Save the Children’s “State of the World’s Mothers” report has named the Democratic Republic of Congo as the world’s worst place to be a mother (Photo Credit: Leon Sadiki/City Press/Gallo Images/Getty Images).

In honor of Mother’s Day, Save the Children released its annual “State of the World’s Mothers” report. I was saddened, but not surprised to see the Democratic Republic of Congo is the worst place to be a mother.

Severe violations of women’s human rights in Congo are, unfortunately, a perennial subject of attention for me and numerous other rights activists. Typically those violations are associated with the long and bloody conflict that has spanned the country and concentrated in its most recent stages in the East.

Indeed, DRC has been plagued by almost two decades of conflict resulting in the suffering and death of millions of men, women and children. Most chillingly, the Congo conflict has become synonymous with rape and other forms of sexual violence, which are committed with impunity by security forces, including the armed forces of the DRC (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo, FARDC), and other armed groups. For this reason, it was ranked the worst place to be a woman by the United Nations just last year.

But this year, the gross abuses associated with wartime violence against women don’t even factor into Congo’s ranking; the report cites among the highest rates of maternal mortality, child mortality, poverty, poor education and, interestingly, women’s very limited political participation, as the factors that have coalesced to put DRC dead last for mothers.

Additional indicators merit attention as well. According to the recently-released U.S. State Department Human Rights Report for DRC, despite the great risks associated with reproduction and the desire of women to limit or space childbearing, it is common practice for health care providers to require a husband’s permission before providing family planning services to women. Access to contraception remained extremely low – only 5.8 percent of women used modern contraceptive methods.

Amnesty recognizes a woman’s right to information and resources to help her plan her family and protect her from risk is a core part of her human rights, and one that women in DRC deserve inherently as human beings, even without the additional risk factors they face as citizens of the worst country in the world for mothers. Further, there’s the fundamental right women have not to be raped, to enjoy consensual sex with consenting adults, which is in the course of Congo’s conflict, flagrantly and consistently abridged.

It’s not only on the battlefields and public spaces that women of DRC have to fear sexual violence – it’s in the home as well. And though Congolese law criminalizes rape, spousal rape is not included in the protections of the law. Domestic violence is not only prevalent, but also afforded total impunity. The 2012 DRC human rights report characterizes it thusly:

According to the 2007 Demographic Health Survey (DHS), 71 percent of women reported some form of sexual, mental, or physical abuse. Other sources found that 86 percent of women in Equateur Province were victims of domestic abuse….Although the law considers assault a crime, it does not specifically address spousal abuse, and police rarely intervened in domestic disputes. There were no reports of judicial authorities taking action in cases of domestic or spousal abuse.

Until the women of Congo live lives free of violence, are protected by laws and judicial action that holds crimes against them to account, and have access to the information, resources and services they need to lead healthy, productive lives, I fear we will continue to see the stream of rights abuses unabated and the annual drumbeat of reports characterizing DRC among the worst places in the world for women. We cannot bear another year of this gross and all-encompassing injustice.

Do Something!

Amnesty’s My Body My Rights Campaign seeks to protect the sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls around the world. Take action in support of these rights so that women of DRC and everywhere can envision a safe and healthy future.

Further, Amnesty International USA is calling on the U.S. Congress to introduce and pass the International Violence Against Women Act, which addresses the many forms of violence against women and girls and further provides for a comprehensive response that includes the various economic, health and other needs we know women of the DRC and the rest of the world need.

Rape survivors awaiting surgery, Panzi hospital, Bukavu, South-Kivu province. Copyright Amnesty International

Three years ago when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton took the unprecedented step of travelling to the Eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to meet with rape survivors of the country’s brutal conflict, I was elated and hopeful. Elated because Secretary Clinton was doing something that had never been done before—sending the message that sexual violence is just as high on America’s foreign policy agenda as trade or traditional capital-to-capital diplomacy, and that the dignity and needs of survivors are a particular priority. Hopeful because I thought it meant perhaps three years later we would see some real change for women in that unending war.

I was wrong.

Tens of thousands of civilians have this very week been displaced following the fall of Goma, a city in Congo’s war-torn east, to the armed group M23, worsening an already dire human rights situation.  Since only April of this year, fighting between the Congolese army and the M23 armed group has displaced 226,000 people in North Kivu province, and 60,000 refugees have fled to Uganda and Rwanda. As with the many other chapters in what’s become known as Africa’s world war, sexual violence has been a trademark of the recent fighting. Amnesty International has documented numerous crimes under international law and other human rights violations committed in the course of fighting between M23 and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) army in recent months.

Congo has been plagued by almost two decades of conflict resulting in suffering and death of millions of men, women and children. Crimes under international law including unlawful killings, enforced disappearance, rape and other forms of torture and sexual violence have been committed on a large scale by national and foreign armies, armed groups and militias. Most chillingly, the Congo conflict has become synonymous with rape and other forms of sexual violence, which are committed with impunity by security forces, including the armed forces of the DRC (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo, FARDC), and other armed groups. And no number of promises from foreign dignitaries or resolutions from international security bodies seems to have changed that.

In a recent mission, Amnesty International visited several internally-displaced person (IDP) and refugee camps in DRC and Uganda. Some women and girls told Amnesty International that they feel more vulnerable in the camps. The husbands and men who would be their protectors have fled, fearing forced conscription by various armed groups. Women and girls report being raped as they scavenge for food or fuel for cooking fires.

As we mark this year’s global “16 Days” campaign against gender violence, I am deeply troubled by the lack of progress—perhaps the opposite of progress—we can claim on this issue. Last year held much the same sombre review of continually climbing rates of violence and soul-crushing impunity with which this war is waged on women’s bodies. This year, I am struck that the campaign is fittingly targeted to raise awareness on all forms of gender violence—including violence against men like Dr. Denis Mukwege, the Congolese doctor who was targeted for assassination on October 25^th, 2012.  Dr. Mukwege is the celebrated—and very rare—surgeon in the East who has dedicated his career at Bukavu’s Panzi Hospital to rebuilding the torn bodies and psyches of Congolese rape survivors.

The Doctor had recently spoken to the UN General Assembly regarding sexual violence in his country, entreating the body to end the violence and bring justice to his country.  Though Dr. Mukwege survived the attack, his guard was not so lucky.

Keeping the Promise to Protect: More Action, Less Arms

When will enough at last be enough? When will we honor our promises to protect with the action that is necessary to prevent this ghastly violence and to hold perpetrators to account?

At Amnesty USA, we are marking this year’s Campaign calling on Secretary Clinton to remember her promises to the women and men of Congo who are the targets of this interminable war. The United States must use its leadership at the Security Council and on the world stage to stop the war on Congo’s women, pressuring the DRC government and the peacekeeping force, MONUSCO, to ensure civilians—especially women and girls—are protected.

On a larger level, what is happening today in the DRC is an urgent example of why progressive policy measures like an international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) are needed. Since 2005, a UN resolution has banned the sale of weapons to armed groups in the North and South Kivu provinces and the Ituri region, where the bulk of revolts (including the current M23 rebellion) have taken place.  However, Amnesty International has documented numerous violations of this policy by the DRC government as well as by companies based in the US, the Ukraine, China and France.  Unfortunately, the UN chose to weaken its restrictions on arms sales in 2008, despite the fact that the UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources in the DRC indicated that neighboring countries such as Rwanda and Uganda continued to supply factions in eastern Congo with arms.

Similarly, the DRC government has allowed former rebel movements to integrate with the DRC armed forces without turning in weapons, and the regime has been increasingly secretive about tracking the whereabouts of weapons within its own military.  DRC forces often sold weapons to rebel groups or pro-government militias.  In 2012, the UN Board of Experts asserted that the Rwandan government was providing aid to the M23 rebel movement linked to Basco Ntaganda, a warlord indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes that included violence against women.  His CNDP militia committed numerous rapes and killings of civilians in 2007 and 2008, and many of its members now belong to the M23 rebel movement.

The international arms trade is fueling Congo’s war on women. As an international community, we must demand an end to it. As Americans, we must insist that our own government hold US companies to account for their hand in the arms trade. We must demand that our leaders honor their commitments to end sexual violence in DRC by taking leadership at the United Nations to halt such crimes, to strengthen the protection of civilians and to ensure that the perpetrators of serious human rights violations are brought to justice. We must ensure that the policy mechanisms that are available—that could be utilized to do something now, today, this minute—actually are. That means using our leverage at the Security Council to put pressure on the world’s largest peacekeeping force, MONUSCO, to protect civilians—especially women and girls—in IDP camps and in the large swaths of countryside where we know fighting is happening but there is insufficient security presence. That means insisting the DRC Government enforce its farcical “zero tolerance policy” for sexual violence—we know who the worst offenders are, and we have the capacity to stop them. And finally, we must ensure survivors’ needs are met—that they have access to the full range of physical and psychosocial health services, livelihoods support and reparations, and legal and justice mechanisms.

Do something!

Write a letter calling on US State Department to take leadership at the Security Council in ensuring both the Government of the DRC and MONUSCO provide protection for civilians, especially women and girls at heightened risk of sexual and gender-based violence, in areas where insufficient security forces are present, including IDP camps, and to ensure survivors of violence have access to a full range of health, psychosocial, livelihoods and justice mechanisms and services.  Visit our 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence site and click on “DRC” to find more information and a sample letter.

Read more:

• Report ‘IF YOU RESIST,WE’LL SHOOT YOU’ THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO AND THE CASE FOR AN EFFECTIVE ARMS TRADE TREATY’
• Democratic Republic of Congo: The Congolese government must arrest and surrender Bosco Ntaganda to the ICC
• DRC: History must not repeat itself as violence flares in North Kivu
• DR Congo: UN urged to protect civilians in North Kivu

Sign reading “No more violence against women” at a 2010 demonstration in Medellin, Colombia. ©AFP/Getty Images

When I woke last Friday, it was to the sound of a woman’s screams in the street. I looked out the window and saw a woman being attacked by a male, and she was screaming for the police. My husband and I called the police. They were on the scene in 5 minutes. The man fled and together with the police we talked the woman through the attack, the police filed a report, and we tried to help the woman recover her lost cell phone and her nerves.

From the very beginning, the day was a stark reminder about the global scourge of violence against women, and about the duty of the state to hold those crimes to account.

Later this afternoon, I had planned to attend a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on violence and intimidation faced by defenders of women’s rights, reproductive rights and LGBT rights in Colombia. I was going not only because Amnesty is working to support the rights of women’s rights defenders, but also because one of the activists who would testify is Monica Roa, a dedicated activist and attorney I first met in 2007 when she had just successfully argued the landmark case that partially decriminalized her country’s extreme abortion ban. I had then as I have today a profound respect for her work and that of her colleagues at Women’s Link Worldwide, an international human rights organization working on gender equality.

Unfortunately, the thanks Monica and her colleagues have received for the series of women’s rights and reproductive rights victories they have secured in Colombia has been intimidation and threats of violence. On May 7, 2012, the power supply to the Women’s Link Worldwide (WLW) office in Bogotá was cut, and minutes later an unidentified person fired a shot into the office. This attack occurred on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Constitutional Court ruling on abortion, as Monica and her colleagues were working on preparations for a campaign to highlight the failure to properly implement the Court’s ruling.

The May 2012 attack was the latest in a series of acts of intimidation against Monica Roa and Women’s Link. Their Bogotá office has been broken into and computers stolen on three different occasions, the latest being this past April. They have also been the targets of death threats and harassment since 2005. On several occasions human excrement has been left in front of the main door of their offices. After the first acts of intimidation in 2005, the government granted Monica—but not her colleagues—protection measures.

After such intimidation, today’s hearing at the Inter-American Commission was an important step toward securing justice for women’s rights defenders like Monica. The hearing came at a critical time, as the Colombian Procurador (Inspector General) is seeking an appointment for another four-year term before the close of this year.  But this morning after I arrived at work, Monica informed me that the hearing has been cancelled, we fear for political reasons.

Monica and all the women’s human rights defenders in Colombia need our help now. They are calling on President Juan Manuel Santos to send the delegates who are in Washington to the Inter American Commission, so Colombia’s women’s rights defenders can have their day in court. Advocates need to be safe to do their important work to uphold human rights. States need to take violence against women seriously, respond to their calls for help, and hold perpetrators to account. Help us pressure Colombia to hear the complaints of its activists, and take all measures to protect them.

How to help

• TWEET AT PRESIDENTSANTOS: Call on President @JuanManSantos to protect women’s rights, including sexual and reproductive health and rights. Monica’s Twitter handle is @MonicaRoa, and her organization is @womenslink
• WRITE FOR RIGHTS: Amnesty International USA is featuring Monica as a women’s rights defender in need of help during its upcoming write-a-thon. Email writeathon@aiusa.org for more information.
• STAND UP to Violence Against Women: Join Amnesty International’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence from November 25, the International Day Against Violence Against Women, to December 10, Human Rights Day. We will be posting a series of blogs, actions and social media engagement to end violence against women, including women’s rights defenders like Monica. Follow us on Twitter at @AmnestyWomenRts and on facebook at Amnesty International USA Women’s Human Rights Network
• READ UP on Monica’s case and the lack of accountability for conflict-related sexual violence in Colombiain Amnesty’s report: “Colombia: Hidden from Justice.”

Sign reading “No more violence against women” at a 2010 demonstration in Medellin, Colombia. (RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP/Getty Images)

In Colombia two women are raped every hour.  This, according the Instituto Nacional de Medicine Legal y Ciencias Dorenses (National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Colombia), is the reality facing Colombian women, meaning that 17,935 women are raped every year. The country’s 45-year-old internal armed conflict has created a dire human rights situation. Women, especially, are caught in the middle: their bodies are used as a strategy to defeat the enemy, as a method of retaliation, as a means of gaining land, or simply to pleasure the different combatants.

All parties in conflict, including the Colombian Army, have used women’s bodies as their commodities. They do it because they know they can get away with it. The impunity for sexual violence in Colombia is striking: according to Colombia’s Semana newspaper, in 2009 only 183 cases of sexual abuse were being investigated.

Yet, as Amnesty International has reported, Colombia has continually failed to protect women from such violence, or to provide justice for victims of sexual violence.

Susan Lee, Americas director at Amnesty International

The personal stories are devastating (all names have been changed to preserve their anonymity):

• 11-year-old Yolanda was returning home from school in a rural part of Saravena, Arauca Department, when she was stopped by a soldier. The soldier (who had previously pestered her for sex) grabbed her and took her to where his army unit was camped, where he raped her and held her captive until morning.
• Ana María is a leader of a victims’ movement in Antioquia Department. She was visiting a survivor of sexual violence when men claiming to be from the Black Eagles paramilitary group arrived at the house. They told Ana María to stop her human rights work and raped both women.
• Daniela was walking with her friend to find firewood in the Bolívar Department, when a man suspected of being a paramilitary took out a knife and forced them into the bushes. He spat in their faces and forced them to have sex with him.

All these women reported these crimes; none have received justice, and, as the Amnesty International report “This is what we demand. Justice!”: Impunity for sexual violence against women in Colombia’s armed conflict details, these stories, sadly, are not uncommon.

As a community leader and survivor of sexual violence explained, “It doesn’t matter if we are careful, or if we are at risk, or how we dress, they [take us] just because we are women… They made me feel that they had the power to do what they wanted to anyone they wanted.”

It’s time for Colombia to declare that all victims of sexual violence, particularly women and girls, have equal protection under the law and equal access to justice!

Anamaria Trujillo contributed to this post.

According to TrustLaw's latest poll, India is the worst place to be a woman among G20 states (Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images)

This week the G20, or the group of the world’s major economies, is convening in Mexico to consider progress and define new commitments toward economic growth and a shared agenda for the world’s wealthiest nations.

Ahead of the meetings, I participated in an expert poll conducted by TrustLaw Women, a project of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, to determine which G20 countries are the best and worst for women.

Our analysis–that reflects the views of 370 gender specialists from five continents and most of the G20 nations–found Canada to be the best G20 country for women. The worst? Perhaps a surprise: Not Saudi Arabia, but India.

This may not seem immediately obvious, given the company India is keeping. Saudi Arabia, infamous for violations of women’s human rights that range from the severe (there are no laws against domestic violence, citizenship can not be inherited from the mother and a woman’s testimony in court is worth half that of a man) to the absurd (restrictions on women’s ability to drive come to mind).

Then there’s Mexico, where Amnesty has documented extensive violence against women. There’s domestic violence. Violence associated with the country’s raging drug and gang wars. Police brutality in Atenco. Vulnerable groups, like migrants and the maquiladoras, face particular threat: In Ciudad Juarez we’ve documented the murderous campaign against women working in the city’s garment factories, and activists in Mexico have told me stories of women who go on birth control as they pass through the country, because they’re certain they’ll be raped along their way to the U.S.

So why India? Isn’t this the land of fifty percent quotas for women’s leadership in local government, or panchayats? Is it not the host of a vibrant civil society network of female activists pushing for women’s social, economic and political opportunities, from the villages to the the mega-cities of Mumbai and Delhi?

To understand why India is indeed the worst G20 country for women, we have to look at the status of women across the life cycle, from birth to death.

Image from www.trust.org

Birth

Let’s start at the very beginning. A girl is born. Or is she? Some of India’s provinces have among the most extreme male-to-female sex ratios in the world. I was just in Mumbai, one of the world’s financial capitals, where only 860 girls are born to every 1000 boys (there are naturally slightly more girls than boys born).

The convergence of discriminatory norms for son preference, the threat of economic ruin for families facing dowry debt, and the accessibility of technology means Indian families are aborting girls right and left. On a global level, the World Bank’s 2012 World Development report estimates that there are nearly 4 million “missing women” each year, more than a third of which is due to son preference and sex-selective abortions.

Girlhood

What of girlhood? If the female fetus makes it to term and survives childbirth—two difficult feats—she’s less likely to receive equal access to education and health benefits than male children. School is only supported to the 7th grade, whereupon families have to take on the cost of educating children, who may have to travel outside of their local neighborhood to attend classes. For poor girls, this often spells the end of their education, as families are either unwilling to pay or girls are kept home for their own “protection.”

Then there’s the prospect of child marriage lurking round the corner. Roughly ten million girls are wed before the age of 18 around the world each year. Child brides are less likely to receive a full education and have skills to support themselves, and severely more likely to die in childbirth as their own bodies are still developing.

Though country rankings for child marriage tend to focus on percentage of child brides of overall population (India is 17th at 44.5% of girls married before 18), research by the International Center for Research on Women emphasizes the importance of looking at the number of child brides and at-risk girls, where India takes the cake due to its huge population and continued prevalence of the practice.

Womanhood

If she safely reaches adulthood, a woman still faces discriminatory norms that make it difficult for her to move about and pursue her dreams. The chance that she’ll face violence–either in her own home or being harassed on the street–is high, and the likelihood that the perpetrator will be held accountable very low.

Millions of women and girls are claimed by India’s huge sex trade, either as prostitutes, or sex slaves–India is a destination, source and transit country for sex trafficking. For prostituted women, the threat of violence, infection and social marginalization is acute.

The Golden Years?

A woman’s old age is by no means golden. Two-thirds of the country’s 60 million elderly women report facing abuse and harassment. They are more likely to be impoverished, surviving their husbands with little income or skills to support themselves. An estimated 62% are illiterate.

Widows are particularly marginalized. Some traditions cast widows out of their homes and communities, prohibiting them from remarrying and condemning them to live out the rest of their days in mourning. The city of Vrindavan is famous for this; thousands of impoverished widows live in its streets.

Although the Indian Hindu custom of sati, that instructs women to self-immolate over their husbands’ funeral pyres, is no longer much in practice and is explicitly outlawed, it surfaces occasionally in northern and central regions of the country.

The practice epitomizes the ultimate injustice: that a woman is only of value to the extent to which she is attached to and subservient to a man, and that a woman’s life should be snuffed out at the moment she no longer has a husband to serve.

Mumbai slum residents protest the destruction of their homes by multi-national corporations. PHOTO: RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images

I’ve spent the past two weeks working with a number of NGOs focused on women’s human rights in the urban slums surrounding Mumbai. These communities are a ground zero for human dignity, where basic needs are not met and human rights are routinely crushed by poverty and the pace of urbanization.

The underworld I traverse each day exists within a global financial capital, a land of five-star hotels and luxury cars. The stark contrast illustrates the urgency of putting human dignity at the center of the dialogue about social change in an increasingly urbanized and inequitable landscape.

Article 1:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

I’ve never seen such extreme yet proximate inequity. Each morning I pass women and girls, barefoot and stunted, picking through dumpsters and street waste to pull out yesterday’s recyclables to sell, while drivers of private cars carry well-to-do school children in air-conditioned comfort to their studies.

This is a society still struggling to shed itself of the complicated and intersecting legacies of colonialism and caste, exacerbated by economic competition, globalization and urbanization. Tent cities and slums crop up in between towering skyscrapers; haves and have-nots live wall-to-wall, yet worlds apart. The headline of my Hindustan Times condemns the latest version of the state government’s budget, which reserves only 1 percent for Mumbai’s poor, who constitute the bulk of its population.

Article 3:                    

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Violence is entrenched here, particularly for women: the 2005 – 2006 National Health and Family Survey found 40 percent of married women reported that they had experienced violence in the home. Police routinely fail to respond to domestic violence complaints, and girls and women are commonly harassed by groups of boys and men, in what’s known as “eve teasing.” Students andteachers also routinely assault girls at school.

Many parents say they keep girls home for their own protection; a girl embodies the family’s honor, and if she is raped the family is ruined. Many families refuse to report abuse because of the stigma. Just last week a mother in Madhya Pradesh reported the rape of her daughter, only to be shot by her husband and brother-in-law for reporting the crime.

Article 6:
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

The government estimates there to be 200,000 people living in Shivaji Nagar, the slum I am working in that abuts Mumbai’s largest dumping ground. The researchers and community social workers I am working with put that number closer to 600,000, even a million. That’s at least three times as many people as the government recognizes, who crowd into already overflowing buildings (I read weekly of injuries from buildings collapsing) and whose waste contributes to already overflowing (open) sewers.

A community worker I spoke with this afternoon re-calibrates my expectations for what success looks like: “In this community, we are fighting to even get birth certificates, so people can be recognized and access services. A birth certificate is your first human right.” The majority of people here are not counted, and therefore not taken into account.

Article 7:
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 16:
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

Last week, India’s lawmakers amended Indian marriage law so that women’s property rights will now be protected in divorce, and adopted children will now will have the same rights at divorce as biological children. Yet the very same week a court ruled in favor of a man who wanted to divorce his wife because in his opinion she wasn’t giving him enough sex. The court ruled that when women deny sex in marriage that is “cruelty, and grounds for divorce.”

There is no such thing as marital rape under India’s laws. And India is notorious for child marriage. According to the International Center for Research on Women, 44.5 percent of Indian girls marry before the age of 18, and arranged marriages are still very much the norm. As I wander the twisting footpaths through the slums, girls are visible everywhere doing wash, cooking and caring for children, the telltale green bangles of a married woman jingling on their wrists.

Article 25:
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Behind my office lies the Shivaji Nagar dumping ground, the largest dump in Mumbai. It is a mountain of waste, upon and around which people live, across which roads traverse, and from which thousands of people, mostly women and children, make their meager living as “rag pickers.” On the outskirts of the slum, houses consist of pieces of plastic and tin stitched together. Water coverage is the lowest in Mumbai, and the distance between public latrines the farthest in the city.

Women who do come to the clinic don’t have the information they need to space children. A doctor I speak with says she can’t counsel adolescent girls on sexual and reproductive health and rights because it isn’t “acceptable.” The Indian Hindu custom of sati—which instructs women to self-immolate over their husbands’ funeral pyres—is rare and explicitly outlawed, but surviving widows are often outcast and struggle to survive.

Though life is a particular challenge for women, it is harsh for everyone. The very location of these communities renders their occupants criminals, “illegals,” undocumented and under-served. You are only legal if you can prove having lived in a house for a certain number of years—the exact figure keeps changing. Paradoxically, the government exacerbates the problems by continually uprooting communities and relocating them here. There are plans to relocate hundreds of thousands more residents from other slums where development contracts have been secured, in what is called transferable development rights.

“Two things get tossed out here,” says Professor Parasuraman, the head of an initiative studying the area at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, “unwanted people… and also Bombay’s waste.”

The Professor’s words perfectly encapsulate the central problem—that this is place has so devalued the dignity and rights of human beings that they are quite literally dumped, as far from the fancy buildings downtown as possible, in the very same place as all the rest of the city’s trash.

You can follow Lyric Thompson and the Women’s Human Rights network of Amnesty USA @AmnestyWomenRts or on Facebook at Amnesty International USA Women’s Human Rights Network.

We have explored the brutal effects of war when it comes to violence against women in countries in active conflict such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Afghanistan and Iraq.  War brings with it a culture of violence that now claims more civilian victims than combatants, the majority of those women and children. Yet to assume that with the declaration of peace comes an immediate cessation of violence would be incorrect; for women, the militarization of gender relations that accompanies war often results in higher incidence of violence after conflict.

We must remember this as we work to bring peace to today’s conflicts, from countries like DRC, where rape continues to be used as a strategic tool of war, to Egypt, where so-called “virginity tests” and other physical violence has been used to intimidate female protesters.

Take the example of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where during the 1992-­1995 war thousands of women and girls were raped. The testimonies women gave just after the war resulted in widespread media attention, public outrage and changes in international law. However, very little has actually been done for the survivors.

Today in the DRC some rape investigations have been called off because of reprisal attacks on those seeking justice, presenting a cruel example of the failure of a justice system to adequately anticipate and respond to–and ultimately deliver for–women who have suffered violence in war.

Similarly, Japan’s famous “comfort women” still await justice, reparations and even the mere acknowledgement by the Japanese Government that the army systematically trafficked, imprisoned and tortured the women as sex slaves throughout WWII. In addition to the miscarriage of justice this represents for survivors, the “comfort women” suffer the indignity of living in a society where not even the national textbooks reflect the historical fact that this grave abuse existed.

Coted’Ivoire is today a prime example of militarism’s enduring footprint of violence against women even after peace is officially declared and a new regime has taken the reigns. Since the beginning of the conflict in September 2002, hundred, possibly thousands of women and girls have been victims of human rights violations including widespread and at times systematic rape  committed by combatant forces or by civilians with close ties  to these forces. Women have again been targeted after the resumption of the post electoral violence in December 2010 where both parties loyal to the outgoing President Laurent Gbagbo and the internationally recognized President Alassane Ouattara attacked women and girls, raping and beating them.

Women have been similarly targeted for violence across this year’s uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Women on the front lines of peace and democracy movements often are politically sidelined once the dust settles. In Nepal’s conflict women played a key role in building peace and advocating for justice and democracy following that country’s civil war, yet today continue to be marginalized from national debates, and have been attacked in peace protests. Protesting outside their governments is the closest many women get to the political process after war and revolution.

We must be as explicit in our demands for the protection of women’s voices as we are for the protection of their bodies, during and beyond the time of war and revolution. As activists, policy makers or concerned global citizens, it is our duty to advocate for women’s rights and interests as much as we demand their rights to live free of violence. That is what the concept of Women, Peace and Security is all about — that women must be protected from violence in war, and their contributions to peace and democracy must be supported in the formal machinations of peace and justice.

Later this month, the U.S. Government is expected to launch the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, a new policy that will guide various U.S. defense, development and diplomatic activities to encourage the protection of women in conflict and the promotion of their access to opportunities to build peace and contribute to the emerging political, economic and social orders following war.

Along with a number of women’s and peace groups conducting advocacy on this issue, Amnesty International USA has drafted an expert statement calling on the U.S. to ensure that this policy has the resources and political buy-in necessary to ensure that it is as robust as possible and its implementation is ensured across the whole of the United States’ considerable foreign policy framework. We eagerly anticipate the launch of this policy on December 15th, and will continue to be deeply committed to ensuring its full implementation in the months and years ahead.

Like what you’ve learned in this series? Let us know! Email us at WHR@aiusa.org and let us know what actions you’ve taken in the course of our 16 Days campaign. You can continue the conversation by following our Women’s Rights Network on Twitter @AmnestyWomenRts and facebook.

Yemen's Arab Spring activist Tawakkul Karman, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Liberian 'peace warrior' Leymah Gbowee, winners of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Today the Nobel Committee announced that it is awarding its Peace Prize to three women: Leymah Gbowee, Tawakkul Karman, and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

While the fact that the prize is being awarded to three women is important, it is not the most important symbol of what today’s announcement represents. Sure, the number of women who have been honored in the prize’s history (twelve until today) pales in comparison to the number of men (eighty-five), and that disparity should be addressed.

But focusing exclusively on the numbers game as we congratulate Gbowee, Karman and Sirleaf misses the point entirely: these women are not honored today because they are women. They are honored for what their work represents in promoting a more peaceful, just world. Doing so as women, they are both at unique risk and offer unique solutions—but their work makes the world a better place for all.

Take Leymah Gbowee, who organized a massive movement of grassroots women—market women, Muslim women, Christian women—who demonstrated en masse to force the brutal dictator Charles Taylor—and the equally brutal rebel groups—to peace talks. Though the UN did not formally include Gbowee and Liberia’s peace women in the official peace talks that took place in Ghana, she and her “troops” set up camp outside and locked the warlords in until they negotiated peace. Their act of civil disobedience showed the world that the demands of agents of war are prioritized above the people’s voice for peace.

Gbowee’s story has been documented on film, propelled her to the stage of global policy discussions, and now been elevated to the elite cadre of Nobel Peace Prize laureates. Her activism laid the groundwork for the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, another of today’s winners, as President of Liberia, ushering in a new phase of desperately-needed stability and development for the country.

Take Tawakkul Karman of Yemen, who leveraged the power of technology and social media to start a revolution, taking center stage in a country and—and a region—that often excludes women. Man and woman alike pay homage to her as the “mother” of Yemen’s peaceful protests for revolution. When the young mother of three was targeted for attack, imprisoned by the ruling regime, and threatened for her life, thousands of supporters rallied around her, demanding her liberty and her protection.

Like all three figures honored by the Nobel Committee today, untold scores of women around the world are organizing for peace and justice. Women have organized in the streets of Havana to demand accountability for political prisoners, and they were on the frontlines of Tahrir Square. They have brought warlords to the peace table in Ireland and Nepal, and they have been targeted for activism and political leadership in Afghanistan and Bahrain.

Like Karman, they face unique risks as women waging peace. In Russia, human rights activist Natalia Estemirova was abducted by armed men in response to her work; she was not as lucky as Karman—the men who threatened her life ended it. Our recently released report on sexual violence in Colombia details the gross human rights violations targeted at women over the course of Colombia’s conflict—unanswered to this day. The mass rapes of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo continue today. A group of 38 women and girl protesters were arrested in Bahrain just over a week ago.

For too long, women have been an overlooked as a primary asset in global efforts to achieve peace. To this day, women have served as only 6% of negotiators to formalized peace talks, despite their undisputed value to peace across the community, national and international levels. They account for only 1 in 13 participants in peace negotiations since 1992, and have never been appointed the chief mediator of a UN-sponsored peace talk. Women’s absence at the peace table leads to impunity for crimes committed against them as a price of negotiated peace, stifling their cries for justice.

So today’s announcement by the Nobel Committee is not only justified, it is also right on time.

Later this month we will celebrate the anniversary of a groundbreaking piece of international law that first linked women with global security concerns: UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325). 1325 recognizes women’s unique vulnerabilities in war, but equally calls for their full participation in the structuring of peace and in the prevention of conflict. This time last year, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood before the United Nations Security Council—the highest security body in the world—and announced that the United States would be drafting a National Action Plan to incorporate the elements of UNSCR 1325 into its national policies and programs.

Be it today’s announcement of the three Peace Prize winners honored on the global stage, or the promise of a National Action Plan on women, peace and security from the world’s largest military power, we find ourselves at a turning point in how we think about women, how we define peace, and who we empower to be the stewards of our security and prosperity.  This is a milestone, not just for women, but for the world.

Rape survivors gather to meet Amnesty International mission delegates, Kindu, Maniema province.

Two years ago, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the unprecedented step of extending a diplomatic visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in order to travel across the country and meet directly with rape survivors in the country’s war-torn eastern region.

The Secretary heard brutal, firsthand accounts of targeted sexual violence women had suffered as part of a systematic campaign by armed groups intended to terrorize civilians and maintain control.

In response, Clinton committed her office to elevated efforts to prevent and respond to sexual violence, including a $17 million investment in survivor services and other programs.

Yet two years later, the headlines coming out of the Congo paint no better picture for women—indeed, it may be worse. Mass rapes have continued, many orchestrated by troops and commanders in the national army, while delays, corruption and disputes amongst Congolese authorities point to a calculated effort to sidestep rather than facilitate the administration of justice.

Just last week, the United Nations publicly implicated two army colonels for blocking investigations into mass rapes committed in North Kivu province over New Year’s Day. To date, no suspect has been charged in the rapes, in which 100 soldiers are reported to have attacked civilians in the villages of Bushani and Kalambahiro with whips and machetes, accusing them of supporting rebel groups. The official number of rape victims is 47, although as with most incidents of sexual violence, the crimes are likely underreported.

Then there were last month’s chilling reports of more mass rapes by 150 members of the Congolese army who had deserted from a training camp and raped over 100 women in Nyakiele village, near the town of Fizi. There are links between the leaders of those attacks and those responsible for the New Year’s Day rapes: the deputy to Colonel Kifaru Niragire, who has given himself up as the leader of the June attacks, was one of nine men—and the first commanding officer in DRC’s history–jailed by a military court on charges of ‘crimes against humanity’ for the January rapes. To date, Kifaru remains on an army base as investigations continue.

Most worryingly, there has been little movement in the delivery of justice for the 387 women, men, boys and girls who were raped in July and August of last year in the largest reported mass rapes on record in the country. Indeed, the news earlier this month was that the investigation has been called off due to reprisal attacks against survivors seeking justice. A UN report published last year pointed to the weakness of the Congolese justice system as a major obstacle to ensuring truth, justice and reparation for human rights violations.

How many more brutal accounts of dozens, even hundreds of rapes must surface before justice is served for women in DRC?

While survivor services are of utmost importance, what is critically needed is a simultaneous intervention that will ensure that justice, guaranteed by both national and international law, is served. In the face of these horrific accounts of rape and institutional failures to hold perpetrators to account, policies like Congo’s supposed “zero-tolerance” policy for sexual violence ring frighteningly false.

Indeed, the very credibility of international conventions like UN Security Council Resolutions 1325, 1820 and 1888, which were designed to protect women in war, are subject to question if the world’s largest peacekeeping force and the intervention of powerful international spokespeople like Special Representative Margot Wallstrom and Secretary Clinton amount to nothing.

There are a number of measures being piloted to address Congo’s historic abridgement of justice. A draft law is currently being discussed at the national level to create a specialized court for prosecuting perpetrators of serious international human rights and humanitarian law violations through mixed chambers consisting of local and international representatives. Mobile courts are also being pioneered, intended to take justice to the villages where the crimes are committed. Yet time is running out for women of Eastern Congo.

By whatever means, prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigations must be conducted into these crimes in accordance with international standards and perpetrators must be prosecuted. Survivors and witnesses seeking justice must be protected during investigations, and they must be able to access medical, psychological and other support services.

The Congolese government seems incapable or unwilling to do so directly, but it is under no circumstances to be permitted to stand in the way of international efforts to do so in its stead. The United States is chief among those who has pledged to end Congo’s war on women; now, more than ever, it is time for Secretary Clinton to keep those promises.

It is time to demand justice for rape survivors in Eastern Congo.

A recent survey by TrustLaw, a project of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, polled 213 women’s rights experts on what they consider to be the world’s worst place to be a woman.

The results are in, and topping the list are Afghanistan, DR Congo, Pakistan, Somalia and India, based on a variety of factors including rape and violence, lack of health services, poverty and human trafficking.

According to the poll, Afghanistan ranks as the worst place in the world to be a woman.

Women in today’s Afghanistan daily face a host of threats, from insurgent violence; attacks on schoolgirls and working women for daring to venture out into the public sphere; high levels of rape and domestic violence, as well as widespread physical and sexual abuse by state forces; forced and child marriage; and honor killings. 87% of Afghan women are illiterate, while 70-80% face forced marriage, many before the age of 16.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which ranked second on the list of the worst places to be a woman, an ongoing war has featured a brutal and strategic campaign of sexual violence targeted at women, from toddlers to the elderly.

Armed militias and members of state forces are notorious for brutal gang rapes as well as sexual and human trafficking.  Women who survive or escape bear a social stigma in their families and communities, or worse suffer from fistula, a painful and embarrassing tearing of the wall between the vaginal and rectal canals.

In addition to conflict-related violence, which is largely associated with the easternmost provinces, a recent analysis of a 2007 household survey finds more than 1,100 women are raped every day in the Congo, nationwide. This tally accounts for both domestic violence and conflict-associated rapes; spousal rape is not criminalized in the DRC.

Pakistan, India and Somalia ranked third, fourth and fifth, respectively, due to high rates of domestic violence, female infanticide (which is estimated to have resulted in up to 50 million girls are thought to be “missing” over the past century), female genital cutting, acid attacks and economic discrimination.

The inclusion of economic discrimination as a form of violence is of particular note; although women comprise 70 percent of the world’s poor (which is widely acknowledged to be a violation of human rights and dignity), it is not always remembered as a form of violence. However, many manifestations violence against women can be traced to roots in poverty, such as the tradition of forced marriage by families seeking to alleviate debt (widely practiced in Afghanistan and Pakistan), the sale of girl children into sex slavery (common in India), and maternal mortality rates associated with lack of access to healthcare.

Learn more about women’s human rights and opportunities for you to make a difference.