Invisible Women - Helping Ukrainian Women on #IWD

Domestic violence against women increases when conflict breaks out. In fact, it is more prevalent than conflict-related sexual violence. To put this in context, an estimated 60,000 women were raped in the three-year Bosnian conflict and up to 250,000 in the hundred-day Rwandan genocide. UN agencies estimate that more than 60,000 women were raped during the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2002); more than 40,000 in Liberia (1989–2003); and at least 200,000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1998. Because of data gaps (apart from anything else, there is often no one for women to report to), the real figures in all these conflicts are likely to have been much higher.

Women are also more likely than men to die from the indirect effects of war. More than half of the world’s maternal deaths occur in conflict-affected and fragile states, and the ten worst-performing countries on maternal mortality are all either conflict or post-conflict countries. Here, maternal mortality is on average 2.5 times higher, and this is partly because post conflict and disaster relief efforts too often forget to account for women’s specific healthcare needs. (IW, pp.296-7)

For over twenty years, the Inter-agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises has called for women in war zones or disaster areas to be provided with birth kits, contraception, obstetrics care and counselling. But, reports the New York Times, ‘over the past two decades, that help has been delivered sporadically, if at all’. One report found that pregnant women are left without obstetrical care, ‘and may miscarry or deliver under extremely unsanitary conditions.’ (IW, p.297)