LONDON, May 25: Women and girls faced ‘horrific’ levels of abuse in worldwide, the Amnesty report said, blaming widespread rape and violence on a mix of ‘indifference, apathy and impunity’. From honour killings carried out by the victims’ families to sexual violence used as a weapon of war, abuse frequently went unpunished and survivors were often abandoned by their own communities, the group said.

Amnesty said it had sought in the past year to argue that violence against women in conflict situations was ‘an extreme manifestation of the discrimination and abuse they face in peacetime’, notably domestic violence and sexual abuse.

“When political tensions degenerate into outright conflict, all forms of violence increase, including rape and other forms of sexual violence against women.”

The annual report, covering 131 countries, noted abuse across the world but highlighted several grave examples: in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), both armed groups and UN forces are guilty of rape; in Turkey, family abuse of women is widespread; in Darfur, Sudan, gang rape is systemic; and in Eastern Europe, economic need fuels the trafficking of women.

In Darfur, where a local rebellion sparked a brutal government backlash, Khartoum-backed militias have staged mass rapes, including of schoolgirls, and ‘frequently abducted’ local women into sexual slavery, Amnesty said.

Tens of thousands of women and girls were also subject to rape and sexual slavery in the DRC, and as in Darfur, victims were then abandoned by their husbands and families, ‘condemning them and their children to extreme poverty’.

All parties in the ongoing conflicts in the eastern DRC have committed the abuses against women, including military and police officers, and United Nations peacekeepers charged with the protection of civilians.

The two African cases were ‘not Exceptional’, Amnesty warned.

Latin America had the highest risk of all types of sexual victimization, according to UN report findings cited by Amnesty.—AFP