by government soldiers highlighted the risks that aid workers, particularly female aid workers face in high-risk areas. This is by no means intended to overshadow the horrific […]
As the Indispensable Nation, the U.S. Must Lead in Eliminating Violence Against Women
By Kelsey Campbell November 25, 2014 Originally published in the Huffington Post. November 25th is designated by the United Nations to be the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The day, based on the anniversary of the 1960 assassination of the three Mirabal sisters in the Dominican Republic by dictator Rafael Trujillo, […]
Negotiating a Better Peace: Women & Civil Society at the Table
Trying to create a more sustainable peace while ignoring over half the population is a recipe for failure, especially when “women’s agency, their creativity and patience, and their capacity to love and to build consensus… make women a valuable constituency for peace”, as Lakshmi Puri, the Deputy Director of UN Women, observed. It was with these goals in mind that women from around the world met in June 2014 at the Better Peace Symposium.
Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict
“The greatest strategic prize for our century is the full social, political and economic empowerment of women everywhere” declared William Hague, the UK Foreign Secretary, at the end of the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict last week.
Women and conflict: why we should not separate rape in war from the everyday reality of violence
By Jelke Boesten Since the late 1990s, the international community has developed treaties and tools to address conflict-related sexual violence. Most recently, the UK government has been promoting the Foreign Secretary’s Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PVSI), and has organised a Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, scheduled for June. These are positive developments […]