In like a lion -- out like a lamb

Welcome to Women's History Month.
This month, as time permits, I will focus on various strides we ladies have made in our endless quest to be fully recognized human beings - go team!

I'm going to start our journey with UN Security Resolution 1820: Women, peace and security. This lovely little document was ratified back the the summer of 2008 and made it clear once and for all that systematic rape during war is a crime against humanity. Woo-wee! We've come a long way, baby!

Of course this doesn't mean that rape wasn't a bad thing before or that it wasn't a punishable war crime prior to 2008. During the trials after World War II, instances of rape and violence against women were discussed but weren't treated as crimes worthy of being considered separately. As time passed, rape became a bit more salient as a form of terrorism and as a crime punishable by international courts. The systematic rape of Muslim women in Bosnia led to eight men being charged for war crimes in 1996 -- notable primarily because these charges were independent of other charges, finally. And in 2001, three Serbian men were found guilty of mass rape and sexual slavery. More recently, rape has been labeled a tool of genocide. In mid 2008, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court accused Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, President of Sudan, of using rape for ethnic cleansing. We'll see whether an indictment goes anywhere.

About nine years prior to UN Resolution 1820,David J. Scheffer stated:

In the past, . . . rape and acts of sexual violence against women went unrecognized and unchallenged. In many conflicts, some soldiers, perpetrators, and world leaders viewed rape as a fringe benefit of war, an unspoken perk. While some observers have dismissed incidents of rape, with the reason that men, or as so often seen, boys, simply get out of hand or out of control after a rough day on the battlefield, recent history has shown that organized, systematic patterns of rape are a component of deliberate ethnic cleansing. The world community, on occasion, ignored the truth that these acts are not simply acts of recklessness, but acts of torture.

But no longer! Now that we have the UN on our side, nothing can hurt us . . . if only the UN had any real power. Sadly, UN resolutions can be about as valuable as the paper they're written on. Men such as Charles Taylor, Robert Mugabe and his troops in Zimbabwe, or the militants in North India, or even US military forces in Iraq don't really give a rat's pa-toot about UN resolutions. Still, ladies, it's a step in the right direction.