GJC In The News
Victims of Sexual Violence in Darfur Face Stigma, Unresponsive Justice System
PBS, In-Depth Coverage: The Darfur Crisis
By Talea Miller, Online NewsHour
15 June 2007
Reports of women raped during militia raids or while seeking supplies are widespread in the Darfur conflict, yet Sudan's government has denied it occurs and prosecuting the crime has remained virtually impossible in the Muslim country.
"It is not in the Sudanese culture or people of Darfur to rape. It doesn't exist. We don't have it," Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said in an interview with NBC in March.
However, the U.N. Human Rights Council on June 11 released recommendations on how the government should respond to the problem, including publishing a national action plan, reforming the legal system, and warning armed forces and militias under government control that any form of sexual violence is prohibited.
While the Sudanese government agreed to all but a few of the recommendations, the real indicator of change will be if they are implemented over the coming months.
Rape in conflict
Rape has been employed as a weapon of war by all sides in Darfur, but the Janjaweed militia, an Islamic army allegedly supported by the Sudanese government, has reportedly conducted the most widespread and systematic attacks.
Aid workers in the region say they have witnessed both attacks and the fallout from how sexual violence is permeating communities.
Former head of the Doctors Without Borders mission in southern Darfur Vanessa Van Schoor said one victim, who was impregnated through rape, starved herself to death rather than face the shame of people knowing what happened to her. Some women in the conflict do take care of their children born of rape, but these children will be a test of how communities will deal with the legacy of the crimes, she said.
Rape is committed with a sense of impunity in this conflict and victims find little recourse, regional observers say.
Sudan requires four male witnesses be willing to testify in order to prosecute any sexual assault. Married women who come forward also put themselves at risk of being found guilty of adultery, said Madeleine Rees, head of the Women's Rights and Gender Unit for the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights.
Victims need to live in a secure environment and feel protected if anything is to change, according to Rees.
"A woman who is a survivor of rape who has been stuck in an [internally displaced persons] camp for years and is constantly subjected to attack ... the chances of her coming forward to testify under these circumstances are slim," said Rees.
Due to the social repercussions and fear of reprisals, even the process of documenting the extent of rape has proved extraordinarily difficult. U.N. workers say they reported 2,500 rapes in Darfur in 2006, but aid groups treating rape victims fear they are seeing only a small fraction of the violations.
Other reports by aid organizations have been focused on more contained areas. The International Rescue Committee reported last year that 200 women were sexually assaulted over five weeks near Darfur's largest displacement camp, Kalma.
Because of the stigma attached to rape, victims are often not willing to come forward even for medical care.
"No culture changes quickly," said Lynn Fredriksson, Africa advocacy director for Amnesty International. "In this particular culture men may feel that women who are sexually violated are no longer clean or fit for marriage."
While women are hesitant to disclose rapes, one of the signs of distress in these Muslim communities is that the men are so willing to talk about the crime.
It was one of the first things men would say when speaking one on one with researchers, according to Jennifer Leaning, a public health expert and Harvard University professor who researched the effects of sexual violence in Darfur in 2004.
"They would say 'Early in the morning the Janjaweed came over the hills and began attacking our homes and raping our women,'" Leaning said. "They didn't linger, they didn't intervene. The story had already spread throughout Darfur that the men would be killed. The time that they took to leave was covered by the raping of the women."
Obstacles for aid organizations
The work of aid groups trying to address the problem of sexual violence has been complicated by government restrictions and impeded by continued violence in the western region of Sudan.
Two officials from Doctors Without Borders working in Sudan were detained briefly in 2005 after the release of a report on sexual violence, based on more than 500 rape cases the organization saw over five months in south and west Darfur.
The Sudanese authorities accused the organization of crimes against the state, publishing false reports, spying and undermining Sudanese society. The consequence of the report was that it "jeopardized the whole program," said Van Schoor.
Some humanitarian groups that speak out about issues such as rape have been denied entry to Sudan. Amnesty International has not been allowed in since 2005, and now works outside the country at internally displaced camps and refugee camps in Chad.
The Sudanese government signed an agreement with the U.N. in March pledging to ease restrictions on aid workers in Darfur and to accelerate the issuing of visas and travel permits.
But U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte reported problems persist after a visit to Sudan in mid-April.
"The denial of visas, the harassment of aid workers and other measures, have created the impression that the government of Sudan is engaged in a deliberate campaign of intimidation," Negroponte said.
Gamal Malik, a spokesperson for the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, D.C., said the government is following through on the deal and rebuffed the criticism.
"We made an agreement with the U.N. in regards to the aid workers so we don't comment on any statements," Malik said.
Fewer and fewer groups are working in the region because of security problems as well. The aid organizations that do remain walk a fine line between political groups and militia factions in order to keep operating and providing aid.
"There are probably about 20 different groups now, there are no clear frontlines anymore," said Van Schoor. "You can negotiate access into a certain areas and if it switches sides what you negotiated no longer holds."
The sexual violence also has heightened tensions between ethnic groups, Amnesty International researcher Arnaud Royer said. At the beginning of May, while Royer was visiting an IDP camp in Chad, a women was attacked at the outskirts of the camp. The perpetrators were Arab, but were not from the area.
"The administration was not there, no one was there to explain to the population what happened," Royer said. "The blame was put on an Arab community near the camp."
Prosecuting on an international level
While the situation continues to deteriorate and has threatened to spread across borders, some promising advances are showing up in the international court. The International Criminal Court issued warrants in May for two men accused of war crimes, including rape.
The recognition of rape as one of the crimes is significant, said Janet Benshoof, president of the Global Justice Center in New York. She said prosecuting war crimes under international law has produced the most advances for women over the past 20 years.
"It opens a space to make enforceable law for women, that trickles down to domestic policy," said Benshoof.
Rees warned that although the message that rape is not being ignored is an important step, expectations for what it means for Darfur victims should be realistic.
"The justice is going to seem a little more remote and there has to be an understanding that that is how the system is going to work," Rees said. "It's not going to be able to prosecute thousands of men for rape."
But "the fact that we are now addressing [rape] as a war crime is actually huge progress," she said.