With the political crisis in Syria, many of the nation’s inhabitants have become refugees, thus leaving them vulnerable to all types of attack-including sexual assault.

Syrian activists and figureheads from Harvard and Columbia University recognized this and have teemed up to launch Women Under Siege. Backed by Gloria Steinem and the Women’s Media Center, this project allows Syrian citizens and other in the area to report incidences of sexualized violence to track its occurrence in hopes that justice will be served on behalf of the victims.

The following explanation is taken from their blog:

There is an old idiom in medicine that says, “You can’t diagnose a fever without taking a temperature.” So just as taking a temperature tells us so much about the health of a person, taking in the rate of sexual assault can quickly, quantitatively, and objectively tell us valuable information about the health of a…

Pardon me for living under a rock, but in the midst of clearing out my DVR, I finally sat down and watched Miss Representation, a documentary that chronicles the media’s objectification of women and how it has systematically served to hold women back in terms of industry, politics, and leadership.

While I am not blind to offensive advertising, I must say this documentary gave me a much deeper understanding of how the media, in large part, objectifies women-which is indeed victimization. With a plethora of sexualized advertisements, movies and television shows, it’s no wonder that, by and large, my generation is more concerned about the next episode of “The Real Housewives of…” instead of the Planned Parenthood debacle.

I signed the pledge to spread the word about the media’s gross bias toward women and produce content of my own to combat this epidemic. I implore you to watch the…