FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2004

CONTACT: Brooke Benschoter, (515) 271-2017, brooke.benschoter@drake.edu

DRAKE PROFESSOR TO DISCUSS RESEARCH OF BALKAN "WAR BABIES"

Drake University lecturer R. Charli Carpenter , who returned to Des Moines from Bosnia this week, will talk Tuesday, May 4, about her study of children who were born of wartime rape in the Balkans.

The talk, which is free and open to the public, will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday in room 235 of Drake's Meredith Hall, 28th Street & Carpenter Avenue. Carpenter's talk will be followed by a viewing of a documentary movie titled "War Babies" by Raymonde Provencher .

Carpenter's research project, "Children of the Enemy? Forced Pregnancy, Humanitarian Assistance and Children's Rights in the Balkans," is funded through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

After the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, hundreds of children conceived in mass rape campaigns were born to mothers who did not want them. Many of these wartime orphans are viewed as "children of the enemy," a situation that can potentially impact their rights to education, identity, family and security.

While volumes have been written about mass rape and forced pregnancy as a women's issue, Carpenter's project aims to raise awareness of the topic as a children's issue.

The "War Babies" documentary explores a number of difficult issues faced by children born of wartime rape, such as the kind of life they can expect to lead and how they can become accepted by family members after being stigmatized as a "child of the enemy."