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Home - the most dangerous place for Colombian women and girls

by Anastasia Moloney | @anastasiabogota | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Tuesday, 26 May 2015 16:42 GMT

People take part in a march in Bogota, Colombia, for peace and against crimes and violence against women, November 22, 2013. REUTERS/John Vizcaino

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Colombia's macho culture, and discrimination against women in general, are behind widespread gender violence

BOGOTA, May 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In Colombia, a country wracked by five decades of internal conflict, nearly 9,000 women and girls have suffered rape or other sexual violence at the hands of armed groups, according to the official register of war victims.

All warring factions - leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and government troops - have carried out rape and other forms of sexual violence during the long-running war.

But - as Colombia held its first national day honouring victims of conflict-related sexual violence on May 25 - the biggest threat of abuse for many women and girls was not at the hands of fighting men but from relatives in their own homes.

Sixty-five percent of the nearly 18,000 cases of sexual assault against women and girls reported last year took place at home, and eight percent on the street, according to Colombia's National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences.

Some 6,670 women and girls said their attackers were family members, and nearly 4,000 said they were assaulted by men they knew.

Those most at risk of sexual abuse in Colombia, a socially conservative country, are young girls.

Nearly 70 percent of the sexual assaults reported were carried out on girls of 5 to 17, with stepfathers and relatives the main culprits.

Sexual violence against girls in the home is thought to be far higher than official figures show, local women's groups say, as girls are often ashamed to come forward or fear reprisals from their attackers.

Many cases don't come to light because of the stigma surrounding incest, which is considered a private matter that should be dealt with behind closed doors.

A government poll earlier this year found nearly 80 percent of those questioned said people should 'not wash their dirty laundry in public.'

A common situation is that the man sexually abusing a girl at home is the family's sole breadwinner, who threatens to remove his economic support if the girl reports the crime, experts say.

Colombia's macho culture, and discrimination against women in general, are behind the widespread gender violence in the country, women's rights groups say.

As wartime rape survivors held public events and conferences as part of the May 25 national day, they said a key way to combat the scourge of sexual violence - both as part of Colombia's war and in the home - was to encourage more women and girls to speak out and report such crimes.

For Jineth Bedoya, a Colombian journalist and leading women's rights activist who was gang-raped and tortured by three paramilitary fighters 15 years ago, breaking down the silence surrounding sexual violence is crucial.

"It's not easy to speak out. I've had to go through a long process to understand and forgive so that I can transform the pain in order to begin to believe again," Bedoya told an audience of rape survivors, politicians and police officers in Bogota on Monday.

"This isn't the time to keep quiet. Women have kept silent for a long time, which has meant more victims and women being victimised again. We have to speak out."

(Reporting By Anastasia Moloney; Editing by Tim Pearce)

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