Refugees and the Risk of Rape
by Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch
- USA -
“We need the NGOs to bring firewood in lorries [trucks]. If they do not, we have to keep going. We have heard and seen rape with our eyes here outside the camp. In one day, three people were raped. On another day, two were raped...One 10-year-old girl was raped twice. There is no response from the government. We invited the governor to come and sit in a meeting with us, but [he] refused.” — a refugee in Iridimi Camp, Chad
• Women in refugees face daily challenges to provide for their families, including the fuel to prepare food. Photograph courtesy of the Women’s Refugee Commission/Erin Patrick. •
According to a report released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 2003, mass rape of women and children has been documented in Bosnia, Cambodia, Liberia, Peru, Somalia, and Uganda during their respective wars. The report estimates that more than 20,000 Muslim women were raped during the Bosnian war, many of whom never received the proper medical and psychological care. In Africa, where there is a large percentage of internally displaced persons and refugees, more than 90 million women and girls have been subjected to female genital mutilation. During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, various reports estimate that anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 women were victims of rape. In displaced households in Sierra Leone, 94% reported cases of sexual assault, rape, torture, and sexual slavery. Worldwide, at least one in three women has experienced physical and sexual abuse; some areas of the world have rates as high as 70%.
In the summer of 2007 as a Trinity College human rights fellow, I was involved in promoting and spreading the petition to bring the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA) to the U.S. Congress. In a stand against gender violence, this bill proposes to allot $1 billion over a period of five years to support health and psychological services, as well as education and legal help for victims of violence. The goal of the act is to not only end violence against women, but also change societal attitudes towards survivors of gender violence. As a survivor of sexual assault and a Connecticut certified sexual assault crisis counselor, this bill promotion was more than just a job for me. This bill gives a voice to many of the brutalized women in the world.
• One of the most dangerous tasks for refugee women is collecting firewood, exposing them to violent attacks and rape. Photograph courtesy of the Women’s Refugee Commission/Erin Patrick. •
Even gathering firewood, necessary for survival, is a dangerous task. According to a report released by the WRC, women “risk being raped, beaten, or killed when searching for firewood.” In an effort to address the epidemic, the WRC developed the Fuel and Firewood Initiative – a partnership with InterAction, the UNHCR and the World Food Program – to provide refugees with sustainable energy while reducing the risk of rape. Erin Patrick, a senior program officer for the initiative describes the pressing need for intervention: “Internally displaced women and girls in Darfur are at risk of rape, harassment and other forms of violence every time they leave the camps to collect wood,” she explains. The initiative involves policy makers, fuel and energy technologies, and humanitarian efforts to provide a better quality of life for refugees.
“The danger is the same, near or far, but there's no wood nearby. When we are there getting the wood, local people sometimes take the girls' clothes off. And do bad things. The people wear green uniforms. Some have camels. Some have horses. At the place where we get the firewood they tell us, 'Line up one by one.' They say, ‘Stand 2 by 2’ and they take us off like that and then they rape us. Sometimes this happens until evenings. We have told the police, but the police say ‘Stay in your tent and nothing will happen’.”
— a refugee in Mille Camp, Chad
These stories happen far too often, and yet few people ever hear of them. Even with programs like the Fuel and Firewood Initiative in place, international recognition and action is needed.
• Parabolic solar cookers use mirrors to cook food with energy from the sun. Photograph courtesy of the Women’s Refugee Commission/Erin Patrick. •
The I-VAWA was introduced to the U.S. Senate by Vice President Joe Biden on October 31, 2007 and in the House of Representatives by Congressman Howard Berman on April 30, 2008. However, the bill has not passed—it is still sitting in committee. While it does have bipartisan support, I-VAWA has been pushed to the side due to other pressing matters in the U.S. However, with Biden as Vice President now, there may be a higher chance that the bill will be signed into law. You can help make that happen by contacting your Senator or Congressman.
About the Author
Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch is a recent graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, CT with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Neuroscience, where her thesis was on learning, memory and attention deficits in female college-age sexual assault survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder. For the past three years, she was the senior co-editor of the Feminist Scholarship Review and Women Unite! at the Trinity College Women and Gender Resource Action Center.
Elizabeth is an advocate for women's health, lobbying on Congress for reproductive health rights. In addition, she is a Connecticut certified sexual assault crisis counselor. Her work has appeared in Campus Progress, EmpowHer, Feminist Review, Girlistic and Della Donna, and she regularly writes for Demand Studios and is the Hartford Women's Health Examiner. She plans to get her Masters of Social Work in order to work with refugees and victims of sexual abuse.
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Comments (9)
That women and children are driven from their homes and countries by violence is dreadful enough. That they then are at even greater risk than "normal" (already a shamefully high risk) of rape is almost unendurable.
We must find ways to protect women. We must also find ways to change the cultural norms that encourage men to rape.
The culture of military aggression breeds aggression against women, witness the high rates of sexual abuse of women in the US military. All these things are linked.
We must work for peace and justice everywhere we can.
Posted by Nancy Vining Van Ness | July 23, 2009 6:17 PM
As I read the feature one thing became clear. Universally women and girls are made to pay the price during a military operation, a riot or caste wars. Women need more protection no matter how that happens, it must happen. If that means stricter polices, a stronger enforcement of laws guarding guarding rights or simply punishing the offender.
In the state of Orissa in India where over the past year there has been a lot of communal tension, women were raped and sexually assaulted in a similar way. Even there the camps were unsafe and pregnant women were forced to deliver without any medical care.
Its sad that such a plight continues across the world. Indigenous governments need to take the task of safeguarding women and their rights more seriously.
Posted by lesley | July 23, 2009 7:41 PM
It is heartbreaking to read stories like that in the 21st century. Still, most harm is done to women because they are far more vulnerable than men. I can't possibly imagine what these little girls are going through, and all in the name of some "fake" peacekeepers.Like in Bosnia, the US Peacekeeping Units raped little girls and women. I wonder if any of those soldiers were brought to justice once they returned to their country. My guess is not. They were there for a more noble cause - they namely brought the people freedom. Yes, but at what cost?
I still think that the punishment for men committing this kind of crimes is not harsh enough, if they ever get caught. Even if they are caught, there's always somebody covering their back. And I'm sick and tired of hearing that war brings casualties. What is it in men that makes them commit this kind of acts? Is this a way of passing their time? Is it military service that allows them to do whatever they want and go unpunished? Who is responsible for delivering them to justice?
We still live in this manmade world where everything is allowed, and nothing's going to change if the governments do not enforce stricter laws. How do you educate men who think they can do as they please in the name of army? How do you educate men who have no respect for women and merely see them as the object for releasing their violence? We all know that rape is not about sex, it is about control, about showing the victim who's the master, and that is far more painful than the real pain, and the pain women have to endure because the courts doubt about the truth of their confessions. Stricter laws and punishment that's the only answer.
Posted by Viktorija | July 24, 2009 10:03 AM
One of the ways that we can start protecting our women, both internationally and at home, is by changing how women are depicted in the mainstream media -- as submissive sex objects. That's why The WIP is so is amazing -- one of few publications where women can BE the media, writing about themselves and each other in a humanizing way.
Posted by Megtady | July 24, 2009 1:59 PM
Viktorija:
You might find unique answers to your question on why men commit these crimes, and especially in times of war, in "The Dark Side of Men," exquisitely written by Michael
Ghiglieri, primate researcher and protege of Jane Goodall. Both as a sociologist and writer, I too have often pondered on this vexing question and sought answers that went beyond the sociological explanations of "socialization and conditioning." There is more at work here: biology and evolutionary forces, as Ghigliari contends, play a huge role in explaining innate male violence. His book does an excellent job in detailing the
"biological grim heritage" of the male species. I definitely came away with a better understanding of the mayhem in our world.
Posted by handan | July 24, 2009 3:01 PM
After reading the article and the comments, I decided to contribute with a little beam of light from my own experience (I have been involved in UN peacekeeping education for the last 10 years, and represented my country -Argentina- in UN-DPKO and UN-OHCHR projects.
In her article, Elizabeth portrays a cruel reality that is even worse than what sheer words can transmit. But I feel that somehow the big issue is not grasped. Most conflicts occur in tribal societies, where women are allotted a certain gender role. With the men going to war they have to take upon themselves other roles because they are left by themselves. We used to say that women were part of the vulnerable groups, the term was changed by "groups at risk", because it doesn't connote weakness from the part of corageous women. Some other time I can expand on this.
But I wanted to make a point of something else. As the comments put it, it seems that "women have to pay the price [of war]" or that they are at "greater risk of HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnacies...". Then I read that "men...think they can do as they please...". I disagree with this views.
We have to bear in mind that gender violence is an integral part of military tactics or strategies(call it whatever)mainly of irregular armed factions (not common among regular armies)in all conflicts, mainly when they are rooted in ethnicity. In supposedly "civilized" societies, women are brutalized by individual men. But in conflict areas, violence against women is systematized, because they are instrumental against the opposite faction. Killing has no consequences. Death is a blessing, you don't have to take care of dead women or children. Armed irregular forces have put into pracice crueler ways of infringing damage to the enemy, ways which surpass the imaginable.
Examples? In Rwanda it was not just that women were being raped, no...death squads (men suffering HIV/AIDS) were sent in order to infect female victims of rape, so as to create a greater problem to the enemy. As when in Sierra Leone whole villages were maimed at knee and elbow level, knowing that somebody was left out of combat in order to take care of the crippled who had no hands to use, or legs to move! Barbaric? It's the same principle the civilized world uses when planting land mines...it injures the soldier, but rarely kills him, and at least 2 other soldiers have to take care of the casualty! MACABRE, ISN'T IT?
Unwanted prengancies, if you see it from our perspective! And one thing we are good at is at looking at things from different perspectives! Those pregancies are "WANTED" by the perpetrators of rape. It is a way of dirtying the ethnicity of a certain group. A "subtle" way of ethnic cleansing (terrible euphemism). The woman and her baby are rejected by their social environment.
What is worse, when a peace agreement is in place and the DDR process starts, women are victimized by their own male relatives, who arrive home after going through traumatic experiences and pour all their anger on their own women!
Summing up: gender violence is not just a brutalizing act, but a systematic and agreed upon way of using women to impair the capacity of the enemy faction.
Mind you, I am speaking of irregular combatants. As for regular armies, first of all "US Peacekeeping Units" is almost an oximoron! And as for UN Peacekeeping Forces, there have been numerous cases of Sexual Abuse and Explotation (SEA) which have led UN to a blunt "Tolerance Zero" among troops. But, but...the curious thing is that the worst cases were carried out by civilian personnel, not by the military. The problem is that the military (as they are uniformed) are more "visible", so to speak. The worst case happened in MONUC, if I'm not wrong, where a UN civilian had bulks of photos and films practicing pedophilia. So, again, summing up: let's try to avoid prejudices against the military in PK, and let's create awareness that any man - UN, NGO's, yo name it- whether uniformed or not can take advantage of the power they can exercise over the local population.
Moreover, people that are supposed to help or bring a solution in an apparently post conflict area, many times make things worse out of ignorance of cultural norms of the people they want to help. Example? With the war in Afghanistan, the locals crossed the border and were located in refugee camps. There were so many widows of war that the decision was taken to separate them from families that had a male head. The rumour was spread that in the "Women's Camp" prostitution was praciced, until the inhabitants of the other camp had the proof that it was true and burnt down the WC. Which was "the proof"? Humanitarian agencies had includen soap in the weekly boxes, without taking into account that muslim women only wash with soap after having sexual intercourse! So cultural awareness is a must!
Thanks for your patience if you got to this point in your reading!
Posted by Alaciel | July 24, 2009 3:29 PM
I am very concerned that the UN has hired death squad mercenaries, Kaibiles, from Guatemala, notorious for their heinous crimes, massacres and disembowelment of pregnant women. I wonder what these guys have done to make the situation for women raped in the Congo, where Kaibiles work as so called UN Peacekeeprs, even worse. According to a recent article by Eve Ensler of Vagina Monologs, rapes are on the rise in the Congo rather than being halted. She said UN Peacekeepers facilitate the rapers. What is that all about?
http://en.allexperts.com/e/k/ka/kaibiles.htm
I do not believe women Peacekeepers is the solution unless there are no arms, they are hundreds, if not thousands, devoted to nonviolent solutions. I am devoted to nonviolently putting an end to femicide, ecocide and genocide. I will work on this to my final days. I see mass rape spreading and not just in "official" war zones. Look at Ciudad Juarez in Mexico and Gautemala City where so many women are mutilated, tortured and killed. This is going on globally and has reached unprecedented proportions. I do believe soul force Gandhian direct action is our only hope. But it will take thousands, if not millions of us willing to give our lives to truly put an end to this insane madness.
There should never be any cultural justification EVER for killing women. We must quickly come together and generate powerful solutions. This is simply intolerable.
Posted by swaneagle | July 26, 2009 10:59 AM
This is such an important article and such important discussion following. I very much appreciate your post Alaciel. The name of the article by Eve Ensler is "Broken UN Promise in Congo". Please, anyone who is in any way involved with the UN, insist on an investigation into the hiring of known death squads as Peacekeepers. This is an outright atrocity with no end.
Peace, swaneagle
Posted by swaneagle | July 26, 2009 1:42 PM
There should be a global joint effort to end violence against women. The article shed the light of a fact that most people want to ignore. Rape victims' agony last a lifetime, so what about poor women are raped over and over. It is high time for the world to think of women as human being not objects that could be exploited. thanks for the author as such articles might help in changing situations of some women
Posted by SuadHamada | August 4, 2009 1:40 PM