types

TYPES OF RAPE
Rape During Conflict 'Becoming Genocidal' in Countries with High HIV/AIDS Prevalence

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Philadelphia Inquirer

Posted on Sun, Aug. 08, 2004

In Africa, rape emerges as a form of genocide

By César Chelala

Rape as a weapon of war has existed for as long as war itself.

And now rape is taking a particularly heavy toll on women's lives in conflicts around the world. A high proportion of rape victims end up infected with sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Most of the countries in which rape reigns as an instrument of war are in almost perpetual states of internal strife. These countries lack medicines and basic health-care services, so that becoming HIV-infected is virtually a death sentence. Rape is especially common in poor countries torn by tribal or ethnic conflict, in which the warring factions have a high rate of HIV infection. Under such circumstances, rape is rapidly becoming genocidal.
Rape happens on a wide scale in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Uganda, and in Sudan. In the Congo, where more than 3 million people have been displaced by war, rape victims are counted in the thousands. According to some estimates, about 60 percent of combatants in Congo are HIV-infected. In Uganda, soldiers from the Lord's Resistance Army have stepped up rape and mutilation of women in their struggle to replace a secular government in the country.
Rape was widespread also in Rwanda and in Sierra Leone. According to the Women's Equity in Access to Care and Treatment, 67 percent of rape survivors in Rwanda are HIV-infected. Executive director Anne-Christine d'Adesky recently called rape "an engine of HIV-infection."
But while rape in Rwanda on a massive scale has stopped, and is now much less frequent in Sierra Leone, it continues in Sudan, Uganda and Congo, where human-rights activists say that girls as young as 3 have been raped with knives, sticks and guns. In the Congo, gang rape has become so common that thousands of women suffer from vaginal fistula, which makes them unable to control bodily functions and leads to lifelong debilitating health problems.
Rape as a means of humiliating women, their families, and their communities is frequently conducted in public, in front of husbands and children. It is, in essence, a brutal way to show or maintain dominance.
A recent report by Amnesty International calls attention to the phenomenon in Sudan. The report examines a pattern of systematic and brutal attacks against civilians in the Darfur states of Sudan by a government-sponsored militia known as Janjawid (armed men on horses) and by the government army.
The Sudan confrontation has led to the displacement of at least 1.2 million people, most of them within the country. No member of the Janjawid or of the armed forces has been charged with rape or other human-rights violations, suggesting that this persecution enjoys government acquiescence.
The consequences go far beyond HIV/AIDS. Many rape victims get pregnant, are murdered, or are (in very high numbers) forced to become sex slaves.
For many men, the rape of their wives is a form of humiliation not only for themselves but also for their ethnic, tribal or religious group. This may cause husbands and communities to reject rape victims or even their children. Even when pregnancy does not occur, men in patriarchal societies still may reject their wives, mothers or daughters after they have been raped. Having endured the brutality of the rape itself and its physical and psychological consequences, the women find themselves denied basic human rights. Lepa Mladjenovic, a Serbian psychotherapist and antiwar activist, states that rape renders a woman "homeless in her own body."
Given the scale of abuses against civilians in Sudan, including the rape of children as young as 8 and as old as 80, Amnesty International is calling for an international commission of inquiry. Such a commission should be supported by the United Nations and the leading Western democracies. Rape victims should be provided with antiretroviral drugs and rape counseling. Only with rapid action and widespread political support do we have a chance of diminishing the barbaric impact of rape as a tool of war.
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César Chelala is author of "AIDS: A Modern Epidemic." and an international health-care consultant.