June 30, 2006
http://www.awid.org

 

SUDAN - RAPE IN DARFUR

By Kathambi Kinoti

The crisis in Darfur continues to take its toll on people's lives despite
the intervention of the African Union's peacekeeping force. The United
Nations has been keen to send  peacekeepers to this volatile region of
Sudan, but the Sudanese government has been reluctant to let a UN force in,
claiming that this would be akin to allowing a recolonization of the first
African country south of the Sahara to gain independence. [1] Sudan's
president Omar al-Bashir recently indicated that he would lead a resistance
against any foreign force coming into Darfur. [2] His government has,
however, not opposed the presence of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping
force in the region, a force that has encountered severe limitations in
keeping the peace due to financial and logistical shortcomings.

There have been numerous reports of the rape of women and girls in Darfur
and in Chad, Sudan's neighbour to the west, a country to which many of the
more than two million displaced Darfurians have fled to escape the war in
their region. Within camps set up for internally displaced persons (IDPs)
women have some measure of security. However, they are often attacked and
raped when, as they must, they leave the IDP camps to collect firewood for
sale or for use in cooking. According to some studies, every Darfurian
woman has been raped or personally knows other women who have been raped.
[3] The rape is said to be perpetrated by the Sudanese security forces as
well as the Janjaweed militia. The latter group is often claimed to be
armed and otherwise supported by the Sudanese government which on its part
denies any link with the Janjaweed. The security forces in Chad have also
been implicated in the rape of women. Regardless of who is perpetrating
rape, countless women have been subjected to sexual violence during the
Darfur conflict which began in 2003. One of the keywords of the Darfur
conflict is undoubtedly rape.

Genocide, ethnic cleansing or 'simple' conflict?

The United States Congress and administration has referred to the Darfur
situation as genocide. However, no other state has classified it as such,
and a recent UN mission has found no evidence of genocide. Some media
quarters have referred to the conflict as an ethnic cleansing while other
people see it as a conflict over resources.

The classification of the kind of conflict taking place in Darfur has some
implications on the kind of intervention the world community could make,
and presumably the extent to which failure to intervene would weigh on its
conscience. Genocide, which is the annihilation of a distinct ethnic or
racial group, is seemingly regarded as being more serious than the
elimination of people due to conflicts over resources. The international
community has often castigated itself over its failure to intervene in a
timely manner in the 1994 Rwanda genocide and has vowed 'never again.' If
the Darfur war were commonly accepted as genocide or ethnic cleansing, the
international community might have been more assertive of its obligation to
intervene as quickly and effectively as practicable.

The legal classification of the Darfur war under international law not only
has implications on how the international community will intervene, but also
on how people found to have violated international law will be treated. This
is because there are legal distinctions between genocide, crimes against
humanity, war crimes and acts of aggression. The UN has forwarded to the
International Criminal Court the names of 51 people accused of committing
war crimes in the Darfur conflict. These crimes include rape and other
forms of torture. Sudan's government has however vowed that it will not
hand over the suspects to the ICC, but has not itself preferred charges
against them.

Whom does rape violate?

Rape cuts across all the distinctions of international law. Moreover, it is
also not only a crime under international law; it is a crime under national
laws, religious tenets and moral sensibilities. When African Darfurian
women are raped in order to produce Arab babies, it can be regarded as a
measure to ensure that all babies born henceforth are of a certain
ethnicity, or as an act calculated to humiliate the community of women
violated. This is how rape as a weapon of war is commonly perceived. The
outrage clearly seems to be against a certain ethnic or racial group
seeking to eliminate the other by altering the genetic makeup of future
generations. The world also seems to be outraged against the humiliation of
an ethnic group by the rape of its women. What is less clear is the extent
of the outrage against the violation of the woman.

The rape of one woman –anywhere in the world- has tremendous immediate and
long term implications on her personhood, not only physically but
emotionally and psychologically. It invariably affects the way she relates
with herself, others and her environment, a way of relating is that is
coloured by the trauma of rape. The sum effect of the sexual violation of
numerous individual Darfurian women is likely to have repercussions on
Darfurian women as a group and on Darfurian society in general. This is all
the more so considering that there are meagre resources for the physical
treatment let alone the psychological counseling of victims. What is the
individual and societal effect of such a large number of psychically
violated women?

Politics is regarded as having a major role in the Darfur conflict; not
only local politics but also international politics. Some quarters say that
the United States is vocal about the Darfur crisis only to divert attention
from the war it is waging in Iraq. [4] The government of Sudan is disputing
the extent of rape reported one non governmental organization. The head of
the Sudan mission of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Holland was recently
arraigned in a Sudanese court, charged with falsifying information in a
report that chronicled the widespread rape of women in the Darfur conflict.
[5] The Sudanese president, casting doubt on the veracity of the MSF report,
is reported as having said that rape is unIslamic. MSF, however is adamant
that rape is widespread and that disclosing the information collected from
victims would violate doctor-patient confidentiality rules.

Whether or it is conflict over resources, genocide, ethnic clashes or
ethnic cleansing that is taking place in Darfur right now, lives are being
lost, devalued and otherwise irrevocably changed. Rape used as a method to
alter the genetic ethnicity of a group with a view to eventually
eliminating it is clearly abhorred. Rape used as a method to humiliate a
certain ethnic group is abhorred. However the appraisal of conflict in the
light of what rape does to the individual woman and the resultant effect on
the society is something that warrants deeper exploration.

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Notes:

1. See Osman, Mohamed 'Sudan's Leader Rules Out UN Peacekeepers in Darfur.'
Global Policy Forum,' June 20, 2006. The Global Policy Forum.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/ issues/sudan/2006/0620albashir.htm
2. Ibid.
3. O'Neill, W and Cassis, V. 'Protecting Two Million Internally Displaced:
The Successes and Shortcomings of the African Union in Darfur,' 2005: The
Brookings Institution- University of Bern.
4. See Flounders, Sarah 'Why are the USA so interested in Darfur?'
"Geostrategie" June 8, 2006.