[ Womens' health ]
Destroying the social order
Sexualised violence perpetrated by soldiers and militiamen in wartime does more than harm the physical and mental health of women. It also has an impact on the honour and self-image of the male relatives who should protect them. Strategically used rape serves to destroy community cohesion. For good reason, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution in June to criminalise sexualised violence in wartime more strictly.
[ By Rita Schäfer ]
The collapse of the medical infrastructure is disastrous for women and girls, and particularly so for those who have become victims of rape. Many struggle with lasting consequences – both physical and psychological – for the rest of their lives. An example are vaginal fistulas which leave women incontinent (see article on page 332). If those suffering from fistulas are not surgically treated, they tend to be considered unclean. Many are cast out by their families.
Sexual violence, of course, also spreads HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted (STDs) diseases. Many rape victims, however, do not undergo HIV testing for fear of being disowned. Such problems exist – in different forms – in Christian, Muslim and other communities.
In wartime, all statistics are mere estimates. In general, the same can be said of statistics on rape and STDs. Horrifying though the official figures may be – the number of unreported cases is much higher.
Despite their suffering, the women concerned receive little help. At best, assistance is provided by local NGOs, sometimes with the support of international organisations. For the situation to improve, political and religious authorities must play a leading role. Not least, the armies and warlords concerned must be held accountable.
Strategic rape
In war, rape is a deliberate strategy, designed to humiliate and terrorise people. Rape is common when countries are occupied and populations displaced. Such acts of violence are frequently linked to nationalistic, ethnic or genocidal ideology. The driving force is revenge, retaliation and punishment of the “enemy”. High-ranking military officers and politicians continue to trivialise this type of sexualised violence, stating that “boys will be boys”. The truth is that many military commanders and warlords are responsible for such crimes – for instance, by providing their troops with sex slaves as a reward for their bravery. After mass rapes of women and girls, perpetrators can share a feeling of omnipotence, and leaders may want exactly that to happen as way of boosting cohesion in the troops, while traumatising the enemy at the same time.
Countless rape victims keep silent about what they have suffered in order to protect their own honour, and that of their male relatives. This is so in Muslim and other societies. It is particularly common in cultures where bride prices are customary, so that men, to some extent, “own” their wives and exercise great control over them. Rape does not only challenge the husband’s or father’s dominant role, but also the concerned men’s view of themselves. After all, they are expected to protect their wives, daughters and other female relatives from danger and violence. Some fathers disown daughters, simply because they cannot bear the daily confrontation with their failure to keep them safe. Moreover, there is no chance that a raped teenage mother will ever find a husband, so she and her offspring become an additional burden . Disastrous consequences of such acts of violence are evident in Sudan, for instance (see article below).
A lifetime of stigma
The suffering of the victims does not end once short-term, physical effects are healed. Life is particularly hard for women who become pregnant. Children born of rape are still considered “children of the enemy”, prompting some women to try to abort their child, putting their own life and the health of their baby at risk. Many babies are born disabled as a result of failed abortions.
The situation is terrible for the children and their mothers. Typically, they are considered bringers of bad luck and disease. Moreover, many husbands fear that sexual contact with their violated and pregnant wives can infect them with terrible, even fatal illnesses.
Whether rape victims and their children are accepted into a community tends to depend on the stand religious leaders take. For instance, in the Democratic Republic of Congo representatives of Pentecostal churches carry out dubious rituals in order to cleanse their community “of evil”. Unlike traditional healers who occasionally resort to extravagant rituals in an effort to restore the dignity of the rape victims and their children, representatives of various churches have been known to declare the victims sinners, thus legitimising their social exclusion. Many of the children born of rape are denounced as witches.
In Sierra Leone leaders of traditional, religious-motivated women’s organisations point to rape when legitimising traditional female genital mutilation, claiming to restore the social order. Some even get financial support from the government.
Exploitation, not protection
Aid agency staff in refugee camps throughout Africa are regularly found to exploit the predicament of young women instead of following the international guidelines for their protection. In a metaphorical sense, the women concerned are then perceived by the local people to be “married” to the aid agencies. Their situation is precarious. They are powerless in the face of domestic violence and the sexual advances of camp staff.
Husbands as well as unmarried men in refugee camps in northern Uganda see their masculinity challenged in such situations. Unlike economically potent aid workers and security staff working in the camps, young male refugees have no way of establishing a family by legal means. Therefore, many use violence to assert their virility.
After years of being reduced to helpless aid recipients, many husbands are demoralised. Some react with physical and sexualised violence to the reality that aid agency workers take advantage of their position of power. Thus the health and safety of women and children often depend on the outcome of male power struggles.
This problem, of course, does not exist only in Ugandan refugee camps. After a crisis, it is essential to take into account how complexly fragmented the sense of masculinity often is. After all, many men in the camps were previously involved in acts of war as combatants, while others became victims. Some know both from their own experience.
Peacekeepers or beachkeepers?
Male hierarchies may provoke local conflicts with UN peacekeeping forces. For some years now, “blue helmets” who abuse women and girls have been held accountable for their actions. Nonetheless, incidents still occur. Comprehensive gender guidelines and gender training have changed little.
Many UN soldiers are struggling to cope with their deployment. Poorly trained and poorly equipped as they are, they are said to be in the service only for the money. Many feel a need to redefine their self-image, which impacts on how they behave towards the local people.
In the 1990s, blue-helmet soldiers in Sierra Leone were disparagingly referred to as “beachkeepers”. Most were to be found in the beach bars of Freetown, socialising with young girls and offering them a little money or food in return for sex. Unsurprisingly, they conceived numerous children. In view of the economic and political power struggles in West Africa at the time, the local men viewed these blatant shows of virility by the UN soldiers, especially those from Nigeria, as an insult. Many responded by treating young women with hostility.
Conflict also resulted from sexual relationships between young girls and blue helmets from Pakistan. The South Asians’ attitude was often one of racist dominance. Sierra Leonean men, many of whom had fought in the civil war, reacted with violence towards the girls.
More than absence of war
It is important to change cultural and religious attitudes in certain post-war societies. Many practices which the governments of affected nations tolerate or even encourage flagrantly contradict the international agreements as well as basic human rights declarations, endorsed by the very same governments. Such mixed messages contribute to the continued occurance of sexualised violence, war crimes and their negative repercussions in the long run. Unless attention is paid to these matters, the very means supposed to “heal” and “establish order” after a war can prolong tensions and trigger new ones along already established fault lines.
Rape victims and their children are regularly deprived of the basic rights of land and home. Both, obviously, are essential for survival. Left to fend for themselves, many marginalised women are forced to “exchange” sexual services for food. They have no bargaining power. They have to keep putting themselves into situations of dependence, humiliation and new risks – such as contracting HIV, for instance. Worst affected are stigmatised teenage mothers, divorced women and young widows with small children.
Medical services, legal reforms and improvements to the economic situation of women are vitally important in post-war societies. Such progress, however, will not be sustainable unless the men get support too. They need special programmes where they learn that violence is not the epitome of manhood. At the same time, men must get opportunities to come to terms with their own traumas. Comprehensive programmes are needed to address the propensity for violence of demobilised militiamen – often an entire generation of young men.
It is not enough to release ex-combatants with a cheque or a toolbox into what is usually a fragile peace. Aggressive and violent sexual attitudes among men are a threat to everyone. They are a strain on the health system, make family planning impossible and intensify social conflict. It is vitally important that these structural problems are resolved, because they will decide the future of entire societies.
Rita Schäfer
is a social anthropologist and a freelance author and consultant.
»» Marx.Schaefer@t-online.de
Sudanese examples of sexualised war crimes
In decades of civil war, systematic rape primarily taught government opponents one thing in southern Sudan: their powerlessness to protect their female family-members. Northern Sudanese troops abducted and impregnated countless women from southern Sudan. They resorted to this tactic with the aim of destroying social cohesion in the region. The patrilineal succession was systematically broken down, as children borne by the abducted women were not fathered by their own menfolk.Subsequently in the 1990s the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA) called upon the men of the Dinka people to make their women bear more children. Thereupon many men ignored the tradition of sexual abstinence during the period of breast-feeding. This practice, combined with an almost complete lack of medical care, caused a dramatic increase in infant and mother mortality rates.
Local knowledge of contraception and midwifery – customarily the prerogative of older women – was lost in the years of turmoil. A few hurriedly-trained, young midwives were of little real help. Women who gave birth had little or no faith in these inexperienced, yet dictatorial birth attendants.
At the same time, domestic violence was on the increase. Many SPLA combatants followed the military’s role model; and violence became an epitome of manliness. Low-ranking combatants would suspect their wives of entering into relationships with higher-ranked military officers – if only to obtain goods needed for survival. Even after northern and southern Sudan reached a peace agreement in early 2005, gender-specific violence continued to be a problem; and it is not limited to the wives of former combatants.
Often judicial authorities fail to help in crisis regions. If there are any legal proceedings at all, local judges usually decide in favour of the accused, not the victims. In Darfur, for example, the courts play a significant role in further entrenching the existing gender order by sexually violent means. On behalf of the central government, the judiciary interprets Islamic law, and extremely arbitrarily so. Unless four male witnesses can “prove” the innocence of a woman who became pregnant as a result of rape, the woman will be punished for adultery. Lashings and imprisonment are typical sentences. Women who have been raped by government soldiers and regime-loyal militias are thus punished once more. The victims receive no medical care at all.
It seems reasonable to compare their plight with that of female slaves. Traditional women singers – so-called Hakamas – sometimes accompany raiders in Darfur and encourage their atrocities. They pay homage to the brave combatants, cheer on the rapists and participate in looting the household goods of the victims.
Before being killed, male relatives are often forced to witness the rapes. The assailants abuse the women so badly that they are no longer capable of performing their familial duties. Witnesses also report that the victims’ legs are sometimes broken or they are tortured so severely that they have no chance of reaching one of the few health posts. (rs)
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D+C, 2008/09, Focus, Page 326-329
