Women and girls faced “horrific” levels of abuse in 2004 worldwide, Amnesty International (AI) has said in its annual human rights review, blaming widespread rape and violence on a mix of “indifference, apathy and impunity”. From honor killings carried out by the victims’ families to sexual violence used as a weapon of war, abuse frequently went unpunished and survivors were often abandoned by their own communities, the London-based rights group said. Amnesty indicated that it had sought in the past year to argue that violence against women in conflict situations was “an extreme manifestation of the discrimination and abuse they face in peacetime”, notably domestic violence and sexual abuse.