European Coordinators
of the World Women’s Conference of grass-roots women
Maria Hagberg (deputy), Monika Gaertner-Engel, Halinka Augustin, Angélica Urrutia (deputy), 10. November 2015
Call for the 25th of November 2015 –
international day of struggle and action
in the World Women’s Conference process
We have now the biggest refugee catastrophe since the Second World War. 60 million people escape from oppression, violence and war. The worldwide patriarchy shows its ugly face in its most dreadful way by raw capitalism, by militarism, by religious and political racism and fascism and human trafficking and slavery.
When women from the Balkan Conflict during the 1990ties witnessing in The European Parliament they told us about rape, and other sexual abuse in war, and about sex trafficking in the trail of war, post conflict situations. They also told us how soldiers used sexual abuse towards women who came from firm religious and traditional societies. After the women were raped they were not only threatened by the enemy but also by their own families because they were blamed for the rape. A lot of women escaped home, sometimes giving birth to children as a result of the rape. They later abandoned these children, and then going on to become suicidal or victims of sex trafficking themselves.
Now we can see the same pattern in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Congo and Sudan and among many other countries in conflict.