For women and children
DURING FOREIGN wars and disasters, women and children suffer egregious abuses. They are raped, killed, or forced into servitude as soldiers, domestics, and sex slaves. They desperately need more protection than the vital but limited food-water-and-shelter response of international aid efforts.
A bill in Congress would enhance emergency aid, making the United States a leader in cracking down on sexual violence and abuse as well as in quickly rebuilding educational and economic activities.
A coordinator would be appointed in the State Department or the US Agency for International Development who would work to ensure that emergency aid always included strategies to protect women and children.
Federally funded aid workers would provide food, water, and shelter, but also rape prevention, healthcare, and schools to keep children safe and on an educational path.
In Darfur, Christine Knudsen of the nonprofit aid organization Save the Children spoke to groups of women who had various security needs. Some wanted escorts while gathering firewood so they'd be protected against rape; some wanted to be able to sell or make goods like soap or cloth to improve their economic conditions; some wanted better food for their families. The bill would use microenterprise to meet some of these needs, potentially giving women grants to make or sell goods and getting them safely to marketplaces. Maintaining women's livelihoods protects their children and creates an alternative to prostitution.
Peacekeeping troops would be sanctioned for sexually abusing the people they are meant to protect -- going as far as suspending the payment of peacekeeping funds to countries that fail to root out abusive troop members.
Waiting to provide this array of protections would be a mistake. Resources that aren't set up early are often permanently delayed. Those efforts that do occur are small and privately funded when what's needed is a comprehensive, well-funded response.
It's tough to budget for the toll of wars and disasters that haven't happened yet, but Save the Children says the 2006 federal budget should allocate at least $81 million to do this work. Congress set a precedent for this by targeting $12.5 million of tsunami aid to women and children.
This bill was filed by Representative Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, who speaks of the world's victimized women and children as if they were voters in her district -- showing that while all politics may be local, what's local increasingly has a global face.
