Robinson launches violence report

FORMER President Mary Robinson yesterday launched an Irish initiative to tackle global violence against women and children.

One-in-three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or abused in some way, according to a World Health Report in 2004. Gender based violence is said to affect one-sixth of the world’s population.

Led by Mrs Robinson, a group of Irish organisations plans to develop a framework of best practice to be used as a model by bodies and governments worldwide in tackling such violence.

Junior Foreign Minister Conor Lenihan recalled how reports of rape and other violence against women in the Darfur region of Sudan prompted the Irish organisations to join in action.

“The horror of these crimes is almost unimaginable. If you read the testimonies currently being aired in the Special Court in Sierra Leone, or the reports of rape and savage violence against women during the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bosnia or Rwanda, you can only begin to understand the pain that so many women have endured and continue to live with,” he said.

A report by the Irish organisations, Gender-Based Violence: a failure to protect, examines why gender based violence gets little public or political attention, particularly in development programmes.

Gender-based violence is systematically used as a weapon of war and is on the increase, particularly in Africa. Sexual exploitation is also widespread in humanitarian crises, where sex is often traded for food rations, safe passage and for access to basic goods.