Sexual Violence against Women as a Global Issue: solidarity for justice

Mina Watanabe Women's Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM), JAPAN
Eriko Ikeda Women's Fund on War and Peace, JAPAN; Women's Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM), JAPAN

The presentation is jointly delivered by Mina Watanabe and Eriko Ikeda. While tracing the development of the worldwide movement on sexual violence against women, the presentation argues that the "comfort women" issue created a momentum for the international trend to see it as a grave violation of human rights. Recent studies show that it is important that perpetrators are held accountable and punished for survivors of sexual violence to recover from PTSD or trauma. The Women's International War Crimes Tribunal in 2000 was a pioneering attempt to demonstrate it. The WAM produced a panel exhibit, "Timor-Leste: women who survived two wars - under the Japanese and Indonesian military rules" in 2006. Now its Tetun version is used by the HAK Association in Dili.