GJC President Janet Benshoof was interviewed for Señal Colombia's episode about Monica Roa, a Colombian activist who is currently the Vice President for Strategy at Women's Link Worldwide, where Benshoof is featured as one of Roa's mentors.
Click here to watch the full episode.
Read Global Justice Center Legal Director Akila Radhakrishnan’s explanation of the gender components of genocide in the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect Blog.
“It’s not enough to just recognize that acts such as sexual violence, abductions, enslavement, forced abortion, and forced impregnation—acts which are disproportionately committed against women—of protected groups can constitute genocide. Rather, the commission of such acts needs to impel action for states and international actors to fulfill their obligations to prevent, suppress and punish genocide. "
Forty-three years ago today, the Supreme Court deemed abortion a constitutionally protected right for women in the United States in Roe v. Wade, taking a huge step forward for women’s equality. Since then, anti-choice lawmakers at the federal and state-level have been working concertedly to render this right meaningless by restricting access to abortion.
The Guttmacher Institute recently found that states have enacted 1,074 abortion restrictions since 1973. One of the longest-standing restrictions is the Helms Amendments, which has been in place since December 1973 and prevents the use of U.S. foreign aid to pay for abortion services, even in the case of rape, incest or life endangerment.
Shutting down federal funding for abortion services exacerbates one of the longest-standing barriers to abortion access: the cost. As anti-choice lawmakers have known for the past four decades, if the right to abortion can’t be eliminated, the next best thing is to make abortion access practically impossible.
The Helms Amendment impacts some of the most vulnerable women and girls in the world; those raped in war. Through the continued imposition of the Helms Amendment without exceptions, the U.S. is denying abortion access to women enslaved and raped by groups like ISIS and Boko Haram, and to girls as young as 12 raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The U.S. is laudably the world’s largest provider of development and humanitarian aid. Through this aid, the U.S. funds a variety of initiatives around the world, including health care services in conflict zones. But when girls and women present at these U.S. funded health centers for medical care, while they may have access to a wide range of services, safe abortion is not one of them. Insultingly, if these women seek out an unsafe abortion and have medical consequences, they can go to a U.S. funded health care provider for post-abortion care, but only after they have put their own life in danger. Not only is this policy illegal under international law, its consequences are dire and often deadly.
Yesterday, in a receiving line at a town hall in Iowa, Hillary Clinton was asked by an activist whether she would “help fix the Helms Amendment” as president, to which she gave a resounding yes. There has been no stronger advocate of women’s rights and abortion rights in the current presidential campaign than Clinton. Rightly framing abortion as a class and racial issue, she’s drawn attention to the fact that making abortion unaffordable essentially renders the right to it meaningless, in particular for low-income women. However, Ms. Clinton, as a part of the Obama Administration, had ample opportunity to act on the Helms Amendment but failed to do so.
During her tenure as Secretary of State, the Helms Amendment’s impact of women raped in war was raised with the Obama Administration multiple times, including during the 2010 Universal Periodic Review of the United States. However, despite the fact that President Obama can take steps through executive action to limit the impact of the Helms Amendment, he and his Administration have continually failed to take any action—to the detriment of countless women around the world.
Like Roe & the U.S. Constitution, a variety of international instruments, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Torture, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, enshrine and protect rights to abortion for women around the world. However, as long as the U.S. remains the world’s largest donor of development and humanitarian aid, abortion restrictions on foreign assistance, such as the Helms Amendment, will continue to impede the ability of women around the world to exercise their right to abortion services.
Today, as we reflect on the legacy of Roe, and sit on pins and needles as we anticipate the arguments and Supreme Court decision in Whole Women’s Health v. Cole, let us also reflect on the idea that the right to abortion is nothing without the protection of actual access to these services, including through public funding. And that policymakers in Washington D.C. shouldn’t be the reason that women are unable to exercise their rights around the world.
Akila Radhakrishnan is the Legal Director at the Global Justice Center. She has published articles in The Atlantic, Women Under Siege, RH Reality Check, Ms. Magazine, the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy and Reproductive Laws for the Twenty-First Century.
Myanmar’s upcoming Universal Periodic Review (“UPR”) provides an ideal venue to question the Government of Myanmar (“Government”) regarding its failure to ensure substantive equality for women as required by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, and international treaties including CEDAW. Since 2011, Myanmar’s “democratization” has neither improved women’s status nor dismantled structural barriers preventing women’s equality.
Myanmar’s failure to ensure women’s rights arises from entrenched legacies of inequality that impede genuine reform in all aspects of law. Specifically, ongoing supremacy of the military, gender inequality embedded in the Constitution and other laws, and the lack of adequate justice mechanisms including an independent judiciary serve as structural barriers to equality. No Government reforms have addressed these issues. As a result, women in Myanmar face (1) gender discrimination embedded in law; (2) barriers to access to justice; and (3) exclusion from participation in public and political life.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - October 15, 2015
[NEW YORK, NY] – Women will never enjoy equal rights in Burma without dismantling structural barriers to gender equality, such as limitations in the 2008 Constitution, an antiquated legal system, and the ongoing legacy of a male-dominated military leadership, according to a report released today by the Global Justice Center and the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. The report, Promises Not Progress: Burma’s National Plan for Women Falls Short of Gender Equality and CEDAW, concludes that Burma’s national gender policy fails to acknowledge or address these structural barriers or to fulfill Burma’s international obligations to ensure substantive gender equality and faults the Government of Burma for failing to follow through on the promises it has made to advance women’s rights. The report is released in advance of Burma’s Universal Periodic Review in November, where the international community can support the fight for gender equality in Burma by exposing the lack of commitment and failures of the Government.
In late 2013, the Government of Burma/Myanmar (“the Government”) issued a National Strategic Action Plan for the Advancement of Women 2013-2022 (NSPAW) based in part on its obligations under the Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Heralded as a “historic and essential step towards substantive equality between women and men,” NSPAW was released amidst a flurry of other governmental plans, strategies, promises, and actions ostensibly aimed at transforming the country into a democracy. However, conspicuously missing from these reforms, including NSPAW, were deeper systemic overhauls of the many legal, political, cultural and socio-economic barriers to the full enjoyment of human rights in Burma which must underpin any true democracy.
The issuance of NSPAW invites assessment of the state of gender equality in Burma, the prospects for NSPAW’s success in meeting its goals, and a comparison between NSPAW and Burma’s international legal obligations under CEDAW. Taking note of the need for such an assessment, as well as the opportunities presented by the forthcoming review of Burma by the CEDAW Committee in July 2016, this report by the Global Justice Center (GJC) and Leitner Center for International Law and Justice (Leitner Center) evaluates NSPAW against the reality for women on the ground in Burma and the Government’s legal obligations under CEDAW.
In short, the critical analysis in this report reveals that NSPAW’s provisions are aspirational and ambiguous, without clear guidance on implementation or benchmarks for meaningful evaluation. This report further demonstrates how NSPAW fails to meaningfully grapple with the structural barriers precluding gender equality—including the 2008 Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, decades of armed conflict and the continuing power of the military, antiquated laws and legal frameworks, and the difference between discrimination “in law” and discrimination “in effect”—all of which must be addressed in order to achieve substantive gender equality in Burma.
As this report shows, at its best NSPAW is an inadequate and amorphous effort to improve women’s experience in Burma without disruption to long-embedded power structures that insulate the country’s male-dominated elite. At its worst, NSPAW is a deceptive document that pays lip service to Burma’s CEDAW and other human rights obligations while actually entrenching gender inequality. Either way, NSPAW suffers from critical shortcomings related to its conceptualization, substantive content, and implementation. Specifically, this report identifies three ways that NSPAW falls short: (1) flawed conceptual foundation, in particular due to its incorporation of and reliance on existing systematic barriers to equality including the 2008 Constitution; (2) lack of practical, action-oriented provisions, as evidenced by the fact that two years after the issuance of NSPAW, no implementation plans have been developed or produced; and (3) absence of accountability through monitoring and evaluation.
Ultimately, NSPAW poses the threat of complacence—both on the part of the Government regarding the treatment of women and girls, as well as on the part of the international community in failing to critically evaluate the Government’s claims of progress. NSPAW is one plan of many in a pattern of cursory improvements to a deeply flawed system. It is GJC and the Leitner Center’s hope that this report, and in particular its recommendations, is a useful tool for all actors working in Burma, including the Government and civil society, to meaningfully address and challenge gender inequality in the country, including through the forthcoming CEDAW review.
Importantly, this report is not intended to be a comprehensive appraisal of women’s rights in Burma and instead examines certain salient substantive areas raised by the interaction of NSPAW, CEDAW and the current state of affairs. Similarly, the report only generally touches on the intense interconnectedness of the issues (e.g. decades on conflict implicate instability in women’s education and professional opportunities, which affect women’s opportunities to participate in political processes, which complicates the ability to earnestly address health, violence, and cultural issues only affecting women). However, we hope the report’s analytical framework can serve as a template for the meaningful consideration of the status of women in Burma through the lens of CEDAW.
The report is organized by substantive issue area, with reference to the articles of CEDAW addressing that issue (e.g. Adoption of a Legal Definition of Discrimination (Articles 1, 2); Women and Education (Article 10); Eliminating Negative Practices, Stereotypes, and Media Portrayals (Articles 5, 15 and General Recommendation 21). Each substantive section of the report is broken up into four smaller sections covering: (1) Burma’s legal obligations under CEDAW; (2) the current situation on the ground in Burma; (3) analysis of NSPAW in light of CEDAW and the current situation; and (4) recommendations for the Government to bring itself into full compliance with CEDAW and to meet its commitment to gender equality.
On June 9, the European Parliament adopted a resolution that would grant abortion access to women and girls who are victim of war rape. This resolution has come at a key time, as recently one-third of the 293 girls who were rescued from Boko Haram in Nigeria were found to be pregnant.
However, due to the U.S.’s Helms Amendment, no U.S. aid can be given to organizations that provide abortion services. These girls are often forced to give birth in dangerous conditions and care for the child of their rapist. The European Parliament is the most recent body to come out against the U.S.’s brutal and outdated abortion ban.
This resolution, detailed in the equalities report “The EU Strategy for Equality between Women and Men Post 2015,” is the fifth resolution on abortion and war rape that has been adopted in the last three years. At the U.S.’s UPR in May, five countries challenged the U.S.’s abortion ban and demanded justification for its continued implementation.
This resolution shows mounting pressure on the U.S. and President Obama to overturn the Helms Amendment. As stated by GJC President Janet Benshoof, “Obama must choose now if his legacy will include turning a blind eye to the plight of women and girls raped in war.”
Read GJC’s Press Release here.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - May 11, 2015
[GENEVA, CH] - Today, during the 2nd Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United States, several UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Member States directly challenged the abortion restrictions that the U.S. imposes on its foreign aid.
EWL met with Global Justice Center in Brussels to discuss access to full medical care for female war rape victims.
The European Women’s Lobby (EWL) is the largest umbrella organisation of women’s associations in the European Union (EU), working to promote women’s rights and equality between women and men.
Click here to read their article about the meeting.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015 09:00-10:00
At Baha'i International Community, UN Office, 866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 120
The Global Justice Center will participate in event, along with Amnesty International and Justice Trust, examining the current issues in Burma and the potential political backsliding in terms of human rights.
Countries around the world have been coming under scrutiny, as it becomes apparent that even with some improvements in women’s rights, violence against women remains alarmingly prevalent. News stories have been inundated with multiple incidents of sexual violence in India, Iraq, Sudan, and the United States. While each country has its own unique narrative in terms of violence towards women; globally, more than one in three women will suffer physical violence and one in ten girls under 18 will be raped. Regardless of individual political or cultural circumstances, the protection and empowerment of women is a global issue.
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the landmark conference on women in Beijing, and the UN is set to review the successes and failures of women’s rights in the past 20 years. In terms of successes; pre-school age children are now composed of equal numbers of boys and girls, twice as many women operate in legislative bodies than did 20 years ago, and maternal mortality has been halved, (though it must be noted that number would be significantly improved if abortions were provided to women in armed conflict.)
Despite these successes, sexual violence remains an unchanging and constant threat to women and girls. Some countries have yet to outlaw marital rape, and even countries with explicit, binding laws against sexual violence usually outright fail to implement them. If moral incentives are not enough, violence against women and children costs 4 trillion dollars yearly on a global scale. Sexual violence remains largely unpunished and is regularly used as an effective military tool in armed conflicts. It is the responsibility of international bodies such as the UN to change such realities. Furthermore, as it has been noted, it is important the people and media continue to speak about these issues and spread awareness, so that the next 20 years we can look back and see a marked improvement on the lives of women and girls.
Today, at the UN Security Council Open Debate on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, Ms. Illwad Elman, a Somali-Canadian social activist who works at the Elman Peace and Human Rights Center in Mogadishu, used GJC language and mentioned both IHL & abortion in her statement, saying:
“Implementation of international humanitarian law (IHL) in a gender responsive manner is key to enhancing the protection of civilians. Women must have equal access to accountability mechanisms, reparations and non-discriminatory medical care, including safe abortion and post-abortion care for survivors of sexual and gender based violence.”
This is the first time abortion was referenced in connection with the important right to non-discriminatory medical care and IHL at the UN Security Council Open Debate on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict.
Click here to read the entire statement.
A recent United Nations report asserted that as many as 70 nations allowed girls to be abused for seeking an education and that attacks upon educated girls are facing an alarming upsurge, with more than 3,600 separate events reported in a single year. In 2012, this particular strain of gender-based violence made its way into the mainstream news and the campaign for girls’ education was given a face and voice in the form of Malala Yousafzai.
Malala championed education rights for girls from a very young age and before she was even a teenager, she wrote a blog for the BBC, detailing her experience with the Taliban. From 2009 through 2012, she rose to prominence as an advocate for women and children, giving interviews and promoting education. In late 2012, she was shot by a gunman on her school bus. The assassination attempt was unsuccessful and sparked global outrage but the Taliban reiterated their threat to execute her and her father. Since the attack, Malala has continued her commitment to education for women and children, for which she won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.
Three days ago, on the 300 day anniversary of the abduction of 300 Nigerian girls, who remain in the custody of Boko Haram, Malala issued a call to action, saying, “I call on people everywhere to join me in demanding urgent action to free these heroic girls…These young women risked everything to get an education that most of us take for granted. I will not forget my sisters. We cannot forget them. We must demand their freedom until they are reunited with the families and back in school, getting the education they so desperately desire.”
If the kidnapped school girls are rescued, the largest impediment to their continued education is pregnancy. If these school girls become pregnant during their captivity, they will be forced to bear the child of their rapist due to a little known US policy called the Helms Amendment that puts an abortion ban on all US foreign aid. Many NGOs in conflict zones, as a result of this legislation, choose to follow the American requirement so that they can continue receiving American money.
Founder of GJC, Janet Benshoof, argued on behalf of the kidnapped girls in her appeal to President Obama on Human Rights Day. Benshoof urged the president to sign an executive order allowing for abortions in conflict zones, where mass, genocidal rapes have taken place. Abortions might forestall the inevitable deterioration of the women’s health, whether it be from pregnancy at to young an age, ostracization, or depression and eventual suicide. GJC supports the mission of the UN and Malala Yousafzai in espousing universal education, but before education can be made available, women and children must be safe in their bodies, and afforded the necessary medical care they deserve.
This year has been one of the worst years for children, according to the United Nations. “As many as 15 million children are caught up in violent conflicts in the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, the State of Palestine, Syria and Ukraine,” said the Unicef’s report. “Globally, an estimated 230 million children currently live in countries and areas affected by armed conflicts.”
“This has been a devastating year for millions of children,” said Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director. “Children have been killed while studying in the classroom and while sleeping in their beds; they have been orphaned, kidnapped, tortured, recruited, raped and even sold as slaves. Never in recent memory have so many children been subjected to such unspeakable brutality.”
© UNICEF
In the Central African Republic, Syria, Iraq, Gaza, South Sudan, Nigeria millions of children are affected by ongoing conflicts. Young girls are being kidnapped, tortured, forcibly impregnated, forced marriages, withheld from education, raped and turned into sex slaves. Half the victims of rape in conflict zones are children.
The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict that took place in London this June recognized that rape and sexual violence in conflict often has a much bigger impact than the fighting itself, and that one should not underestimate the depth of damage done to individual rape victims. “Sexual violence in conflict zones includes extreme physical violence, the use of sticks, bats, bottles, the cutting of genitals, and the sexual torture of victims who are left with horrific injuries. Many die as a result of these attacks. But survivors can also face a catastrophic rejection by their families and may be cast out from their communities”.
Compounding the suffering is a US foreign policy that denies safe abortion services to girls raped in armed conflict. GJC’s August 12th Campaign challenges this routine denial of full medical rights to war rape victims as a violation of the right to non- discriminatory medical care under the Geneva Conventions and its Additional Protocols.
Young girls who become victims of rape used as weapon of war are forced to bear the child of their rapist. This also is an “unspeakable brutality”.
Republicans in Congress are committed to efforts to drain U.S. aid from international family planning programs. Now, as they are freed from the knowledge that a Senate controlled by Democrats would surely block their most extreme measures, they can succeed and harm women worldwide. The United States should be increasing, not decreasing, its current investment of $610 million in funding to international family planning programs, which already prohibit the use of U.S. foreign aid to provide safe abortions “as a method of family planning.”
The prohibition, introduced in 1973 as part of the Helms Amendment, does not define what constitutes “family planning,” yet Republican and Democratic administrations, including Mr. Obama’s, have treated it as a total ban on funding of abortion under any circumstance. As a result, help is denied to women and girls who are victims of rape or whose lives are threatened by carrying a pregnancy to term.
However, there’s still some light at the end of the tunnel, even despite the serious threats posed by this new Congress to women around the world, The President doesn’t need congressional approval to reinterpret the Helms Amendment. The President should act to clarify that the law allows aid to be used to provide safe abortion to women and girls raped in armed conflict.
GJC urges President Obama to issue an executive order lifting U.S. abortion restrictions on humanitarian aid for girls and women raped in armed conflict. Mr. Obama should use his executive authority to end a longstanding misinterpretation of the Helms Amendment, which prohibits foreign aid money from being used to “pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions.”
After all, the denial of abortion violates the medical care guarantees of international humanitarian law and the absolute prohibition on gender discrimination under international humanitarian law. It also constitutes torture and cruel treatment in violation of international humanitarian law.
Lift the Ban. Save lives.
As the NATO summit kicked off yesterday, dozens of world leaders gathered together in Wales to discuss most relevant security issues and future goals. However, while they focus primarily on the crisis in Ukraine and troops withdrawal from Afghanistan, they turn their backs on Afghan women. In Cardiff yesterday, the ‘No Women, No Peace’ campaign was launched by NGOs with an Afghan woman holding a sign reading “Talk to me, not about me.” Following recent presidential elections in Afghanistan, the Kabul government will start changing, as soon as Hamid Karzai will step down from his current president post in the coming weeks. This particular moment is extremely important for Afghan women to take part in political process. At this point, more than ever before, NATO should be monitoring women’s rights in order to protect the future of Afghanistan, which happens to be one out of five priorities for the today’s summit.
In thirteen years, since the NATOs’ invasion back in 2001, these women have come a long way from the point of denial of education, no work opportunities and complete inability to control their lives. Now, as they have jobs and their daughters go to schools, as laws aimed to prevent any violence against women, they are excluded from the discussion table of their country’s future. No voices of Afghan women will be heard at the security talks during the NATO summit today.
Despite NATO’s actions to support the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, that addresses under-representation of women in peace processes despite the terrible impact that wars and conflicts have on them, the situation remains the same.. Two years ago a Women, Peace and Security Task Force under the guidance of appointed Special Representative on Women, Peace and Security was established, and yet women’s voices will not be included at the summit. In other words, the work that NATO has done to include women into peace and security issues is being tested today where the absence of women presents another failed opportunity to shape sustainable peace.