Changing Egyptian Artifacts

Across the globe, people are shocked by the violence committed by ISIS forces against Christians in Egypt just a few days ago. In a graphic, violent video, soldiers beheaded approximately 50 people.

In the United States, we seem to remember and recognize that kind of violence through flickering black and white newsreels of camps in Poland and Germany and in the tides of human sadness that engulfed parts of the 20th century.

In the wake of the ISIS brutality, the world expressed a shared outrage and Egypt angrily responded by bombing suspected ISIS installations in Libya. This growing epidemic of conflict and extremism won’t be easily stopped. It continues to spread across the Middle East and Europe. Across the globe.

Yet, it has further cemented the world’s concern over this kind of terrorism - an extreme, fatal violation of human rights. It's stimulated more conversation on militant theocratic terrorists and helped push for a broader recognition that a shared global strategy is needed. That a shared commitment is needed.

That said, Egypt has another human rights problem – violence against women. Its effects ripple throughout Egyptian society - through families and marriages and communities. And while the ISIS brutality is awful and medieval, the violence against women is a far greater threat to each Egyptian family - and each woman - than the looming specter of ISIS.

In a 2013 United Nations Women survey, more than 99 percent of women and girls interviewed in Egypt reported that they experienced some form of sexual harassment. Then, in Amnesty International’s report released last month, more startling documentation emerged about how “women and girls face violence - on a disturbing scale - both at home and in public. The violence includes domestic violence, sexual mob attacks, and torture in state custody. Egyptian laws and entrenched impunity continue to foster a culture of routine sexual and gender-based violence.”

Can you imagine if, here in the United States, it was considered acceptable that our daughters, sisters, and mothers were subject to sexual violence while in public – or in state custody? Would we really accept that the raping or abusing of our girlfriends and wives was an unfortunate social norm?

Of course not.

So where are the media reports of this tragedy in Egypt?

“In a world populated with over 7 billion people, one in three women will be physically, sexually, or otherwise abused during her lifetime: that’s a staggering one billion women and girls who have experienced violence.” http://blog.amnestyusa.org/women/one-billion-women-and-girls-deserve-better/

For more, read the Amnesty International Report on Egypt violence here: http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/mde_120042015.pdf