Mir Abass
Through out history, women and girls have often been targeted in wartime for violence, especially sexual violence. They have also been excluded from conflict prevention and resolution efforts. Despite increased awareness and mobilization at the local and international levels, women and girls in conflict continue to face multiple challenges. A lack of high-level leadership committed to integrating women’s rights, including in Security Council negotiations and in peace talks, means women are often left out. Grassroots organizations working on women’s local-level peace building and service provision struggle to get adequate and consistent funding. Militarism everywhere is out of control, cutting a violent swath of pandemic proportions across our planet. Women and children account for almost 80% of the casualties of conflict and war as well as 80% of the 40 million people in world who are now refugees from their homes. It is one of the unspoken facts of militarism that women often become the spoils of war, their deaths are considered collateral damage and their bodies are frequently used as battlegrounds and as commodities that can be traded.
Women and girls are not just killed; they are raped, sexually attacked, mutilated and humiliated. Custom, culture and religion have built an image of women as bearing the ‘honour’ of their communities. Disparaging a woman’s sexuality and destroying her physical integrity have become a means by which to terrorize, demean and ‘defeat’ entire communities, as well as to punish, intimidate and humiliate women. Women and girls are not just killed, they are raped, sexually attacked, mutilated and humiliated. Custom, culture and religion have built an image of women as bearing the ‘honour’ of their communities. Disparaging a woman’s sexuality and destroying her physical integrity have become a means by which to terrorize, demean and ‘defeat’ entire communities, as well as to punish, intimidate and humiliate women.. Sexual violence as a tool of war has left hundreds of thousands of women raped, brutalized, impregnated and infected with HIV/AIDS. And hundreds of thousands of women are trafficked annually for forced labor and sexual slavery. The perpetrators of these assaults have rarely been prosecuted or punished. Women in Kashmir have also been subjected to great sufferings since a separatist uprising broke out the region in 1989.Many of them have been widowed, displaced, tortured, raped, and jailed. Some have also had their sons killed in the ongoing conflict. India claims Kashmir to be an integral part, but Pakistan also lays claim over the territory. The two neighbours have fought two wars over the territory. Because of the continuing turmoil, women in Kashmir are forced to undergo immense hardships. It is no easy life, but then these women have braved the challenges stoically. There is hope though that someday some solution will emerge to resolve what an intractable dispute seems and women of this side too will live a respectable life.
(The author is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English at Degree College Handwara. Views are his own [email protected])
