(Left to right) Associate professor of communication, Clemencia Rodriguez, Professor of history, Elyssa Faison, director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Jill Irvine and assistant professor of human relations, Zermarie Deacon speak during a panel discussion about women who are victims of war crimes in Meacham Auditorium in the Oklahoma Memorial Union. Marcin Rutkowski/ The Daily

Tens of thousands of women are traumatized by war every year, and their stories are largely ignored, panelists told an audience Wednesday night in Meacham Auditorium.

The discussion, titled “Gendercide: A Panel Discussion About Women and Conflict Around the World,” was hosted by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program in conjunction with UOSA, the Student Activist Association and the Union Programming Board as part of Human Rights Week.

“Although everyone is affected by war, women are disproportionately affected,” said Bekah Stone, panel moderator and International Area Studies senior.

Each of the four panelists told a story about a woman traumatized by war.

“Often, the history books don’t tell these stories,” Stone said.

To fully understand war, she said, society must understand war from women’s perspectives.

The panelists were Zermarie Deacon, assistant professor of human relations, Jill Irvine, director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Clemencia Rodriguez, associated professor of communication and Elyssa Faison, history professor.

A common thread in the panelists’ stories was the use of rape as a war tactic — one that is sometimes systematic, and almost always one that is not discussed.

Irvine told the story of a Croatian woman, Jadranka Cigelj, who was taken from her home during a series of wars in Bosnia during the 1990s.

Trying to maintain some semblance of a normal life, Cigelj worried what clothes to take with her to a notorious concentration camp, Omarska, in Bosnia, Irvine said.

But Cigelj soon realized that decision was trivial.

Cigelj was one of 36 women in a camp filled mostly with men. The women, Irvine said, were brought there to be raped, often by men they knew.

Loud music played in the camp when someone was killed, tortured or raped, Irvine said. And the loud music played during the entire time.

The women, including Cigelj, were suddenly released after being discovered and reported by foreign journalists, Irvine said. They were dumped outside the camp, left to walk home.

When Cigelj returned home, on foot, Irvine said she was a shell of the person she once was.

“Rape is a tool of war,” Irvine said. “It was intended to sow terror in the population and was deliberately used to make sure communities could never come together again.”

In many communities around the world, rape is so taboo that no help is available to the victims. They do not talk about what happened to them.

Rape is deliberately used in some wars as a way of impregnating the enemy population, Irvine said.

In many areas, this happens frequently because the national identity of a child is determined by who the father is, and it is assumed that women help increase the population of those “committing the atrocities,” Irvine said.

Cigelj and another woman who was held in the camp, Nusreta Sivac, testified for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, in the Netherlands.

Now, if someone commits rape in wartime, especially if it is a systematic policy, it is considered a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Court, Irvine said.

“It’s not talked about by communities; it’s not talked about by people,” Deacon, another panelist, said.

The women who are abused are thought by their abusers to “not count for anything,” she said.

“That’s why it’s a human rights issue,” Deacon said.

Tonight, as part of Human Rights Week, “Take Back the Night,” a rally and march to raise awareness of sexual assault, will begin at 8:30 on the Oklahoma Memorial Union’s east lawn.

The event will be sponsored by OU Advocates for Sexual Assault Awareness and the Women’s Outreach Center.