Press Release
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Today, Thursday, June 9, 2022, the Research and Studies Unit of the FDHRD issued a report entitled (Sexual violence in conflict areas: Tigray-Afghanistan-Yemen-South Sudan). The report emphasized that sexual violence during conflict is being used in the current period as a weapon of war to humiliate and subjugate others and also terrorize them.
The report touched on the manifestations of sexual violence in different places of conflict such as Tigray, Afghanistan, Yemen and South Sudan, where:
Migrant and refugee women and girls in conflict-affected areas, particularly those in detention facilities, continued to face increased risks of sexual violence in Libya and Yemen. Sexual violence is practiced in the context of kidnapping victims or human trafficking, and it was also practiced by terrorist groups.
The year 2021 witnessed waves of terrorism in many regions, which were accompanied by sexual violence and human trafficking. As a result of the penetration of the presence of terrorist groups such as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and the Support of Islam and Muslims, local grievances in Mali and Burkina Faso, this led to an increase in sexual violence rates in conflict areas.
As for sexual violence in different conflict areas, the report found that:
In Afghanistan, violence against women has escalated further since August 2021 when legal and other support mechanisms for women began to close – particularly when women’s shelters closed. The Taliban’s termination of institutional and legal support for women led to women being subjected to more violence, and the fear of reporting incidents for fear that whistleblowers would be tempted by the Taliban.
In Yemen, sexual violence in the Yemeni conflict is largely used as a systematic tool to suppress, intimidate and torture individuals, especially detainees who are subjected to such treatment as punitive measures for their perceived political affiliation or in an attempt to extract confessions by force. It is also used as a way to humiliate women who pursue political careers or choose to speak out in the context of their work.
While in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, sexual violence was used in the Tigray region as a “weapon of war” which greatly affected the lives of women and girls there. During the period from November to June 2021, Tigrayan females were the main targets of war-related sexual violence, as it was Among the rape victims are young girls as young as four years old and teenage girls.
Finally, the report emphasized that despite the state’s efforts to confront and eliminate sexual violence in conflict areas and to sign agreements relating to it, this did not prevent the spread of the phenomenon and women continue to suffer in all areas of conflict.
