Global effort needed against rape in war zones: UN

Brussels, June 22 : A global effort is needed to tackle rape and other sexual violence in war zones, the United Nations said, calling responses to a worsening problem with tens of thousands of victims ''grossly inadequate''.

An international conference in Brussels involving participants from more than 30 countries heard horrific reports of sexual abuses in war zones worldwide.

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, told the meeting most proposals to address the issue continued to go unfunded by donors.

''The responses so far have been grossly inadequate compared to the scale of the problem,'' she said yesterday. ''We need political will and leadership and certainly sustained action.'' A UN report for the meeting said Bosnia and Herzegovina documented 40,000 cases of war-related rape until 1993 and up to 45,600 Kosovar Albanian women suffered similarly from 1998-99.

In Sierra Leone's protracted conflict up to 64,000 women may have been sexually victimised and one in five of 1,500 Burundian women surveyed by the UN in 2004 reported being raped and many knew of or had witnessed rape of minors.

''The stories are heartbreaking,'' said Obaid. ''We must scale up the responses so women do not feel their cries for support are cries in the wilderness.'' Among incidents highlighted were a woman in Congo who found paramilitary soldiers raping her 10-month-old baby, a young woman raped by six Arab men in front of her family in Darfur, and a young ethnic minority girl repeatedly raped then burned alive by an army major in Myanmar's Shan State.

The three-day Brussels conference, sponsored by the European Commission and Belgium, is the first ever international meeting to address the issue of sexual violence in war zones and plans to conclude with a global call to action.

Obaid said the tragedy of rape was compounded when women were infected in the process with HIV.

''Our current inability to protect the health of women and girls in conflict and post-conflict situations represents a human rights failure of global proportions,'' she said.

In a statement, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged donors to provide funds, calling the issue a ''human rights problem, a global health problem and an impediment to peace''.

Reuters