Where did the humanitarian principles go? by Harold Washington College blogger Juan

A few days ago I was on the bus on my way to work and as usual, I am scrolling down some website on my iPhone trying to find something to read that will take my mind off my surrounding reality and place it somewhere interesting. Little did I know that in about 2 minutes from that moment my quest on finding the highly craved, interesting article was going to backfire on me. I stumbled upon an article that made it difficult for me to pass. This article was about a woman in the United Arabs Emirates, which is a country located southeast of the Arabian Peninsula on the Persian Gulf, who was drugged and raped by several men. She found herself in a room she had never been before and could not recall the journey that led her to that place.And so she did what anyone in her position would have had done.

She went to the authorities to report it and find justice for her tragedy. Turns out that the officials of the United Arab Emirates have a profound belief that in order for two people to be allowed sexual intimacy, they have to be married first, and in the instance that intimacy does occur outside marriage, well then that is considered a crime. Not only did the officials blatantly ignored the fact that she was raped, but they tricked and made her sign some papers she could not read since it was written in Arabic. She later found out she had just signed a document stating she had sex outside of marriage and it was due to her choice of drinking alcohol. So she spent 8 months in prison.

When I ponder upon the lack of humanitarian views some countries and cultures hold, frustration takes over. It’s like my mind cannot believe the ignorance that exists in believing in gender superiority. Why men have to constantly maintain a status of power over women. Why women have to serve and contribute and give constantly to their husbands but they can’t ever demand anything, or work in certain fields, or get paid unfairly and differently than men. But some countries run and are based on ideals that are founded on hatred, anger, selfishness, and power-over-everything. And this is an issue which we can only hope to be fixed sometime soon. Honestly, the only solution I can think of is to raise a generation of men who think differently; men who believe women are to be treated of equal respect and not used to an advantage. And so I want to end this blog by saying, be kind to everyone you see, treat everyone the same way you would like to be treated. I could encourage men to focus only on treating women better and with compassion, but it comes down to how you treat and view everyone around you. It’s about a change of mentality that will allow one to want to do good things, be good to others, and learn to have a sense of humanity.