I promise to keep this short. This is to follow up on yesterday’s post on sexual violence against women in refugee camps. Here is some information I found about the subject in the context of international law and human rights treaties. Amnesty International has a “Stop Violence Against Women” section on their website. This has a lot of great resources for activists, those that want to know more about women’s rights and what’s being done or are interested in being a campaign coordinator. 

This is from Amnesty International:

Foundations of Women’s Human Rights in International Law

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates that human rights apply to all people equally, “without distinction of any kind such as race, color, sex, language…or any other status”.
• The Convention on the Elimination of All Form of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),or the International Women’s Human Rights Treaty, was adopted by the UN in 1979. CEDAW was the first document to comprehensively address women’s rights within political, cultural, economic, social and family spheres.
• The 1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (DEVAW)set forth ways in which governments should act to prevent violence, and to protect and defend women’s rights. DEVAW holds states responsible to “exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and, in accordance with national legislation, punish acts of violence against women, whether those acts are perpetrated by the state or by private persons”.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court includes as rape those situations where the victim is deprived of her ability to consent to sex, including providing sex to avoid harm or to obtain basic necessities. It recognizes rape and other forms of sexual violence by combatants in the conduct of armed conflict as war crimes. When rape and sexual violence are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, they are considered crimes against humanity, and in some cases may constitute an element of genocide.

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