GJC Rises for V-Day’s One Billion Rising Campaign to End Gender Violence
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – February 14, 2013
[NEW YORK, NY] – Today, the Global Justice Center rises. We support V-Day and its One Billion Rising campaign to end violence against girls and women. One in three women will be subjected gender-based violence in their lifetime, including sexualized violence. That’s one billion women.
The time to end this culture of rape is now.
The Global Justice Center’s work against sexualized violence focuses on ending impunity for states and individuals using rape as a weapon of war. Girls and women are raped to accomplish military objectives, including genocide. This tactic is used more than any other unlawful weapon of war and is the most powerful and cost effective weapon being used in armed conflict today. Yet, no state has been held accountable for use of rape as an illegal weapon. This egregious violation of international law is routinely ignored and overlooked, despite the staggering number of girls and women subject to this brutality daily in conflict zones around the world.
“I rise to challenge the international community to stand up to its obligations under international law to end impunity,” urges Janet Benshoof, President & Founder of the Global Justice Center. “We must end this culture of rape.”
Our Weapons Discrimination Project to have rape treated as an unlawful weapon of war seeks to hold states accountable in order to give rape victims better avenues for redress and to serve as a deterrent. Just as the classification of landmines as an illegal weapon under the laws of war led to a dramatic decrease in its use in armed conflict, classifying rape as an illegal weapon of war could also have a great deterrence impact on the use of mass tactical rape as a weapon in war.
The Global Justice Center is joined by the Socialist International Women, members of the Norwegian Labor Party and the UK government in the call for the international community to address rape used as a weapon. In October 2012, UK Foreign Minister William Hague stated:
“We now know that rape and sexual violence is used as a deliberate weapon of war in the same way that guns and tanks are, to terrorise civilian populations, to humiliate, scar and destroy whole ethnic groups or religious or political opponents, cheaply, silently and devastatingly…I believe that the time has come for a concerted international effort to challenge the use of rape as a weapon of war and to shatter the culture of impunity.”
Rise in solidarity with V-Day and the Global Justice Center, and support us in the movement to end mass rapes in armed conflict.
Visit www.globaljusticecenter.net to learn more about the Global Justice Center’s work challenging the use of rape as a weapon of war.
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For further information or press inquiries, please contact Sarah Vaughan, Communications and Development Associate via e-mail at svaughan@globaljusticecenter.net or by phone at 212-725-6530 Ext. 204.