While the conflicts that cause women to flee often make news headlines, the plight of women who become refugees and displaced persons frequently remains unpublicized.1 In many cases, refugee and displaced women flee conflict after being terrorized with rape and other sexual and physical abuse. Although they seek refuge to escape these dangers, many are subjected to similar abuse as refugees. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata has called this widespread sexual violence against refugee women a "global outrage."2 Similarly, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, has found:
Sexual violence against refugees is a global problem. Refugees from Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia and Vietnam have brought harrowing stories of abuse and suffering. It constitutes a violation of basic human rights, instilling fear in the lives of victims already profoundly affected by their displacement.3
Refugee and displaced women, uprooted from their homes and countries by war, internal strife, or natural catastrophe are vulnerable to violence both as a result of the surrounding problem and because of their dependency on outsiders for relief provisions. The internally displaced are further at risk because the abuses they seek to escape are often being committed by the very government that should afford them protection.4 Moreover, because they have not crossed any international border to seek refuge or asylum, displaced persons can claim only minimal protection from international law. While the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is tasked with primary responsibility for ensuring protection and assistance to refugees, no similar organization exists within the United Nations system for internally displaced persons. The programs run by the UNHCR and the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) for the internally displaced operate only on an ad hoc basis.
The wide range of abuses against refugees and displaced persons include, frequently, rape and other sexual assault. Women refugees are raped because they are refugees, because of their actual or perceived political or ethnic affiliations, and because they are women. The use of this gender-specific form of abuse frequently has political or ethnic, as well as gender-specific, components. In some cases, refugee and displaced persons' camps are relatively close to the site of the conflict that caused displacement. As the Kenya section in this chapter illustrates, women in such camps are the object of attacks from factions that enter the camps in order to dominate and punish those refugees perceived to be supporting opposing factions. In other cases, combatants who support or even participate in the different sides of a conflictmay mingle with civilian populations within camps. The humiliation, pain and terror that the rapist inflicts on an individual woman in this context is intended to degrade the entire ethnic or political group.
Rape and other forms of sexual assault are frequently gender-specific not only in their form but also in their motivation. Thus, refugee and displaced women and girls are raped because of their gender, irrespective of their age, ethnicity, or political beliefs. In host countries, local residents and even police, military and immigration officials, often view refugee women as targets for assault. They subject refugee and displaced women to rape or other forms of sexual extortion in return for the granting of passage to safety, refugee status, personal documentation, or relief supplies.
Fellow refugees may also target displaced and refugee women for sexual abuse. The dislocation and violence experienced by displaced and refugee populations often destroy family and social structures, and with them, the norms and taboos that normally would have proscribed sexual violence against women. Moreover, the anger, uncertainty and helplessness of male refugees unable to assume their traditionally dominant roles are often translated into violent behavior toward women.
The injuries that refugee and displaced women sustain from being violently raped persist long after the incident. Refugee women interviewed by Human Rights Watch have reported ongoing medical problems, including miscarriages by women raped when pregnant; hemorrhaging for long periods; inability to control urination; sleeplessness; nightmares; chest and back pains; and painful menstruation. For women who have undergone the practice of female genital mutilation, the physical injuries caused by rape are compounded.5 Moreover, refugee and displaced women who become pregnant as a result of rape are often unable to procure safe abortions because abortion is either illegal or too expensive.
Strong cultural stigma attached to rape further intensifies the rape victims' physical and psychological trauma. Women in refugee and displaced camps who acknowledge being raped may be ostracized, or even punished, by their families. As a result, women survivors of sexual violence often are reluctant to seek medical assistance or to file police reports, because they do not want it known that they were raped. Even when incidents are reported, however, effective responses may not be forthcoming, since international humanitarian organizations as well as countries of asylum often do not recognize and are not properly equipped to handle such gender-related abuse.
1 As of February 1995, twenty-three million people had fled across borders becoming refugees, and another twenty-six million had been internally displaced in their own countries. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a staggering figure of one in every 115 people is on the run or in exile. Africa has nearly 7.5 million refugees and as many displaced; Asia has 5.7 million refugees and Europe six million, not including the internally displaced, particularly in Bosnia. Women and children account for roughly 80 percent of all refugees worldwide. "This is No Place Like Home," The New York Times, March 5, 1995 and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World's Refugees (Geneva: UNHCR, 1993), p. 87.
2 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, "Sexual Violence Against Refugees: Guidelines on Prevention and Response" (Geneva: UNHCR, March 1995) [hereafter Sexual Violence Guidelines], Preface by Sadako Ogata, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
3 Ibid., foreword by Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women.
4 At present, there is no internationally agreed-upon definition for the internally displaced. The U.N. secretary-general's special representative for issues relating to internally displaced persons has recommended that the following definition be adopted by the international community: "persons who have been forced to flee their homes suddenly or unexpectedly in large numbers, as a result of armed conflict, internal strife, systematic violations of human rights or natural or man-made disasters; and who are within the territory of their own country." The first report of the special representative also recommended that the international community strengthen legal protections for the internally displaced and create U.N. human rights machinery to monitor their treatment and initiate actions on their behalf. See U.N. Doc E/CN.4/1993/35 as quoted in "The 49th Session of the U.N. Commissioner on Human Rights," International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 5, no. 2 (1993), p. 257; and Roberta Cohen, "International Protection for Internally Displaced Persons—Next Steps," (Refugee Policy Group, Washington D.C.), focus paper no. 2, January 1994, pp. 959-960.
5 Female genital mutilation, also known as female circumcision, is the collective name given to several different traditional practices involving the cutting of female genitals. In the most extreme version, infibulation, the clitoris and inner vaginal lips are removed and the outer lips are stitched closed leaving only a small opening (sometimes the size of a match stick) for the flow of urine and menstrual blood. Sexual intercourse for women who have undergone this operation is painful unless the opening is gradually expanded over time or they are re-cut to widen the opening.
Human Rights Watch strongly opposes nonconsensual female genital mutilation or circumcision as a violation of the rights to physical security (ICCPR, Article 9), and to nondiscrimination on the basis of sex (ICCPR, Article 26).
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