Horrific? We Scarce Know ...

As humanity proceeds by leaps and bounds to civilize itself, to advantage itself with the knowledge that there are certain universal rights that belong to everyone, it seems too much to expect that the lot of women will be eased. These are tired old observations; that men make war and women suffer. And suffer. Women see their men depart to war, their sons, brothers, fathers, and will not return; those that do are never quite the same.

Women, if they're unfortunate enough to live within the theatre of war, have always been assumed to represent "war booty", from time immemorial to the present time when they are also recognized as a tool by which men can further express their rage. But the world doesn't need conflict to recognize that women remain the weak link in the universal rights attending humanity.

Apart from the Amazons of legend, in most societies evolving from patriarchies and remaining male-centric, women are chattels, the property of males; their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. The empowerment of women has taken place in the Western world where democratic liberty, freedom and human rights are given to all equally as a right.

But that represents a small part of the world, and it is elsewhere that the struggle continues, and continues to fail women's needs. A poll released by TrustLaw, a legal news service operated by Thomson Reuters Foundation has launched a TrustLaw Women section, representing news dissemination on global legal rights for women.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation has ranked Afghanistan the world's most dangerous country for women, and the Republic of Congo comes in a close second, with Pakistan, India and Somalia right behind. Threats to women range from domestic abuse and economic disadvantage to female feticide, genital mutilation and other violent attacks.

(In the current conflict in Libya, troops loyal to the regime have been ordered to rape women and girls in towns and villages where the insurgents have their strongholds. Disgusting and horrible as this in and of itself is, there is an additional horror lurking in the wings, with the dishonour brought to families suggesting that "honour killings" of women and girls whose virginity has been blemished, may occur.)

TrustLaw engaged 213 gender experts representing five continents for their ranking of female-adverse countries through their professional perceptions and experience. The risks cited were health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources, and trafficking.

Many of these risks to health and well-being may also affect men, needless to say, primarily as a result of living in poor countries where civil and human rights are the last considerations for the populace on the minds of their leaders, but it is toward women that demeaning and dangerous practises become culturally ingrained and institutionalized.

Respondents to the poll made mention of elevated maternal mortality rates, scarce access to medical professionals and an utter lack of economic rights. There is a one in 11 chance of dying in childbirth for Afghan women, according to UNICEF. It was the immense levels of sexual violence against women in Democratic Republic of Congo that placed it second to Afghanistan.

Almost a half-million Congolese women are raped each year, leading the United Nations to label Congo the rape capital of the world.

"Statistics from DRC are very revealing on this: ongoing war, use of rape as a weapon, recruitment of females as soldiers who are also used as sex slaves. The fact that the government is corrupt and that female rights are very low on the agenda means that there is little or no recourse to justice."

Women have been and continued to be raped in Darfur, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Libya, Syria, and throughout Africa as a brutally empowering tool for and by men. The professed belief that HIV/AIDS could be cured by having sex with a girl child, that her virginity would save the rapist from AIDS has been endemic in Africa.

For grim horror, can anything match the contention of rights activists who describe militias and soldiers raping girls as young as three, along with frail elderly women. Where gang-rapes are the order of the day, as well as rape with bayonets and other odiously disgusting methods of disfiguring and mutilating women and children.

Solutions?