The International War on Women

A report from the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, released on the 20^th May, has shed light on the devastating consequences of the violence in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on girls and young women in schooling. Between 2016 and 2017, dozens of schools across the region were attacked by militia groups, and children were massacred, recruited as child soldiers, or forced from their homes.

Whilst the fighting affected all children in the area, girls were particularly harmed. As the report states, girls were abducted and “used as “magical” forces that would ward off bullets despite being unarmed, and raped and forcibly “married” to troops”. Spiritual beliefs on the part of militia fighters led them to believe that the kidnapped girls would protect them in fighting with the government forces. As a result, these girls were gunned down, having been used as human shields. Those that survived were more likely to suffer with psychological consequences of the trauma, less likely to return to school, and more likely to have suffered other medical consequences such as sexually transmitted infections than their male counterparts.

Sexual- and gender-based violence is prevalent in all conflicts globally. From the high-profile cases of SGBV such as the kidnapping of girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria, down to the fundamentally different experiences of male and female civilians in warzones, the fact remains that women and girls are more exposed to threats and vulnerable to harm in times of crisis. They are also drastically underrepresented in peacebuilding and development activities, despite the fact that increased female participation in such programmes consistently leads to longer, more sustainable peace.

But the restriction of the agency of women is not unique to warzones. Over the last few weeks, the US state of Alabama has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons. State Governor Kay Ivey passed the Alabama Human Life Protection Act into law on the 15^th May 2019. The law is the toughest piece of anti-abortion legislation in the country, punishing abortion doctors with up to life in prison for performing the procedure, with no exemptions for women who are victims of rape or incest. The Bill was passed with a majority of 25 – 6 in the Alabama state legislature. All 25 Republicans who voted on the Bill were men.

Eric Johnston, Chair of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition, explained that the inclusion of victims of rape and incest in the legislation was acceptable because the Bill needed to send a message, saying: “If this exception was added to the bill, it would have killed the bill. Whether you were raped or a victim of incest or get pregnant by consent or accident or even artificial insemination, [the foetus is] still a person. We could not argue to the court with a straight face that it’s a person in one instance but not in another.” But what about the person who will now be forced to carry the baby of their rapist?

In Alabama, Missouri, Georgia, and other US states trying to pass these laws, the fertilised egg and developing foetus are given more rights than the woman bearing them. But it would appear that the right of the egg doesn’t matter unless there is a woman who can be punished as well. In response to a question regarding the fate of IVF clinics under the new law, Senator Clyde Chambliss responded that the destruction of fertilised eggs in clinics would not result in criminal conviction, saying “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant”. So this really isn’t about the fertilised egg or the foetus that will grow into a person at all. This is about the woman’s body in which the egg resides.

Much like the militiamen in Kasai, the female body is viewed by these legislators as something spiritual and sacred, inextricably linked to life itself. In the Congo, the body of a girl can save you from bullets. In Alabama, the body of a woman is the factor that decides if a fertilised egg is a human life or not. In both cases, this seemingly makes the body far more important than the person inside it.

The issues women and girls face in Kasai and Alabama are vastly different, and in many ways incomparable. But they both stem from a desire to control a body without the effort to understand it. They are symptoms of a system built by and for men, in which women play a role to create life and to protect it, without regard for their own.

When a girl is considered a “magical force” that can protect a man from death, she has been dehumanised.

When a girl is abducted and forced to marry a soldier, she has been dehumanised.

When a woman is viewed as a vessel for a new human life, without regard for that woman’s own feelings, she has been dehumanised.

When women are legislated against, discriminated against, and ultimately told that their own experience does not matter, that is dehumanisation.

If we value the rights of human beings to control their own destinies, then we must acknowledge that 50% of the global population are systematically prevented from taking ownership of the things they should have control over; their own body and their own future.

From boardrooms, to battlefields, to government offices, women’s perspectives are drastically underrepresented and misunderstood. For a world striving for peace, justice, and fairness, this is a failure.