Recently, women across the world rolled out their drums and clicked their glasses to celebrate the one hundredth International Women's Day (IWD). While women were busy celebrating their gallant strides, applauding the advances they have made towards achieving equal rights, equal opportunities and progress, millions are downtrodden and groaning in pain under torture and faced annihilation. Among them are hapless victims of maternal death, violence, crisis and war across the world.

The IWD celebration turned awry for women in Dogo Narwa, a south mining settlement in Jos, Plateau state, where more than 500 bodies, many of them women and children, were killed. They were alleged to have been killed by people suspected to be Fulani herdsmen.

Women and children account for almost 80 per cent of the casualties of conflict and war as well as 80 per cent of the 40 million people in the world who are now refugees from their homes. It is one of the unspoken facts of militarism that women often become the spoils of war, their deaths are considered collateral damage and their bodies are frequently used as battlegrounds and commodities that can be traded.

For instance, in the latest catastrophe in Jos, Reuters reported that some of the bodies - including those of women and children - were charred; others had machete wounds across their faces. Aid workers said some were shot.

The shooting was just meant to bring people from their houses and when people came out they cut them with machetes, said Dogo Nahawa resident, Peter Jang, who claimed that women were crying behind him.

There have been scores of protests against the bloodbath since Sunday. An army of women decked in black dresses, sticks in their hands and fresh green leaves on their heads, last Wednesday demonstrated against the massacre in Dogo Nahama.

The protest came on the heels of the mass burial that took place in Zot, Rassat and Doi, Dogo Nahawa villages where over 500 villagers, mostly Berom, were killed. The protesting women chanted dirges to reflect their gloomy condition and their sympathy for their slain children and fellow women.

 The peace protest, which took off from Chugwi village square and continued from the major streets of the local government terminated at the palace of the Gwong Rwei Vwang, Da Choji K. Balak. The leader of the Chugwi women group, Mrs. Kombo Choji, lamented the dastardly act perpetrated by those she described as "heartless and shameless."

Mrs. Kombo called for the immediate removal from office of the General Officer Commanding 3 Armoured Division of the Rukuba Military Cantonment, Major General Saleh Main and Lt. General Abdulrahaman Danbazzau, the Chief of Army Staff, for allegedly failing to protect lives and property. She accused the officials of aiding the killings.

According to a report, Chugwi community Vwang district of Jos South local government area had lost over 250 women since 2001 to date. Besides, able family men and youths have died leaving behind women and children to cater for themselves. It was against this background that women from the community embarked on a protest over the continuous attack on women and children during civil unrests in Plateau state. Led by Mrs. Serah Dennis, they lamented before the district head, Gwom Rwei Vwang, Da Choji K. Balat that the actions of Fulanis during the crises had brought untold hardship to mothers and children, insisting that enough was enough.

Mrs. Dennis also told the community leaders that the march became necessary as a way of demonstrating their feelings over the killings. Her words, "We mourn the massacre of women and our children in series of crises in Jos. It is hard to bear the latest killings in Dogo Nahawa village where defenseless women and children became victims of what they are innocent of.

"If women and children are no longer safe in Jos, in spite of the presence of the military in Jos, then we ask for the withdrawal of soldiers," she said.

Also reacting, National Council of Women Societies, (NCWS ) last Tuesday, condemned what it called 'the senseless massacre' in Jos, Plateau State in the early hours of last Sunday.

The NCWS further declared that it could no longer "fold its arms and watch the lawlessness and continued terrorism which had left women, children and the leaders of tomorrow as the greatest casualties."

In a statement, its National President, Hajia Ramatu Usman, stated "The NCWS is again alarmed at the senseless massacre of defenseless Nigerian children and women in Jos, Plateau State, on Sunday.

"The Nigerian women cannot reconcile this latest mayhem where armed men invaded harmless communities in the early hours and opened fire on defenseless people."

Condemning the last Sunday's carnage in Jos, the women urged security operatives to "fish out the perpetrators of the heinous crime against humanity, no matter how highly placed."

According to a report by Amnesty International, women and girls are not just killed; they are raped, sexually attacked, mutilated and humiliated during conflicts and war. Custom, culture and religion have built an image of women as bearing the 'honour' of their communities. Disparaging a woman's sexuality and destroying her physical integrity have become a means by which to terrorize, demean and 'defeat' entire communities, as well as to punish, intimidate and humiliate women.

Many gender analysts are not only worried over the vulnerabilities of women and children during conflict and war, but that this often occurs on special occasions when they are supposed to be celebrated. For instance, the joy of children turned to horror when troops of the Joint Task Force in Delta State razed Benikrukru community in the Gbaramatu clan of Warri South-West Local Government Area of the state in May last year. The crisis came on the heels of the International Children's Day (ICD). As it were, while their contemporaries were being feted by governments, corporate groups, organisations, individuals and their families across the world, children in Benikrukru community were made wretched casualties of conflict and war.

Several of the indigenes of Gbaramatu kingdom who were victims of the conflict, mainly women and children were displaced from their homes, when the Joint Military Task Force, JTF, bombarded the area in the wake of their bloody clash with the Niger Delta militants. They literally turned the people into refugees in their country; killed and maimed innocent people amounting to systemic annihilation.

Culled from champion newspaper