Just before the World Refugee Day, which is celebrated on June 20th, Corien Jonker, president of the Migration Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), stated that "systematically resorting, in this day and age, to rape and sexual abuse as war weapons is unacceptable. These practices, which are typical of ethnic cleansing campaigns, are blameworthy. Those women who try to escape the horrors of such mistreatments, which are deliberately inflicted upon them to humiliate them, need our protection”. Quoting the statistics of the UN High Commission for the Refugees, Jonker recalled that 20 thousand to 50 thousand women were raped during the war in Bosnia, that over 90% of women in Sierra Leone reported sexual aggressions and that countless rapes were committed during the Rwandan genocide. The president invited the member states of the CoE to "recognise sex-based persecutions” as legitimate grounds for asylum seeking. She also invited the officers at the borders and those who are involved in asylum procedures to be more sensitive to this issue. “We must give clear guidelines to the people in charge of asylum procedures”.
