African Union summit in Johannesburg, South Africa |15 June 2015

Actress Angelina Jolie wants rapists prosecuted

Angelina Jolie has implored women leaders at a forum of African nations in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa, to live up to their commitments to prosecute gender-based violence in their countries.

Actress and United Nations ambassador for refugees, Jolie said this on Friday when she addressed the forum ahead of the African Union (AU) summit in the city. She also urged international support to stop crimes against women.

 “You have committed yourselves to zero tolerance of violence against women. Now is the time to arrest men who commit crimes and prosecute them. Some men revel in the subjugation of women. Rape and sexual violence is no less a crime when it happens in countries at peace,” she told her audience.

The famous actress applauded African Union chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma for placing women’s rights at the heart of this year’s summit, and said violence against women had become a global epidemic.

“Violence against women is still treated as a lesser crime. More and more armed groups turn violence against women and children into a weapon of choice because of near total impunity,” she said.
Speaking to Agence France Presse (AFP), she explained that the issue of rapes is not “an African problem but a global one, but few places have suffered as Africa”.

The 40-year-old actress said that the steps taken by conflict-torn African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and the Ivory Coast to put an end to violence against women, encouraged her even more, wrote The Citizen, a South African daily.

“Please think what it would mean if the 54 nations of the African Union press together as one towards full rights and opportunities for women,” she told The Citizen.

African Union chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, British Foreign Secretary William Hague, and Zainab Bangura, United Nations’ secretary general’s special representative on sexual violence and conflict, also formed part of the panel which discussed the prevalence of sexual crimes against women in the war-torn areas.

Mrs Bangura hailed the fact that Africa is taking the lead on reducing violence against women perpetrated by their militaries.  According to Mrs Bangura, there has been a reduction by 50 percent in violence perpetrated against women by the military in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

She sees the greatest challenge in ensuring women’s protection and equal rights as being in the Middle East, largely due to the rise of Islamic State. “Women are being stripped, examined, and auctioned – sometimes for a pack of cigarettes,” Mrs Bangura said.

Mrs Jolie and Mr Hague, the co-founders of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, also met South African activists at the forum to discuss strategies to prevent sexual violence in the country that has a high rate of rape and violence against women, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Compiled by Gerard Govinden in Johannesburg