UNITED NATIONS, March 8 (UPI) -- The United Nations marks International Women's Day with a discussion on how to stop violence against women and girls.
"Violence against women and girls makes its hideous imprint on every continent, country and culture," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in an address Thursday at U.N. World Headquarters in New York.
The structure of the United Nations should be reformed to put women's issues, currently spread between three offices, into one entity, Ban said, opening a panel discussion on violence against women. A plan to create a new department for women's issues was first proposed in November.
"Such a new body should be able to call on all of the U.N. system's resources in the work to empower women and realize gender equality worldwide," he said.
Recent allegations of U.N. peacekeepers raping women was addressed by participants on the panel.
"In such vulnerable societies as the ones where we have peacekeeping operations, people are really traumatized," said Antero Lopes, deputy police advisor for U.N. Peacekeeping Operations. "The last thing they need is the people who come in to help them ... instead of being role models we are offenders as well."
The United Nations has adopted a zero-tolerance policy and provides training on gender issues, he said.
Raghida Dergham, a columnist for Arabic daily Al Hayat, said despite the difficulty of ending violence against women, people should persist.
"Rape of girls should not be whispered and hushed away, it should become an outcry that won't go away," she said. "Don't despair. Persist, insist, educate, shame us in the media to do more by consistently telling us the story. Every time you despair another criminal gets away with impunity."
