Rape, war and nonsense

It's a straight-forward report on a UN agency seeking (no surprise there) extra funding and reporting on rape and sexual violence in wars and conflicts. After all, given the dismal record of some UN peacekeepers, who better than the UN to study such a problem?

A UN report prepared for the meeting found that systematic rape was a prominent feature of the conflicts in Bosnia-Hergovina, DR Congo, East Timor and Haiti, and is ongoing in the Darfur region of Sudan.

No-one knows exactly how many women have been attacked in the chaos of Darfur, the BBC's David Loyn says from the conference.

But rape has been used there as a weapon of war to impose the will of one people on another - as it was in previous conflicts such as those in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Rwanda, he says.

In Rwanda, officials estimate that 60,000 women were raped during the 1994 conflict, two-thirds of whom have been infected with HIV/Aids, the UNFPA believes.

In Bosnia, the figure is put at around 40,000.

The conference has already heard testimony from the DR Congo, where sex with very young children has become commonplace in the mistaken belief it can cure Aids.

Ok, well and good. However, here's a howler from Gaza:

Sexual violence has also been linked to development funding. Cases in Gaza and the West Bank have increased significantly since the EU and the US cut funding after January's election of Hamas, Luay Shabaneh of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics says.

Get it? Internal Palestinian problems are the fault of others- including the US- and not caused by support for a terrorist regime which is the reason funds got cut. All as "established by the "Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics."

Thank you BBC for sharing that unquestioned info with us.

One man's terrorist may be another's freedom fighter, and one woman's rapist may be another's victim of withdrawn US & EU funding...what garbage...