Trigger warning: violence against women, sexual violence, political conflict, human enslavement, gender-based discrimination.
Violence Against Women in Post-Conflict
In many large-scale armed conflicts, sexual violence is often used as a tactic of war. Historically and currently, sexual violence has been employed by the state as an institutional tactic to subjugate certain groups of people. Professor Tanaka from the Hiroshima
Peace Institute writes that “the conquest of another race and colonization of its people often produce the de-masculinization and feminization of the colonized, and sexual abuse of the bodies of women belonging to the conquered nation symbolizes the dominance
of the conquerors.”[1] Comfort Women
are an example of state-sanctioned sexualized violence against women during war.
Detailed testimonies of victimized women.
“Comfort women” is the term used for sexual slaves who were deceived, abducted, and forced into slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War. These women were from Japanese occupied territories during the war such as Korea, China, Taiwan,
Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Netherlands, Saipan, etc. There were approximately 139,000 comfort women, 80 percent of whom were aged between 14 and 18.[2]
The women were raped by as many as 30 soldiers a day.[3] The
survivors who returned home after the war suffer from life-long physical and emotional trauma.
A video about an Australian comfort woman.
In May 2013, the UN Committee Against Torture urged Japan to “take immediate and effective legislative and administrative measures to find a ‘victim-centered’ resolution for the issues of ‘comfort women.’”[4]
CNN footage on Korean survivors.
On March 4, 2016, Amnesty International submitted a report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), emphasizing that “acknowledging these crimes under international law, and factually recording them in histories… is an
important step to ensure non-repetition and end impunity for crimes of sexual violence committed during armed conflicts.”[5]
About “comfort women” from the Philippines.
If you would like to continue the conversation, please contact
Shiella Cervantes, Assistant Dean and Advisor to Pan-Asian Students, and
Michelle Hector Kermond, Assistant Dean and Advisor for Sexuality, Women, and Gender.
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