MENA Research Center Podcast

News from Europe with a focus on Muslim topics.

So-called »conflict-related sexual violence«, in fact unrelated to any real conception of sexuality, is one of the worst atrocities of war and terrorist attacks, systematically used as a tactic to humiliate, violate and ruin the minds and bodies of victims. In most cases it is intended to leave them alive to tell their story, with the intention of spreading fear and breaking the spirit of the assaulted.Conflict-related sexual violence is a war crime in international law, can be a constitutive element of genocide and is certainly used as a means of ethnic cleansing, either to damage beyond repair the reproductive cycle of an »enemy« or to repopulate regions with the »true blood« of the would-be conqueror. Although the majority of victims are women and girls, they are not the only targets, and conflict-related sexual violence is less gender-specific in the case of young children.Orit Sulitzeanu acts as the Executive Director of The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel since 2013. The ARCCI is the leading advocacy organization in Israel that deals with combating sexual violence. In 2023 she was accepted to the elluminate collective of 1 of 10 of women leaders initiated by the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York and she will be awarded this June the prestigious »Rapport Prize« as one of the heroic women, who since October 7 are breaking new ground in Documentation & Advocacy. Carmit Klar-Chalamish is head of the research department of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel. She has conducted various research in the field of victims/ survivors of sexual offenses: the needs of victims/survivors during the Covid pandemic period, Restorative Justice in cases of sexual offenses, and practices of sexual harassment. She also wrote the first report dealing with sexual violence during the October 7 war.