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By Kathleen Carmody
Women who are bought and sold in human trafficking, now the third largest source of profit for international organised crime after drugs and arms, are proving especially
vulnerable to rape and enslavement, according to a new Amnesty International report.
Launched on International Women’s Day last week, the new report titled Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds, exposes the daily
torture and illtreatment of women that occurs worldwide.
It describes violence against women as ongoing, institutionalised and devastating.
“As I speak we can be sure that somewhere some atrocity is
being meted out to an innocent female victim,” said NSW Governor, Dr Marie Bashir, who launched the report.
“There is no doubt this phenomena is a global problem and one which has existed for millennia. The
challenge today is in our response and how we can contribute to or participate in repudiation and extinguishment of these dreadful behaviours,” Dr Bashir said.
The report details the continuing violation of
the most basic human rights against women across the world, across diverse countries and cultures and regardless of economic or social status.
It found women faced widespread and systematic terror in all
walks of life, in the community, in the workplace, in areas of conflict, after fleeing to seek asylum and in situations of sexual slavery.
“(The) torture of women is noted in a global culture which denies
women equal rights with men and which legitimises the violent appropriation of women’s bodies for individual gratification or political ends,” Dr Bashir said.
Women are frequently singled out for torture in
armed conflicts because of their role as educators and as symbols of the community, Amnesty revealed. Tutsi women in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and Muslim, Serb, Croat and ethnic Albanian women in the former
Yugoslavia, were tortured because they were women of a particular ethnic, national or religious group.
The report highlights the issue of human trafficking, stating that the buying and selling of human beings
was now the third largest source of profit for international organised crime after drugs and arms.
“Women who have been bought and sold for forced labour, sexual exploitation and forced marriage are also
vulnerable to torture ... Trafficked women are particularly vulnerable to physical violence, including rape, unlawful confinement, confiscation of identity papers and enslavement.”
The horrendous practice of
female genital mutilation also continued unabated, the report noted, and in certain countries women are still subject to “honour” crimes – where they are killed or routinely tortured for bringing shame on to their
families.
The problems don’t just occur in the developing world, or in situations of war, however. World Bank figures show violence in the home is universal with one in every five women having experienced
physical or sexual assault. In the US a woman is battered every 15 seconds while 700,000 are raped each year.
“The … report asserts that without exception, women’s greatest risk of violence comes not from
strangers but from within the home and people they know,” Dr Bashir said.
According to Amnesty, the Australian government has failed to demonstrate a commitment to international systems of human rights
protection, including those that pertain to human rights for women.
The Australian Government must sign and ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women and the statute to the International Criminal Court, Amnesty said.
“It is appropriate to reflect upon the fact that while Australia has signed the United Nations declaration regarding human
rights for women, it has not yet ratified the International Criminal Court establishment,” commented Dr Bashir.
“It is difficult to reconcile this tardiness on the part of a democratic nation.”
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