Sheila Sisulu
8 March 2007
column
Nairobi — Annie's life in the Democratic Republic of Congo was perfect.
She is a university graduate and her husband was a gold and diamond trader. They lived with their children in a four-bedroom house in Bukavu, eastern Congo.
One day her husband was forced to flee for his life and the five Government soldiers who came looking for him gang-raped her. Before they left they threatened to return and kill her.
With her life shattered she took her children and fled. As she was fleeing rebels ambushed Anne and sexually violated her with bottles.
Anne finally made it to a refugee camp, where she has been living in a mud house and sleeping on the ground with her nine children for the past year.
Annie's story is all too familiar. The faces may change, the details vary and the language may be different, but there is always one constant, violence against women and girls.
Gender violence can be found in every country but is most prevalent in developing countries. Its perpetrators do not consider age.
Women and girls are intentionally targeted for violent acts, especially during war, because they are seen as mothers of future generations. Violence against women in conflict situations assumes many forms.
40 per cent of women were raped
Rape is often only one of the ways in which women are targeted. But while other abuses, such as murder and other forms of torture have long been denounced as war crimes, rape has been down played as an unfortunate but inevitable side effect of men to war.
During Liberia's 14-year civil war, 40 per cent of the female population were raped. Nearly half of Liberian women are living with permanent physical and psychological injuries. Many are now supporting themselves by the only means they have, transactional sex, which exposes them to more violence.
Systematic rape, torture or sexual enslavement has been used to suppress, terrify and de-stabilise communities all over the world, from Haiti to DRC to Myanmar.
During Sierra Leone's long and bloody civil war, thousands of women and girls as young as seven were kidnapped into sexual slavery. Others were forced to become soldiers, to kill and commit atrocious crimes.
Mass rape of women also took place during the Rwanda Genocide and in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Sadly, violence against women and girls is not confined to war only.
For many girls, it begins at birth, with female infanticide. Globally 6,000 girls undergo female genital mutilation daily, a cultural practice found in many parts of the world, particularly in Africa.
This experience often heralds a longer line of abuses and violations. At least one in three women suffer physical or sexual abuse, forced marriage, kidnapping and trafficking, forced prostitution, domestic violence, legal discrimination and exploitation as widows at some point in their lives. If they are pregnant, the risk of severe, sustained and repeated attacks is greater still.
Appalling and primitive abuses continue
How is it that seven years after the new millennium, when mankind has reached such dizzying summits in science, technology and rational thinking, such appalling and primitive abuses continue, with no end in sight?
Ending gender violence will also mean ending impunity for those who commit it. Yet, in many places, rapists and abusers roam free.
Cultural norms, politics, economics, religion, conflicts must all be examined and the understanding used to convey that unacceptability of violence against women and girls.
But most of all, factors that contribute to gender violence, poverty, ignorance, hunger, need to be rooted out and eradicated.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is working to this end. Its long-standing practice of putting food aid directly into the hands of women not only empowers them, but also helps ensure that nourishment gets to those who need it most.
WFP also provides food to accompany training and education for women and girls. With such skills women are also less likely to resort to transactional sex. With the support of the international community, governments can be held accountable for their policies and practices designed to protect women, and efforts of local women's organisations, police or security forces can be co-ordinated.
Sheila Sisulu is WFP's Deputy Executive Director
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 The East African Standard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
