Amal Clooney continues fight for female victims of sexual violence

Lebanon-born human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin Clooney has long been fighting for the rights of sexual violence victims across the world. Her ferocious call for justice on the behalf of countless Yazidi women who were tortured and raped by the fallen Islamic State in Iraq is making headlines everywhere. 

On Tuesday, the barrister spoke at a UN voting session on a resolution on sexual violence in war.

At the session, she was joined by her client, Iraqi-Yazidi sexual violence survivor and Nobel prize winning activist Nadia Murad. 

"Justice isn't inevitable. It doesn't just happen. And it doesn't stand a chance if people in power, including those at this table, don't make it a priority," Clooney said, addressing UN members at the organizations' headquarters in New York. 

"This is your chance to stand on the right side of history. You owe it to Nadia and the thousands of women and girls who must watch ISIS members go back to normal life, while they, the victims, never can," she added. 

Murad also made an address at the meeting, calling the UN out for not taking any substantial action to protect victims of sexual violence in war. 

"Not a single person has been charged for sexual slavery," she told delegates, referring to the destruction and death inflicted on the Yazidi community. 

"The hopes of an entire generation have been destroyed. We give speeches at the UN but no real measures have been taken and nothing has been done," she said. 

The Tuesday vote session didn't achieve the results expected, as a watered-down version of the sexual violence in war resolution was passed. This came after a last-minute U.S. intervention threatened to veto the measure.

If the injustices Yazidi women endured go unpunished, their cases will resemble those of thousands of Arab female victims of sexual assault who seldom get their rights. 

This is due to flawed legal systems in the region that rarely give women their most basic right to justice. It's also a result of the fact that victims are rarely emboldened to call out their harassers and are sometimes even blamed for being assaulted. 

A Lebanese campaign launched by an NGO called ABAAD proved just how intense victim blaming can be when it comes to rape cases reported in the country. Some activists in the region believe that situation is exactly the same, if not worse, for victims across the Arab world. 

In Lebanon, an article allowed rapists to avoid punishment if they married their victims. It had been in effect until 2017 before it was repealed by authorities following a massive campaign led by local NGOs, including ABAAD.

Article 522 was applied to cases of rape, sex with a minor, molestation of children, sexual harassment of children, exploitation of someone in a less powerful position, and kidnapping of women or girls.

Although the decision was hailed as a victory at the time, some said the article was only "partially abolished." 

Lebanese NGO KAFA described the development as a "partial victory", explaining that the article's "effect continues under Article 505 which involves sex with a minor who is 15 years of age, as it does through article 518, which concerns the seduction of a minor with the promise of marriage."