Nyota Myhabwa (left), Marceline Seminvumbi (centre), and Kabesha Katambwe (right) take part in a women’s meeting in a Sharing Centre in Kibati refugee camp near Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo: Lionel Healing, ActionAid.
The date was chosen in commemoration of three sisters who were violently assassinated on 25 November 1960. Known as the ‘Unforgettable Butterflies’, Patria, Minerva, and Maria-Teresa Mirabel were killed for their political activism in the Dominican Republic. Sadly, 51 years after their deaths, violence against women is still an issue of endemic proportions.
Gender violence is one of the most widespread human rights abuses. Around the world, one in three women have been coerced into sex, beaten or suffered from some other form of abuse throughout their lifetime. Violence against women is particularly prevalent within the settings of war, conflict and natural disasters.
During periods of warfare women’s bodies often become battlegrounds, with rape used as a mechanism by which to dominate and humiliate.
In the aftermath of natural disasters, women and young people are often left unaccompanied, which means their risk of being a victim of violence is heightened.
Furthermore, breakdowns in law and order mean perpetrators often abuse with impunity.
One example of this is the Democratic Republic of Congo where years of warfare have left behind a harsh legacy of gender violence. Thousands of Congolese girls and women suffer from vaginal fistula—tissue tears in the vagina, bladder and rectum—after surviving brutal rapes in which guns and branches were used to violate them.
As Marceline Semivunbi, a displaced person from Kiwanja recounts, “While fleeing with my children I arrived in a banana plantation and came across five armed rebel soldiers. They each raped me in turn. I suffered a lot during the rape and I don’t know how long it lasted. I don’t know if I caught AIDS or not and I am still in pain.”
Violence against women not only undermines women’s safety and dignity, but also compromises their ability to end the cycle of vulnerability, marginalisation, and poverty. That’s why ActionAid Australia has made the protection of women’s rights during conflicts and emergencies, one of our main objectives in our new five-year strategy.
ActionAid currently helps to support Congolese women, like Marceline, by providing medical care and trauma healing through sharing centres. And, over the next five years, we will be working to further enhance the safety, security and dignity of women affected by conflict and disasters in priority countries by supporting women to prevent and respond to gender based violence.
It’s time for the world to stop viewing women’s bodies as battlefields. By working to eliminate gender violence, we can help to empower women to be drivers of change.
