Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women

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You meet these women, here in the city, or go out to the village, to Taba, and meet them and they seem normal. But I think when they go home and close their doors at night, there is a space inside them which no one can break into, no matter what you do.” Even as you may think that humanity no longer exists in a world where babies can get raped, Lamb has brought to the fore certain individuals who have given up their own peace and are fighting hard to bring justice to these women and to ensure that sexual violence is no longer used as a war weapon. Dr. Denis Mukwege, Nadia Murad, Christine Schuler Deschryver, Shaker Jeffrey, Abdullah Shrim - these are just some of the people who decided that enough was enough and put their lives on the line to stop the violence. Not to forget how some of the survivors themselves, despite their trauma and in the face of ostracisation, have decided to speak out against their perpetrators. And I am ashamed to admit that I identified one area of complete ignorance. Before I started reading this book, I knew about crimes of ISIS and Boko Haram, I had a lot of information about wars in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and related international tribunals, I read books and watched documentaries about Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh, but I had zero knowledge about an ongoing war in Congo and about multiple victims of rape in this country.

Our Bodies, Their Battlefield by Christina Lamb | Waterstones Our Bodies, Their Battlefield by Christina Lamb | Waterstones

This is his face and this is a link to his foundation that I support - https://www.mukwegefoundation.org/muk....Išprievartautą mamą, kuri kada nors senatvėje papasakoja vaikams, kas jai nutiko, vaikai kaltina ir su ja atsisako bendrauti. Lamb’s attempts to interview perpetrators don’t get very far. The Isis prisoners she meets deny that they raped – it’s always someone else who kept a Yazidi slave, although, suspiciously, they seem to know a lot about the practice. Lamb asks why some armies rape and some do not. The British raped less than other armies during the second world war, mainly due to their military culture. Despite the brutality of the conflict, there are few reports of Israeli soldiers raping Palestinians, possibly because one-third of the soldiers in the Israeli Defence Forces are women, a far higher proportion than in most armies.

Our Bodies, Their Battlefields | Book by Christina Lamb

There have been a number of successes in different places, in recent years: Guatemala, Colombia, Chad. But each time it’s been where the woman or women involved have been incredibly courageous, and incredibly persistent. There isn’t any institutional change, or major international movement to try and help these women. That’s what we need to be doing. It’s not enough that you occasionally get a success because somebody fought endlessly. You mention in the book one example of a Rohingya refugee woman living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, who had been raped. A queue of journalists were lining up to hear her story. What would you say about the ethical responsibility of foreign correspondents when covering crises like those you have covered? Cristina Lamb ne tik keliavo, kalbino, pasakojo nukentėjusių moterų istorijas, bet ir bandė atsakyti į klausimą, kodėl ir kaip prievartavimai tampa ginklu. Trumpai apžvelgė istoriją ir teisinius aspektus. Čia galima išgirsti ir vyrų balsą: smurtautojų, prievartautojų ir tų vyrų, kurie moteris gelbėja nuo prievartautojų.Prievartaujama ir kankinama dažnai neslepiant, kad taip daro dėl to, jog moterys niekada gyvenime nebenorėtų turėti santykių su vyrais, vaikų, gyventi. Kaip Bučoje. Ir taip ir būna, jos nenori, nieko. Many of the experiences shared with you in the book are traumatic, and we know from studies, even studies that have focused on COVID-19, that there is a psychological toll of covering trauma on journalists. What has the impact been like for you?