Women as pawns of armed conflicts

IF they were not used to being killed and seeing people murdered, the fear of death would have been the least thing in their teenage minds when they set out for school from their various homes on April 17, 2011.
But residing in a society described as the most dangerous to live on earth, left their minds enveloped by the fear of the unknown despite the fragile smiles on their faces, as they headed for school that fateful day.

Hardly had these little girls arrived their school which is located in the Afghanistan province of Takhar than they were rushed to the hospital by the school authorities. Reason: Over 150 of them had fainted and were vomiting. A month after that incident, no fewer than 100 other girls in the same province suffered a similar fate.#BRINGBACKOURGIRL5
Although the Taliban, which had been against the eduction of girls and women, denied being behind the incident, the Afghanistan government officially accused the group of culpability.
The two incidents did not happen in isolation as women have increasingly become pawns in armed conflict globally. The rise of global terrorism has made more women victims of such conflicts.
 news agents learnt that in most of these cases, women are forcefully displaced and are made to suffer rights violations as well as sexual and gender-based violence.
The recent abduction of about 250 secondary school girls in Chibok, Borno State exemplifies the plight of women in the face of the spread of socio- religious conflicts. This position was buttressed by an American journalist, Jan Goodwin in her book: Price of Honor. Goodwin who has covered wars in Europe, America, Africa and the Middle East, brought to the fore, the plight of women in terrorised nations and concluded that they have ‘’become pawns in a bitter power game.’’
Many stakeholders who spoke to VF are worried that women are always at the receiving end of global conflicts despite not being the principal causes of such hostilities.
The most worrisome aspect of it is that these violations are taking place in the midst of numerous international conventions on violence against women. For instance, the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution 48/104, frowned against all forms of violence against women.
With organised violence on the increase, so have women become easy preys.
Responding to a question bordering on this, a psychologist, Mr. Lanre Olusola highlighted the multiplier effects of female-related violence. “Psychologically, if you touch one woman’s life, you touch the children and the husbands.
But, if you touch one man’s life, it does not create much impact. Secondly, when you touch a woman or a child, you whip up the emotional sense in it and that is a tool that people use most times,” he said.
Speaking specifically on the abducted Chibok girls, he said: “The kidnapping of about 200 girls is a wrong move and a miscalculation. I said that because the whole world is against it. This was a tactical error and so the whole world is going to get the girls back. I have no doubt that we are going to get the girls back because all hands are on deck through prayers and other actions. Everybody is singing the same song ‘bring the girls back’. So, the girls are coming back without a shadow of doubt.”
He called for the creation of institutions that prevent such incidents from occurring. “It’s about creating an environment of pain and pleasure. That is what the rule of law is all about. That is what the law courts, police and other security agencies are there to make it known that the guilty ones cannot get away with their actions. If the guilty feels maximum pain for his actions, you will see that after this, someone else will not be encouraged to do the same thing. Why crime keeps re-occurring is because these people know that nothing will happen, and that must stop,” he canvassed.
He explained that there is a leverage in psychology called the principle of pain and pleasure. “When you know that you are going to suffer pain, an enormous kind of pain and you cannot get away with what you are doing, psychologically you restrain yourself from doing it. But when you know that there is an alternative and you know that you can achieve an enormous pleasure from that positive alternative, you will gravitate towards it. For those doing the harm, when the environment creates serious consequences and maximum pain, they will reduce the occurrences of it. When you create institutions that ensure that those people that are behind it are brought to book, then you will find out that a lot of people will commit their energies, efforts and resources to ensuring that it stops and people doing it will restrain themselves from doing it,” he opined.
According to Olusola: “Boko Haram’s influence is collapsing and the world is zeroing in on them. We need to give Nigerians and Africans a sense of security through the media. We need to insist that they stop projecting these bad pictures about Nigeria. Those pictures that are being shown is not doing us any good. The sense of security that we perceive is a reflection of what we see and hear. If we keep projecting these pictures, we are constantly eroding our own sense of security,” he said.
President of Gender Alternative Action, JAA, Prince Funke Martins, called for the enforcement of all known laws against violence on women and girls. She believes that such enforcement will curtail or completely eliminate such abuses. “I will not say that much has not been done to protect women in conflict times. But more needs to be done. It saddens the mind that women have become dogs of war globally,” she lamented.
She was irked that conventions on the protection of women from oppression rarely work. The Gender Alternative Action boss enjoined world leaders to stop relegating gender issues to the background.
“We had the Berlin Conference where we thought that the resolutions will be adhered to. There were also others before it. But the situation has gone hay wire. What justifies abduction of girls? These girls, we all know, are innocent and were not part of the issues that led to the conflict, yet they are paying the price. This campaign should not stop with the ‘bring back the girls’ campaign. It must be sustained for the sake of motherhood,” she advocated.
*Women protesting the abduction of Chibok girls
Funke noted that apart from the Chibok abductions, women suffer so much organised violence in Nigeria, hence she wants the relevant authorities to severely punish those who orchestrate violence against women.
Collaborating Funke’s  argument, the Executive Director of Equity Coalition, Mrs Ethel Udofia, regretted that: “People do what they want to do irrespective of whether it is against the law or not; they are doing it because they know nobody will charge them to court or do anything to them.
”We should make sure that laws are obeyed. When people are not brought to book or punished according to the dictates of the law, they will take things casually knowing that they can go unpunished,’’she posited.