U.N. categorizes rape as a war tactic

By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council demanded on Thursday that warring governments and factions act to halt violence against women, saying rape was no longer just a by-product of war but a military tactic.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who chaired part of the session, told the council the world had now recognized that sexual violence during conflicts went beyond individual victims to affect nations' security and stability.

Echoed by a string of speakers, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the 15-nation council the problem had "reached unspeakable and pandemic proportions in some societies attempting to recover from conflict."

Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert, a former U.N. peacekeeping commander, told the meeting: "It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict."

Speakers identified former Yugoslavia, Sudan's Darfur region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Liberia as conflict regions where deliberate sexual violence had occurred on a mass scale.

U.N. officials have said the problem is currently worst in eastern Congo. But a recent survey of 2,000 women and girls in Liberia showed 75 percent had been raped during the West African country's civil war.

A U.S.-sponsored resolution adopted unanimously by the council called sexual violence "a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group."

It said the violence "can significantly exacerbate situations of armed conflict and may impede the restoration of international peace and security."