For the 20th anniversary of two resolutions allowing the recognition of rape as a war crime, UN Women France organizes a digital forum on the theme “Is a sustainable peace without women possible ?”, on October 15, 2020 at 6:30 pm. Two round tables are planned, one specifically on sexual violence during conflicts. Despite these resolutions, “rape as a tool of war has become endemic and quasi-systematic”, notes on its website We are not weapons of war, a French NGO campaigning for the awareness and elimination of sexual violence during wartime. Even today, these are still used in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Iraq against the Yezidis and in Burma against the Rohingyas, and remain a tool to traumatize and destroy populations.
A military strategy in its own right
There are no accurate data on sexual violence in wartime around the world: it is rarely recognized or even reported. And for the estimations generally given in the world, We are not weapons of war advises to “multiply them by 3 or even 5 times to correspond to reality”. “Sexual violence in conflicts is a military or political strategy in its own right,” continues the NGO. “They are defined and decided in high places in the same way as the bombing of a village, the extermination of a people, the gassing of a community is decided”. A “perfect crime”, rarely punished, with invisible victims. It aims at the same time to humiliate and intimidate populations, to destroy communities, to prevent women from giving birth, and even to deliberately transmit diseases such as HIV.
During the genocide that tore Rwanda apart in 1994, between 250,000 and 500,000 women were sexually abused, according to the UN. Rape was even encouraged by the media. “Tutsi women experienced extreme barbarity”, Victoire regrets. She was 32 years old at the time of the genocide. Tutsi women were considered, according to the racist Hutu ideology, as spies or lascivians, and were often killed after serving as sex slaves. “Even after being raped, militiamen would stick sticks in their vaginas or with wooden stakes and then abandon them on the hills when they were not killed“, Victoire recounts. “The Tutsi woman was first dragged into the bush and then raped and killed in atrocious conditions”. She recalls: “I was buried alive and once they made me drink a bottle of Thiodan, a pesticide used to kill insects. But I survived.”
Beyond the numbers, a deep pain that must be fought
Rape is all the more a pernicious weapon because it touches the victims deep within themselves, leaving invisible traumas that may never be erased. “It is an eternal struggle because rape leaves wounds, it doesn’t end, it keeps coming back and kills the brain, heart and soul. It wounds the body but does not spare the mind either,” Victoire says , “so we must fight it at all costs and get out of this state”. In Rwanda, after the genocide, female survivors organized and helped each other. Some, like Victoire, testified before traditional courts. “It takes a lot of courage to dare to say that you were a victim of rape and to speak about it publicly,” she says. By the actions of Rwandan survivors, rape as a crime of genocide has been enshrined in Rwandan law. To date, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is the first – and only – international tribunal to have recognized it.
But “those who have remained silent, who have kept it in their hearts, suffer in silence. These victims have become sick or mentally handicapped”. Victoire supports the women survivors through workshops and warns the authorities as soon as one of them is weak.
Prevention is the key to fight against these abuses and the traumas that result from them. “One out of three victims attempts suicide within 72 hours after the rape due to lack of access to care”, warns We are not weapons of war. To assist them and collect reliable data, the NGO is developing a mobile application. Named BackUp, it would allow victims of sexual violence in wartime to report themselves and professionals to coordinate their actions. The organization wants to change its approach: “we must not ask victims to go to services, but we must bring the services to these victims”.
Marion Fontaine
