SENTINEL WATCH July 14, 2008 Issue

STEPS TOWARD HEALING THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE

KWADJO BOAITEY

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD an economist or politician say that he or she can always tell how healthy and prosperous a nation is by how it treats its women? That's both a provocative question and an interesting assessment. But isn't it true that the rights of all men and women, cherished, realized, and upheld equally in any nation, would make it a happy, healthy, inspiring place to live?

Recently, I found myself praying about the treatment of women. I'd just finished reading a newspaper article about some troubling findings by the humanitarian aid organization Save the Children. The report found that efforts to stem sexual abuse of young girls in Haiti, the Ivory Coast, and South Sudan by UN peacekeepers were falling short (Mike Pflanz, "Sex abuse by peacekeepers still a problem, says report," The Christian Science Monitor, May 27, 2008).

The troubling nature of that report was compounded for me by the fact that women being raped, as a weapon of war, is on the rise. Incidents against women have been documented with alarming frequency in the ongoing Sudan-Darfur conflict, the Rwandan genocide, the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, as well as the present conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Similar findings have also been noted in recent conflicts in Kosovo, Peru, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cyprus, and Haiti.