A new approach is needed to give greater priority to the care and support of rape victims, a major review in England and Wales has said.

The review's author, cross-bench peer Baroness Stern, said debate has been too focused on rape conviction rates.

Her recommendations include offering every rape victim a specialist adviser to support them after an attack.

The report acknowledged attitudes and practices have improved but said implementation had been patchy.

Lady Stern, a prisons reformer, was commissioned by ministers to review how police, prosecutors and other bodies deal with complaints of rape.

During her five-month study she talked to more than 200 people ranging from rape victims to police officers.

Lady Stern said there should be a new approach to how victims are dealt with and cared for, regardless of how the criminal investigation was carried out.

'Abysmal' treatment

She called for a network of independent professional advisers to support a victim after he or she come forward.

The advisers' tasks would be to explain police procedures, provide a link between the victim and detectives, and support the victim in court.

Similar schemes have been piloted in some parts of England and Wales.

Lady Stern's review also backed the use of independent centres, known as Sarcs (Sexual Abuse Referral Centres), saying they needed to be in every police force in England and Wales by 2011.

Sarcs enable victims to receive counselling and other help, including medical examinations, without having to speak to the police.

Lady Stern hit out at the treatment victims of alleged rape received from police and prosecutors.

She said that while in some areas victims received the best possible support, in other areas they were treated abysmally.

She said support and care for victims should be given as high a priority as prosecution and conviction of perpetrators.

It was also "completely unacceptable" for police and prosecutors to lose interest in a victim whose complaint was not going to lead to a conviction.

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BBC News
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In other capitals of the world, it would not have been an extraordinary scene.

An opening at a hot new art gallery with men and women mingling and enjoying themselves.

But in this case, part of the frisson was nerves. Would the marauding religious police see unmarried — and some uncovered — women talking freely with men in the merry crowd of 600 and stage a raid?

It was an unlikely moment, SoHo comes to Saudi Arabia — the first mixed exhibition anyone can remember in Riyadh, the stultifying capital of a country that bans any exhibition of skin, fun or romance.

But the most astonishing part was that the Islamic purity enforcers failed to show up at Art Pure.

“I was worried, but the religious police just sort of disappeared,” recalled Mounira Ajlani, the mother of Noura Bouzo, a 27-year-old artist featured at the exhibition who painted the saucy “Saudi Bling.” “It was very relaxed, very normal. Everyone was saying, ‘Are we in Saudi Arabia?’ ”

Sarah, a young Saudi professional who was at the gallery that night, agreed: “It was remarkable. You saw women covered from head to toe. You saw women uncovered. You saw men of all different classes come, and they were extremely comfortable, and everyone looked at the art and left.”

Progress is measured by a sundial in this stunted desert kingdom. Sarah dryly refers to it as “Saudi time.”

As women nudge their way into the work force, they are still hampered by archaic tribal rules and patriarchal religious ones.

An American Muslim working here says there are hard adjustments, like hearing men use the occasional epithet “Dog” to address her, and not being able to leave the airport coming home from a business trip because she has no husband or male relative to pick her up.

She had to secure a letter from her employer stating that she could leave the airport on her own. When she wanted to buy a car, she had to use the subterfuge of having a male friend buy it for her, and even then, she can’t drive it except in one of the exclusive compounds with looser rules.

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By Maureen Dowd
New York Times
Photo Credit: New York Times

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Susan notes: this AFP story was initially published in February 2008; but not much has changed for trafficked women in India since then...

The wrinkles on Sumari's face betray her troubled past, making her look far older than the nearly 40 years she believes she is.

Widowed young, she was brought from her native village to northern India and sold to a man who abused her sexually and physically, and imprisoned her and her daughter in his house.

"It went on for three or four months, until he sold us off to another man," says Mumtaz, Sumari's daughter, who is now about 20.

Sumari is one of the luckier women, having eventually found a good husband after being sold repeatedly in a thriving human trade in northern India that is blamed on local customs and a shortage of women.

More than 10,000 women like her are believed to have been bought or lured with the promise of a job from poorer Indian states in recent years to be married to men who cannot find wives.

"There aren't enough girls here. Locals won't give their girls to widowers, ageing and handicapped men," said Fatima, Sumari's neighbour in Mewat, a district of Haryana state where there are 820 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of six.

This compares to a national average of 927 to 1,000, and the worldwide average of 1,050 girls for every 1,000 boys.

Experts say abortion of female foetuses because of the traditional Hindu preference for sons in this male-dominated society has led to a severe shortage of women in Haryana, and upset the sex balance nationwide.

Mewat, just 50 kilometres (30 miles) from New Delhi, was carved out as a separate administrative zone from Gurgaon district -- which boasts high-rise offices and upmarket malls -- and stands in stark contrast to India's impressive growth story.

Bride trafficking has been well-documented here and while the impact on the region's sex ratio is a major concern, the problem is complicated by other factors such as acute poverty and early marriage.

"Many women die during childbirth here, leaving a large number of widowers who can't find local girls. They have to buy them," said Manmohan Sharma of the non-profit Voluntary Health Association of Punjab, which campaigns against female foeticide.

Trafficking in India takes place largely for commercial sexual exploitation, as well as for labour, organ transplant and forced marriage, says the UN office on Drugs and Crime, though it adds there are no reliable statistics on victims.

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By Juhan Samuel
South Asian Women's Forum
Photo Credit: AFP

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The upper house of India’s Parliament passed a bill Tuesday that would amend the Constitution to reserve one-third of the seats in India’s national and state legislatures for women, after the measure stirred two days of political chaos that could whittle the governing coalition’s majority to a dangerously thin margin.

The vote, which is an early step in the process of amending the Constitution, brought pandemonium to Parliament, as a small group of regional caste-based parties waged a fierce fight to block it, arguing that it would diminish their influence.

The parties, allies of the governing coalition led by the Congress Party, have threatened to withdraw their support, which would reduce the coalition’s voting majority to single digits and jeopardize crucial legislation like India’s budget, which was just introduced. The chaos surrounding the bill threatens to undermine what has been an otherwise stable coalition government, analysts said.

Tuesday’s vote was the first of four hurdles the measure must clear. The lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, must pass the bill, then the proposed amendment will need to win approval from at least half of India’s state legislatures. Then India’s president, a largely ceremonial post, must sign off.

The amendment is a long-sought tool to improve the lot of women in India, the world’s most populous democracy. Despite having had several formidable female leaders — including former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi, the current leader of the Congress Party — Indian women lag behind men in virtually every sphere of life.

Various governments have been trying to get the amendment passed since the 1990s, but each has failed despite wide support across the political spectrum. The fight over the bill illustrates the often vicious competition between caste, religion, ethnicity and gender over who will benefit most from laws designed to reduce inequality.

Opponents of the bill say that it will favor wealthy upper-caste women at the expense of the lower castes and Muslims.

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By Lydia Polgreen
New York Times
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Associated Press

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