On this important day, 25th of November we recognize the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Today we pay tribute to all women who have suffered violence, and we honour your strength.
As part of KWO’s efforts to eliminate violence against women, we take part every year in the “16 Days of Activism” Campaign, which also starts today, and closes on December 10th, the International Day for Human Rights. We will be conducting many events and activities in our community over the next 16 days and hope these will contribute in some way to make change that reduces violence against women.
Today we are proud to launch a new KWO report about SGBV cases in the refugee camps. The report is called “Salt in the Wound: Justice Outcomes and SGBV Cases in the Karen refugee camps, 2011-13”.
The report documents the results of research into the justice outcomes of 289 cases of sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) in the seven Karen-majority refugee campslocated along the Thai-Burma border. The results of our research are staggering, and provide ample evidence for the need for change.
In the vast majority (80%) of all the SGBV cases in six of the seven camps, women received inadequate justice responses. Even in cases of sexual violence, including rape, we found that there were very weak responses by the judicial systems. The inadequate justice outcomes include perpetrators just signing an agreement to say that they won’t do it again (usually with no follow up to ensure that they don’t), or paying a small fine to the authorities (usually with zero compensation for the victim) or almost no action at all by authorities. This is not good enough for crimes of violence.
We ask that you download our report, read it, and allow it to motivate you to take action for change. Join us in the important work of eliminating violence against women.
Please Click here for English Version of Full Report: [scribd id=290995511 key=key-Pl1O72HMOsfmPPrJjkq1 mode=scroll]
Please Click here for Karen Version of Full Report:[scribd id=290995011 key=key-CUd7X8Ion1YPOKbdEhuW mode=scroll]
