I am tired of reading articles that feature men like Intallah, the MNLA, AQIM, the Malian Army, etc… Collectively, they are all saying the same thing. Collectively, they will all continue to use violence and chaos to protect their privilege.

Where are the articles that provide a platform for Oumou Sall Seck and Aicha Belco Maiga? With the exception of Arte Reportage and the New York Times, these 2 brave women have basically been ignored by media even though they are the official representatives of their communities!

Please read this report:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-31/sexual-violence-in-mali-casts-shadow-over-peace-efforts.html

Sexual Violence in Mali Casts Shadow Over Peace Efforts
By Flavia Krause-Jackson & Pauline Bax – Jan 31, 2013 3:00 AM GMT

Rebels who had conquered northern Mali offered to pay the equivalent of $14 for a 13-year-old girl. When her family said no, they took her anyway.
A week later, she died in captivity, after she was repeatedly raped by a group of armed men.

Enlarge image
Malian men take part in a meeting of residents from Northern Mali, in Bamako on April 4, 2012. The placard reads “No to rape”. Photographer: Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images
That incident in April is one of hundreds of documented cases compiled by the United Nations in the past year that shed light on the sexual violence unleashed by insurgents — mostly Touareg separatists rather than al-Qaeda-linked Islamists — during their occupation of a sparsely populated and inhospitable Mali region the size of Texas.
Nine months later, the rebels have melted away into the desert as French intervention troops advance. For the women of the farming and cattle-herding communities, the prospect is that yet another peace deal will ignore the record of rape used as a weapon of war.
“The question of sexual violence is not treated as an urgent question, unfortunately,” Hannah Armstrong, an analyst on security in West Africa. The same Touareg fighters now clamoring for negotiations “carried out raid-style attacks during which animals were stolen, slave-caste women raped repeatedly,” she said in an interview in Bamako, the Malian capital.
A total of 211 cases of sexual violence — including gang rape, sexual slavery, forced marriages and torture — were committed during house-to-house operations or at checkpoints during 2012, according to the Office of the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict.
Rape, Looting
The cases, which have not been made public, were verified over the course of a two-week fact-finding mission in November, when a UN official met in person with witnesses and survivors of sexual assault. Their names were withheld out of concern for their safety as the perpetrators still held the affected areas.
Only a handful of peace agreements address such crimes. The likelihood is that in Mali conflict-related sexual violence will be brushed aside, as has happened in Libya since the fighting that toppled and killed dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
A further complication is that those held responsible for the worst abuses against women are young Touareg men of Malian origin who rescinded their claims of independence and are now making peace overtures. The separatist rebel group that unleashed the chaos, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, known by its French acronym MNLA, lost control over its militants soon after it occupied the north and its fighters were seen attacking their own people.

“The question of sexual violence is not treated as an urgent question, unfortunately,” Hannah Armstrong, an analyst on security in West Africa. The same Touareg fighters now clamoring for negotiations “carried out raid-style attacks during which animals were stolen, slave-caste women raped repeatedly,” she said in an interview in Bamako, the Malian capital.
A total of 211 cases of sexual violence — including gang rape, sexual slavery, forced marriages and torture — were committed during house-to-house operations or at checkpoints during 2012, according to the Office of the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict.
Rape, Looting

The cases, which have not been made public, were verified over the course of a two-week fact-finding mission in November, when a UN official met in person with witnesses and survivors of sexual assault. Their names were withheld out of concern for their safety as the perpetrators still held the affected areas.
Only a handful of peace agreements address such crimes. The likelihood is that in Mali conflict-related sexual violence will be brushed aside, as has happened in Libya since the fighting that toppled and killed dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
A further complication is that those held responsible for the worst abuses against women are young Touareg men of Malian origin who rescinded their claims of independence and are now making peace overtures. The separatist rebel group that unleashed the chaos, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, known by its French acronym MNLA, lost control over its militants soon after it occupied the north and its fighters were seen attacking their own people.