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Little attention paid to sexualised war crimes


06/2005
  

[ Sexualised violence ]

Forgotten victims

All too often, rape and even sex slavery go along with armed conflict. The brutal abuse of women and girls typically serves as a strategic element of enforcing cynical, armed power. The world public and multilateral bodies became aware of the issue in the mid 1990s, but interest has waned since. It shouldn’t have. Numerous women continue to become victims of sexualised war violence.


[ By Eva-Maria Bruchhaus ]

The mass rapes committed by Serbian troops and militias in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995 caused a great stir internationally due to intensive reporting – particularly on television. It is estimated that around 20,000 women and girls were affected. The world public was also confronted with sexualised violence in connection with the Rwandan genocide of 1994. In both cases, it became obvious that ruthless conflict parties were systematically using sexualised violence as a weapon.

Since then, public interest in the topic has waned although the subject deserves even more attention. It is believed that several hundred thousand women have become victims of rape in the chaos in the Congo alone. Time and time again, journalists have reported similar atrocities from the Sudanese war province of Darfur, and yet the public continues to regard sexual assaults and even abduction into prostitution slavery as inevitable collateral damage of war.

At the same time, the sense of right and wrong has made considerable progress in the last hundred years. Before the Second World War, the expanded Hague Convention stated rather broadly that the honour and rights of the family must be respected. The 4th Geneva Convention clarified this further stating that women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault. Sadly, decades went by before such criminal offences committed in war were actually punished by law courts. That happened in the 1990s at the International Rwanda Tribunal and the International Yugoslavia Tribunal.

Sexualised violence has been defined a war crime ever since the UN Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993; it was then that the necessary instruments for the administration of justice and punishment were developed. The International Criminal Court, which was founded in 1998 and came into force in 2002, has these instruments at its disposal. In an attempt to do justice to the realities of so-called “new wars”, in which the boundaries between military campaigns, organised crime and extensive human rights abuses are becoming increasingly blurred, the current set of rules makes not only rape, but also sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced sterilisation, enforced pregnancy and other forms of sexual/sexualised violence punishable by law.

In October 2000, Resolution 1325 of the World Security Council dealt specifically with the situation of women and girls in armed conflict and propagated a “three Ps” policy. The Ps stand for:
– prevention of war,
– participation of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, and
– protection of women and girls in war and crisis regions.
Resolution 1325 calls upon parties to armed conflict to respect the international laws and to protect women and girls from sexualised violence. Furthermore, it demands that the perpetrators be prosecuted and denied any amnesty.


Practical problems

Solemnly sworn policies, however, are of little help to people who have become victims of sexualised war violence. One of the greatest legal difficulties is that the affected people – not necessarily only women and girls – are unable to report the perpetrators to the authorities straight away. The judiciary must painstakingly reconstruct what happened much later, which means the victims have to testify as witnesses, a process that, once more, causes considerable strain and distress. In order for criminal offenders to be prosecuted, it is therefore imperative to let experts document crimes immediately. For good reason, a UN special reporter has been entrusted with this job since 1994.

Another problem lies in the different legal understandings of different societies. In many countries – for example in the Muslim world – the prevailing view is that rape does not violate the human rights of the affected woman but constitutes a blow to her family honour. As a consequence, victims of violence may be disowned by their relatives. This line of thinking adds to the woes of traumatised persons. Moreover, it makes the investigation of the cases more difficult with depressing consequences in terms of the perpetrators rarely being punished and the inadequate rehabilitation of victims.

In any case, helping affected women is often a more urgent task than criminal prosecution. Many of them bear the full burden of providing for their families because the men have gone off to war or have even been killed. Seriously wounded, both physically and emotionally – and possibly socially excluded on top of all that –, these women receive remarkably little support. These days, after the fighting is over, programmes are normally put in place to re-integrate demobilised militias and child soldiers. However, there are scarcely any projects for the victims of sexualised war violence, even though these persons need medical attention, psychosocial and social counselling, legal assistance and material support.

The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has only limited funds available for these matters. It supports small measures with amounts of $25,000 to $125,000. In 2004, it spent a total of just $900,000 US dollars on 17 projects in this area. Among other things, UNIFEM paid a legal adviser in the Cambodian Ministry for Women’s and Veterans’ Affairs and supported a measure to investigate the situation of rape victims in Darfur. However, such useful activities do not provide help for the countless women who must cope with traumatic experiences in difficult situations.

Liberia is a telling example of the slight interest donors have in the victims of sexualised war violence. A needs assessment by the UN Development Group and the World Bank, which forms the basis of the international reconstruction aid in 2004 and 2005, lists the restoration of productive capacity among its goals. This is to be achieved by creating social safety nets for groups with specific vulnerabilities, among other things. But the document does not mention rape victims as a target group, and, accordingly, does not earmark any specific funds.

The German organisation medica mondiale, which has taken on the task of concrete help for the survivors, knows how difficult it is to stir up interest and raise money. At least, the German Development Ministry supported a medica project in Kosovo with approximately ¤ 900,000 from 2002 to 2004. One reason for such contributions being the exception is that the programmes concerned are not simply emergency relief. They require long term involvement. Treating trauma can take years and does not result in any spectacular outcome. In the harsh jargon of aid professionals, these projects are therefore “simply not sexy”.

Along with medica mondiale, the International Rescue Committee, World Vision and amnesty international are also explicitly and actively committed to the survivors of war-related sexualised violence. amnesty has been running a special campaign to stop violence against women in armed conflicts since 2004. Otherwise, the topic hardly gets any attention anymore in the international debate on women’s human rights.

It is true that rape in armed conflict was branded as abominable crime in the Platform for Action of the 4th World Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1994. There was no lack of appeals to sentence the perpetrators. Nonetheless, the topic was not a priority at any of the numerous international conferences that followed. Even at the UN Conference on Women’s Rights in New York in March, the issue was not paid any special attention, despite the fact it quite obviously fits in with the United Nations’ current notion of security, which explicitly includes the individual need for safety.

The German side could and should revive this discussion. Governmental actors should contribute to this goal – potentially driven by relevant activist organisations. The Women’s Security Council, a network of prominent scholars from German peace and gender studies, could also play a valuable role in mobilising resources for, and drawing attention to, the victims of sexualised violence in war.


Eva-Maria Bruchhaus
has been working as a development consultant since 1979. She belongs to the pool of experts of medica mondiale.
nc-bruchhev@netcologne.de



References:
medica mondiale (ed.), 2004: Sexualisierte Kriegsgewalt und ihre Folgen. Handbuch zur Unterstützung traumatisierter Frauen in verschiedenen Arbeitsfeldern. Frankfurt/Main: Mabuse (Sexualised violence in war and its consequences. Handbook on the support of traumatised women in different fields of work – English edition is planned)


Links:
medica mondiale:
http://www.medicamondiale.org/
amnesty international:
http://web.amnesty.org/actforwomen