infinite hope

…The inclusion of gender-based evidence in sentencing Lubanga is crucial for many reasons.

First, the admission of such evidence raises the awareness of the prevalence of sexualized violence in conflict zones. Sexualized violence committed in conflict has notoriously been overlooked throughout history, particularly in the realm of international justice. The judicial legacy of the war crimes trials at Nuremberg was virtually silent on gender-based crimes. It took more than 50 years of digging up historical accounts to lift the veil of silence to reveal the sexualized violence committed against Jewish women during the Holocaust. Similarly, at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the first indictment before the court in the case against Jean-Paul Akayesu—a Rwandan mayor who did nothing to prevent the rape and murder of his citizens and even orchestrated particular killings—did not include any charges of sexualized violence despite the fact that evidence and witness testimony revealed systematic rape of women during the genocide. Judge Navanetham Pillay, the only female on the three-judge panel, pointed out the omission and urged the chamber to add charges of sexualized violence to the indictment. Because of her efforts, the case went down in international legal history as the first one to prosecute and convict for rape as an act of genocide.  

Second, the admission of gender-based evidence protects against future invisibility of girl child soldiers under the law. These “soldiers” experience a unique set of gender-based crimesthat often are not encompassed within the ordinary definition of conscription of child soldiers under the Rome Statute of the ICC. Judge Odio Benito, in her separate and dissenting opinion, recognized that by not including sexualized violence and gender-based crimes within the legal concept of conscripting minors for “use to participate actively in the hostilities,” the courthad discriminated against girl child soldiers.

“Invisibility of sexual violence in the legal concept leads to discrimination against the victims of enlistment, conscription, and use who systematically suffer from this crime as an intrinsic part of the armed group,” Benito said.

Finally, admission of gender-based evidence ensures a proper reparations scheme for victims that, according to the Rome Statute, may include restitution, compensation, and rehabilitation, among other things. Reparations for child soldiers must include a gender perspective in order to better address the disparate effects of crimes committed against boy and girl soldiers. The Women’s Initiative for Gender Justice pointed out in their observations on reparations that even in the case of similar crimes committed against boy and girl child soldiers, the resulting trauma may include different dimensions for girls.

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“Three armed men in government uniform came into the camp. The strongest one shone a powerful torch in my eyes, he strangled me and then raped me in front of my crying kids,” she said.

Mohamed, a widow, said she waited for sunrise before making her way to a nearby clinic only to be told there were no doctors.

“Later the camp leaders brought me some painkillers. Now I’m OK but I do not know what diseases I caught from the rape. I have nowhere to go for a check-up,” Mohamed said. “We live in these makeshift shelters. We have no aid agency or government to protect us at night. We are at God’s mercy.”

Isak also said rape was common in her camp.

“They rape even mothers at gunpoint at night — and we are threatened to death should we disclose it,” she said. “The makeshift shelters have no lockable doors, so these men just come in at night and lie on you.”

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…The vicious war that claimed the lives of more than 5 million people in Congo’s eastern flank might be officially over but the violence continues, particularly when it comes to women. During the worst years of the conflict, armed groups used sexual violence as a weapon but now rape perpetrated by civilians accounts for a large percentage of cases. Doctors and NGOs fear it has almost settled into something approaching a norm in a society ravaged by war.

A study published last year in the American Journal of Public Health concluded that 1,152 women are raped every day in Congo, a rate equal to 48 per hour. That rate is 26 times more than the previous estimate of 16,000 rapes reported in one year by the UN.

The highest frequency of rape was found in North Kivu, Fazili’s home province and the area most affected by the conflict, where 67 women per 1,000 had been raped at least once.

“The message is important and clear: rape in (Congo) has metastasised amid a climate of impunity, and has emerged as one of the great human crises of our time,” said Michael VanRooyen, director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

There are no precise figures relating to the number of children born from these rapes, but they are thought to number in the thousands. Abortion is illegal in Congo, so the women have little choice but to carry the pregnancy to full term.

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ciiaobella:

Dying of shame: a Congolese rape victim, currently resident in Uganda. This man’s wife has left him, as she was unable to accept what happened. He attempted suicide at the end of last year. Photograph: Will Storr for the Observer

“Of all the secrets of war, there is one that is so well kept that it exists mostly as a rumour. It is usually denied by the perpetrator and his victim. Governments, aid agencies and human rights defenders at the UN barely acknowledge its possibility. Yet every now and then someone gathers the courage to tell of it. This is just what happened on an ordinary afternoon in the office of a kind and careful counsellor in Kampala, Uganda. For four years Eunice Owiny had been employed by Makerere University’s Refugee Law Project (RLP) to help displaced people from all over Africa work through their traumas. This particular case, though, was a puzzle. A female client was having marital difficulties. “My husband can’t have sex,” she complained. “He feels very bad about this. I’m sure there’s something he’s keeping from me.”

Owiny invited the husband in. For a while they got nowhere. Then Owiny asked the wife to leave. The man then murmured cryptically: “It happened to me.” Owiny frowned. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an old sanitary pad. “Mama Eunice,” he said. “I am in pain. I have to use this.”

Laying the pus-covered pad on the desk in front of him, he gave up his secret. During his escape from the civil war in neighbouring Congo, he had been separated from his wife and taken by rebels. His captors raped him, three times a day, every day for three years. And he wasn’t the only one. He watched as man after man was taken and raped. The wounds of one were so grievous that he died in the cell in front of him.

“That was hard for me to take,” Owiny tells me today. “There are certain things you just don’t believe can happen to a man, you get me? But I know now that sexual violence against men is a huge problem. Everybody has heard the women’s stories. But nobody has heard the men’s.” Read more…

(Source: ellobofilipino)

It took a video going “viral” of a Libyan woman being dragged from a Tripoli hotel — shouting that she’d been raped for two days by 15 men — to put a face and name to a weapon of war that dates back at least to the founding of ancient Rome.

Defying social norms that can turn rape victims into outcasts, Iman al-Obeidi went public with her story. Her allegations of torture at the hands of soldiers loyal to Muammar Qaddafi spread fast via Facebook and Twitter.

“Iman is publicly hailed as a hero in Benghazi, and there are discussions about changing attitudes,” Arafat Jamal, the United Nations refugee agency’s co-coordinator for Libya, said in an interview from Benghazi.

The worldwide attention given to Obeidi’s plight helped secure the 29-year-old law graduate safe passage to Romania and shine a spotlight on a horror that dates back to the earliest armies and continues in war zones such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

…The one-year-old United Nations women’s agency, UN Women, unveils today its first report drawing attention to sexual violence against women as the International Criminal Court investigates allegations of mass rapes in Libya.

“Very significant advances in international law in the past two decades have, for the first time, made it possible to redress sexual violence crimes,” according to 165-page report by the agency led by former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. “However, prosecutions are rare.”

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The Hague, Netherlands (CNN) — Security forces in Libya are allegedly using sexual enhancement drugs as a “machete” and gang-raping women they stop at checkpoints, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has said.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo told CNN Monday that the court in The Hague will investigate allegations of institutionalized rape in the war-torn country.

“There are rapes. The issue is who organized them,” Luis Moreno-Ocampo told CNN’s Nic Robertson. “They were committed in some police barracks. Were the policemen prosecuted? What happened?” he asked.

Moreno-Ocampo said the criminal court has information about women who were stopped at checkpoints and, because they were carrying the flag of the rebels, were taken by police and gang raped.

He also said there were reports of the use of male sexual enhancement drugs, which he called a “tool of massive rape.”

“There’s some information with Viagra. So, it’s like a machete,” he said. “It’s new. Viagra is a tool of massive rape.

“So we are investigating. We are not ready to present the case yet, but I hope in the coming month, we’ll add charges or review the charges for rapes.”

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BARAKA, Congo – One by one, the rape survivors relived their attacks for a panel of judges: A newly married bride flung her torn, bloodied clothing onto the courtroom floor. A mother of six dropped to her knees, raised her arms to heaven and cried out for peace.

Nearly 50 women poured out their stories in a wave of anguish that ended Monday with the conviction of an army colonel for crimes against humanity — a landmark verdict in this Central African country where thousands are believed to be raped each year by soldiers and militia groups who often go unpunished.

It was the first time a commanding officer had been tried in such an attack.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Lt. Col. Mutuare Daniel Kibibi, who was accused of ordering his troops on New Year’s Day to attack the village of Fizi, a sprawling community 20 miles (35 kilometers) south of Baraka on an escarpment of mountains covered in banana trees.

Military prosecutor Col. Laurent Mutata Luaba said the men “behaved like wild beasts,” terrorizing defenseless civilians they had orders to protect.

Doctors later treated 62 women for rape. One woman testified that Kibibi himself raped her for 40 minutes.

Kibibi and the 10 of his men who stood trial with him were the only ones identified after the rampage.

As the defendants were being led away in handcuffs, hundreds of people jeered at them, booed and shook their fists. Some shouted, “Kibibi! You thought you could get away with this! Now you are going to jail!” and “You must pay for your crimes!”

Kibibi, 46, who is married with eight children, was convicted of four counts of crimes against humanity but will serve no more than 20 years in prison.

Kibibi denies all the charges and says the testimony by his bodyguards was part of a plot to denigrate him. Defense attorney Alfred Maisha described his client as a “valiant hero” who had served in the army since 1984 and had risked his life many times in the defense of the country.

Maisha said many of the troops under Kibibi’s command were poorly trained and included former members of rebel and militia groups.

Witnesses said the soldiers descended in a fury upon the village, where residents had stoned a soldier to death who had been involved in an altercation with a local shop owner.

The soldiers smashed down doors and went house-to-house, pillaging, beating and raping for an entire night, from 7 p.m. until 6 a.m. the next day, witnesses said.

Three of Kibibi’s officers received the same sentences, and five others got lesser sentences. One man was acquitted and another will be tried in juvenile court.

But even as the men were sent away, women feared that some attackers had escaped justice.

“Most of the rapists are still right here in our village,” one woman said as she nursed her baby. “If we go to the river for water, we get raped. If we go to the fields for food, we get raped. If we go to the market to sell our goods, we get raped.

“Our lives are filled with danger,” she said. “There is no peace.”

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JOHANNESBURG – An aid worker says rebels in eastern Congo gang-raped nearly 200 women over four days within miles of a U.N. peacekeepers’ base.

Will F. Cragin of the International Medical Corps says aid workers knew rebels had occupied Luvungi town the day after the attack began on July 30.

More than three weeks later the U.N. mission says it still is investigating.

Cragin told The Associated Press Monday by telephone that his organization was only able to go into the town that is 10 miles (16 kilometers) from a U.N. military camp after rebels withdrew voluntarily on Aug. 4.

He said international and local health workers have treated 179 women but that the number raped could be much higher. Cragin said his aid group has been going back to the town and identifying more cases.

It’s an impossible choice — feed your family, or run the risk of a brutal sexual attack. It has happened to hundreds of thousands of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since civil war broke out ten years ago. The assaults show no sign of abating, even though a simple solution could reduce the risk.