World fails to treat rape cases

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UNITED NATIONS, Mar 8 (Reuters) Rape is weapon of war and the world fails to treat it as a crime, two UN agencies said as the Security Council called for justice for women and girls who are victims of violence.

The UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said yesterday that while 104 out of 192 countries in the world had made rape a crime, these laws were poorly enforced.

''The violence that women experience in times of peace is exacerbated during conflict: rape is being used as a weapon of war on a large scale,'' UNIFEM Executive Director Noeleen Heyzer told a news conference. ''Women's and girls' bodies have become the battleground.'' The Security Council called for an end to impunity for gender-based violence during armed conflict and the inclusion of sexual and other violent acts against women and girls in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes prosecutions.

Rima Salah, deputy executive director of UNICEF, said the indictments by the Hague-based International Criminal Court last month of a Sudanese minister and a militia commander for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including sexual violence, was a good start.

''Sexual violence is a weapon of war with the strategic intent to humiliate communities ... to really disintegrate the fabric of society,'' Salah said. ''I saw it being done in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo and in Darfur.

''No one, including the UN itself, is doing enough to end this terrible situation. We fail to treat it as a crime.'' To mark International Women's Day today, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that violence against women and girls continued in every continent, country and culture.

''Most societies prohibit such violence -- yet the reality is that, too often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned,'' he said.

''That is why International Women's Day is so important.''