REFUGEE WOMEN VULNERABLE TO SEXUAL ASSAULT
According to the U.N., sexual violence is one of the worst global protection challenges and leaves all refugee women at risk of sexual violence.
It was there, on 45 Street, that her neighbor, a Yemeni man, raped her.
“My son was in the room, crying. That didn’t stop him. I screamed loudly. Someone must have heard me, but no one came.”
Vulnerabilities of refugees to sexual violence
Refugees—those escaping war, persecution, famine or drought—often experience multiple traumatic events, from the death or separation from loved ones to the physical and often treacherous journey from home, the overcrowded and potentially dangerous camps and the marginalization and poverty in their country of first asylum. The impact of these events leaves refugees, particularly women and children, extremely vulnerable to abuse. Refugee women are left without the protection of their home state, and, often, their host state. These states themselves can be responsible for the systemic rape and sexual abuse of women in conflict areas. Rape as a tool of war has been documented during conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo and more.
In addition to being used as a weapon of war, rape and sexual violence has been “exacerbated by unequal gender relations within communities of concern … it has been both a cause of forced displacement and a terrible consequence of community structures that accompanies displacement. It has also been perpetrated by some of the very people who have been entrusted with the task of protecting refugees and displaced persons,” according to the U.N. Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) report on refugees and sexual assault, “Sexual and Gender-Based Violence.”
Life following sexual violence
The man who raped Fatima left for Saudi Arabia following the crime, and though he has since returned, he has not faced criminal prosecution. Fatima filed a complaint with Yemeni police forces, an action she took with some risk. Although she was granted official refugee status by UNHCR, the Yemeni government—a signatory to the U.N.’s 1951 Convention on Refugees—does not recognize her as such. This leaves her vulnerable to arrest, deportation and even abuse from those in positions of power, such as security forces.
Following Fatima’s rape, she immediately went to a state hospital for treatment. The hospital, after having her wait for several hours, asked her to return the next day. She returned and left again, still without receiving treatment.
A couple of months later, Fatima learned she was pregnant with her rapist’s child.
“I tried to get an abortion, but no one would give me one. The doctor said because I’d had a C-section with my first son, it was too dangerous.”
Her youngest son, now nearly two years old, hangs around his mother’s neck, alternating shyly between hiding and peeking.
“If it were just me, I could manage; but how do I take care of my children? The woman letting me stay here has found tenants; we have to be out at the end of the month. The school down the road costs 5,000 riyals. Because we’re Christians, I don’t want to send him to the public school. I’m afraid we’re going to end up back on the streets. Who knows what will happen to me, to my children.”
Protection Challenges
According to the Refugee Council’s Vulnerable Women Project, refugee women are more affected by gendered violence than any other female population in the world. The U.N. regards sexual violence as one of the worst global protection challenges. Its “scale, prevalence and profound impact” leaves all refugee women at risk of rape or other forms of sexual violence.
The Vulnerable Women Project reports that up to half a million women were raped during the Rwandan genocide. In parts of Liberia, 90 percent of women and girls older than three suffered sexual violence, while three out of four women in parts of Eastern Congo have survived sexual violence and abuse. Even in the United States, a liberal western democracy, one in three women will be sexually abused in her lifetime, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The exact number of refugee women who experience rape or other forms of sexual violence is difficult to calculate.
International instruments aimed at ending sexual violence
Ratified by the U.N. in 1979, the Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) calls on countries to “condemn violence against women, to create legal and social protection and not to invoke custom, tradition or religion to avoid taking protective and preventative measures.”
A joint U.N. report, “Combating Gender-Based Violence: A Key to Achieving the MDGS,” outlines key urgent actions, including initiating a special committee to “look into legal instruments to counter gender-based violence” and to “mobilize resources to support the provision of legal assistance … for victims of violence.”
Gender-based violence and women’s rights have only recently been considered human rights issues. Women have historically been, and remain, underrepresented, even in bodies such as the U.N.
“Although the discussion surrounding violence against women has matured significantly, the continued male-dominated status of both international and individual State law effectively prevents the total elimination of violence against women,” according to a report by Jennifer Ulrich in the January 2000 issue of the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies.
“Countries must adopt a discourse that questions the fundamental roots of such violence; those roots, however, extend deep into the international legal scheme and ironically into the instruments that specifically address violence against women,” Ulrich writes.
More Violence
In addition to beatings and starvation, refugee women risk sexual violence during their voyage to Yemen. Most refugees leave from Bossaso, Somalia, or from Djibouti. Smugglers are known to rape women while at sea. Others face sexual violence upon arrival in Yemen and, if they make it, at the camps.
Unhealed Wounds
Katiba, 37, sobs as she recounts being raped in a small Somali village by her employer’s husband. The rapes started at age 15 and continuing for two years. She had left her family to help bring in money and found work cleaning a couple’s home. Nearly everyday, while his wife was out or asleep, the middle-aged man raped Katiba.
In 1988, the Somali National Movement (SNM) invaded Somalia from their base in Ethiopia. Hearing rumors about rape and other atrocities committed by both SNM rebels and government forces, Katiba fled the village and set out for Mogadishu—she received word that her parents, three brothers and two sisters were there.
Twenty-four years later, Katiba does not know where her family is. She’s been told her mother is dead, killed during the war. Her father is thought to be in Mogadishu, according to news she received six years ago. He is missing both his legs; rebel forces cut them off. She wonders if he’s still alive. She has no information regarding her brothers and sisters.
After working various jobs in Yemen, she was hired at the Somali Refuge Community Development Center (SRCDC), where she works with various members of the Somali community, including rape and sexual assault survivors.
While her rape occurred more than two decades ago, Katiba still suffers.
“I’m still uncomfortable around most men. I really hate most men.”
Fearful for her safety, she moves every four to five months with her roommate and best friend, an HIV-positive Somali woman she refers to as “my only family.”
Women and children at SRCDC are also important to Katiba.
“Women who’ve been raped, children without parents, refugees without family, I feel for them so much,” she says. “We must find ways to heal and grow together, we can’t do it on our own.”
Source: http://www.yementimes.com/en/1591/culture/1169/Refugee-women-vulnerable-to-sexual-assault.htm
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