I will never forget the survivors I’ve met, or what they told me. The mother in Goma, whose five-year-old daughter had been raped outside a police station in plain view. Or the Syrian woman I met in Jordan last week, who asked I hide her name and face, because she knew that if she spoke out against the crimes against her, she would be attacked and possibly killed.
Rape is a tool of war. It is an act of aggression and a crime against humanity. The numbers are so vast, and the numbers so painful, that we often have to stop to remember that, behind each number is someone with a name, a personality, a story, and dreams no different from ours and those of our children.
I understand that there are many things that are difficult for the UN Security Council to agree on, but sexual violence in conflict should not be one of them. That it is a crime to rape young children is not something I imagine anyone in this room would not be able to agree on.
The rights and wrongs of this issue are straightforward, and the actions that need to be taken have been identified. What is needed is political will. And that is what is being asked of your countries today: To act on the knowledge of what is right and what is unjust, and to show the determination to do something about it.
I want to stress this again: In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take your friend to one, take your daughter to one.
Obviously, there are just some heuristics I’ve found successful in the past. […] If a paper fails one or more tests (particularly tests 6-10), that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong; conversely, if it passes all ten that still doesn’t mean it’s right. At some point, there might be nothing left to do except to roll up your sleeves, brew some coffee, and tell your graduate student to read the paper and report back to you.
“Theoretically, this place ought to be perfect,” leading Terxus astrobiologist Dr. Srin Xanarth said of the reportedly blighted planet located at the edge of a spiral arm in the Milky Way galaxy. “When our long-range satellites first picked it up, we honestly thought we’d hit the jackpot. We just assumed it would be a lush, green world filled with abundant natural resources. But unfortunately, its damaged biosphere makes it wholly unsuitable for living creatures of any kind.”
“It’s basically a dead planet,” she added. “We give it another 200 years, tops.”
what happens to women who are denied abortions (h/t Katke B) – stojí za prečítanie, výsledky toho výskumu by som sa rada dozvedela, ale dve veci mi v tom článku veľmi chýbajú:
– každá žena je ten človek, ktorý je najpovolanejší robiť rozhodnutia o sebe, svojom tele a svojom živote. A do tých rozhodnutí by nemala byť dotlačená. Možno ich neskôr budú ľutovať. Ale kto má právo ich z tohto dôvodu dotlačiť do iného rozhodnutia?
– opäť raz, kde sú otcovia? Kde sú tí, ktorí nesú druhú polovicu zodpovednosti? “Her ex had begun a new relationship, and she knew he wouldn’t be there to support her or a child.” Zase raz je to jej problém. A nech sa rozhodne tak či tak, nebude to pre ňu dobre. Možno prítomný zainteresovaný otec by v tej situácii spravil dostatočne veľký rozdiel. Stále by to bolo jej rozhodnutie, ale mala by podporu. Ale článok sa tvári, že otcovia nie sú súčasť problému.
Dnes toho nebude veľa – boli sme 5 dní v Mníchove, zajtra deadline na článok na jesennú konferenciu v Štuttgarte, v stredu štátnice a obhajoby minimovky a pomedzi to príprava grantu, ktorý bude treba v júni podať…