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Four Women Raped Every Five Minutes - Who Remembers Kony 2012?

September 21, 2012
tags:#Africa, #AID, #Central African Republic, #child, #child soldiers, #DRC, #feminism, #Feminismus, #Joseph Kony, #Kony, #Kony2012, #South Sudan, #Uganda, #United Nations
located:Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda
by:Jack Bicker
Abducted young girls are initiated into a life in which their worth is defined by their sexual subservience to men.

The young girls abducted by Joseph Kony are the mothers of Africa's future, and the systematic crimes committed by his forces jeopardise their sexual and psychological health, their fertility, education, ability to enter into normal relationships, and their future ability to create a stable family life.

A recent study of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo sheds further light on the lives of women in one of Africa's most conflict ridden regions, suggesting that four women are raped every five minutes in an area for which the United Nations has noted that “women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group”.

These statistics come on the back of the charity War Child estimating that 40% of the world's child soldiers are girls - often in early adolescence - abducted for use as "wives" to one or more soldiers.

Along side the work of organisations who aim to bring an end to Joseph Kony's twenty-five year reign of terror, the social and psychological, educational and economic rehabilitation of these young women is imperative to central Africa's future. Even when Joseph Kony is finally removed, the work will continue to create a culture in which women are able to live their lives in an equal dignity.

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Image: Still taken from Kony 2012

Article written by:
jack bicker
Jack Bicker
Author
Central African Republic South Sudan Uganda
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