Thank you for that. Let me first of all make a little comment on your first statement.
We know that starts maybe with the documented history, or even before, but it was used as collateral damage, as they consider it, or it was used as a pleasure for the combatants, or a reward for combatants. Even in those communities they believe that women belong to men, and to declare victory on this army or this country, just to humiliate the opponents they rape their women. That's it.
During the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s we learned that more than 200,000 Chinese women in Nanking were raped, and they were in sexual slavery.
Since the war in Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia and Kosovo, and now in Congo, in Sierra Leone, in other places, and now in Syria, it's now used as a weapon of war. Now they are targeted just to break the families. They rape them because they belong to this belief, or they belong to this tribe, or they belong to this society. This is why it's different from other rapes.
How is this prevented? How is this done? I think this is a collective measure that should be taken. It's a matter of education. First of all, you have to educate women, to tell them they are full citizens not second-class citizens. They should be educated. It should be learned. We have to rehabilitate the society. Even now we have some terrible stories from Zaatari camp in Jordan.
These humanitarian agencies are coming from different places in the Arab world, particularly from the Gulf region, from Arabia. Usually it's the elderly people who will go. They are in the 50 to 65 age group. They ask if these people would like to have their girls wed. A man who is 70 years old is going to wed with a child who is 15 years old. They take them under poverty, under economic hardship, under shame, under protection, and they take them for one or two weeks in an apartment, in Amman, or al-Mafraq, in Ramtha, or anywhere close to the camp, and then they leave them. Maybe they are impregnated, or not, and they leave them.
The problem in the Arab world, in the Muslim world, it's a matter of education. The mentality should be changed. Believe me, this is against Islamic rules. Islamic rules...rape and war.... It's advantageous to Muslim society, traditionally speaking. We never heard, but presently we hear.
In the early ages, as I say, according to Islam, only one case was documented, where an army leader, when they invaded some places in Arabia, found a woman. He liked this woman, and he took her as a wife. Then the chief of staff reported him to the second caliph, to Umar ibn Al-Khattab, that this leader had done this and this. What should he do? This is again against honour killing. Fornication should be handled by a judicial body, but not by families when they kill their women and kill their innocent children, who were already victims. He said, “When you receive my judgment, stone him to death because he is married and he took this woman illegally.”
This is just one case. Then, it's a matter of tradition. It's a matter of people should be rehabilitated and should be educated.