[Mitai-announce] Rape a way of life for Darfur's women

[Kayvan]

you can help by donating $$$ to (and telling your friends/co-workers) 
about http://www.dpado.org/projects.php?project=womencenters
--
Rape a way of life for Darfur's women

 From CNN Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson
(http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/06/19/darfur.rape/index.html)

ZAM ZAM DISPLACEMENT CAMP, Sudan (CNN)  -- Sudan's Darfur crisis has 
exploded on many fronts -- violence, hunger, displacement and looting -- 
but United Nations peacekeepers say the biggest issue now affecting the 
region is the systematic rape of women and children.

  Thousands of women -- as young as four -- caught in the middle of the 
struggle between rebel forces and government-backed militias have become 
victims of rape, they say, with some aid groups claiming it is being 
used as a weapon of ethnic cleansing.

"That is one of the biggest issues in Darfur -- the rapes, and crimes 
against women and children," says Michael Fryer, UNAMID's police 
commissioner, the United Nations peacekeeping force deployed to try to 
tackle the violence.

Relief workers say they are powerless to stop the attacks and they say 
if they do speak out they fear the Sudanese government will tell them to 
leave the country.

Humanitarian group Refugees International in a report last year said 
rape was "an integral part of the pattern of violence that the 
government of Sudan is inflicting upon the targeted ethnic groups in 
Darfur."

Some relief workers say almost 100 percent of women living in aid camps 
have been raped or become victims of gender-based violence, with many 
teenagers forced by militiamen to have sex multiple times while running 
regular errands such as collecting firewood. Video Watch women face 
dangers in Darfur »

They say the situation has now become so bad, many women are now 
resigned to rape attacks as a way of life and men are unwilling to 
accompany them because they fear they will be killed if they try to 
defend them.

But despite the extent of the abuse, the Sudanese government insists 
there is no problem, adding to the difficulties faced by the victims who 
are often ostracized by their communities or fall foul of a legal system 
seen as favoring their attackers.

"There is no rape in Darfur," says Mohammad Hassan Awad, a Humanitarian 
Aid Commissioner for West Darfur, who accuses foreign aid workers of 
persuading people in refugee camps to make false claims.

While few aid workers dispute the extent of the attacks against women, 
they say survivors are unwilling to come forward -- but those that do 
reveal shocking levels of abuse.

  "She said they removed their scarves and used it to tie them up and 
were taking turns to rape them -- one is 13 years old the other one is 
16 years," says Ajayi Funmi of the UNAMID police, who is trying to 
educate women told CNN after talking to two girls.

Making matters worse, aid workers say scores of babies conceived through 
rape are being dumped by their mothers.

"Abandoned babies are reported but because of the stigma attached to it 
there is no detailed report because the women don't come forward," says 
Dr Naqib Safi of the U.N. children's body UNICEF.

As many as 20 babies a month are being dumped in one camp of 22,000 people.

With both U.N. officials calling for more female officers to better 
educate women against rape and women saying they won't feel safe until 
the under-equipped and undermanned United Nations force is strong enough 
to protect them, the situation shows little sign of improving.