SonjaBe.com International Relations – Be Here | Be You | Be True

By Sonja Be Shame, guilt, fear, and sadness. While these are feelings that should be experienced by the criminals of rape and gender violence, they are sadly and commonly felt by the victim. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more dehumanizing than the act of rape. Whether the victim is a man or a woman, a child or a teenager, the numerous effects of rape are damaging to not just the victim but society as a whole. In many cultures and societies, rape is stigmatized and survivors are left abandoned from their communities.  Because of the stigma that is attached to it, rape is significantly one of the most underreported violent crimes. If the UN reports that 1 in 3 women face violence at some point in their lifetime, it is unimaginable to know the actual numbers. Read More »

By Michelle Blanchet. What do you picture when you think of Colombia?  Cocaine?  Gang warfare? Sadly, violence is nothing new to Colombia, and has instilled a bad reputation to an otherwise wonderful country.  Decades of conflict have often left the state powerless to control paramilitary groups, or to manage organized crime. Drug and arms trafficking have intensified the entire situation, which have caused the country to periodically hit some of the highest homicide and crime rates in the world. Read More »

By Jamie Van Horne Blood stained clothes draped over the pews and bullet holes in the walls were a vivid reminder. The church in Nyamata, an ominous memorial of what occurred in 1994, stands to commemorate the 15,000 people who sought refuge in this church only to be executed there during the Rwandan genocide. Walking down a narrow marble staircase, we were led into a small vault full of glass-encased skulls and bones of the victims. The skulls told the story of how each person was killed – a thin line through the bone represented a machete, a large hole was a club, and a small hole was a bullet. Behind the case of bones was one casket. It held the body of a single unidentified woman whose death was illustrative of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of other woman across the country. She was raped. Read More »