By Anne Marie Williams
As members of the international community, we must work together to make peace a reality in Africa's violent conflicts. In not acting, we betray entire populations of women caught in the middle of these wars who are brutalized, raped and forgotten in the peacemaking process. We need to remember these hidden victims and work to ensure peace on their behalf.
Militias and government forces fight to control territory through a number of tactics, such as ruling populations through fear and by raping women. These attacks terrorize villages and breakdown economic and social systems. During community raids, girls and women are enslaved as wives for militia commanders and kept captive for years.
Systematic rape is a crime against humanity according to the International Criminal Court. Despite this, thousands of women have fallen victim in the militia wars or genocides in Rwanda, Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote D'Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo. At this very moment, the conflict in Darfur, Sudan claims hundreds more victims.
Even as peace agreements are made, the perpetrators of these heinous crimes go unpunished. Rape is often seen as an inevitable effect of war. Women face stigmas returning home and are discouraged from reporting the crimes. There is no justice in these conflicts for using rape as a weapon of war.
While the perpetrators receive medical treatment in prisons, women are left without medical resources. Usually with children from the rapes, these women are shunned from their homes. They live in poverty and many of them suffer serious injury or disablement from the crimes. Brutality and genital mutilation with objects such as bottles, coupled with a lack of medical treatment leave many women seriously hurt.
Tens of thousands of women are infected with HIV and other sexually transmitted infections during wartime. Militias are thought to rape women to intentionally spread HIV. In Rwanda, it is believed that the Hutu militia's widespread campaign of rape used HIV as another attempt to exterminate Tutsis. As a result of sexual violence, 60 percent those infected with HIV in southern Africa are female. Further stigmatized for having HIV and without access to medical treatment, these women add to the huge number of HIV victims and AIDS deaths in Africa.
Nongovernmental organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International tirelessly advocate for the protection of these women. Together, we need to put pressure on the United Nations and the governments of war-torn countries to protect women and not forget them in the peacemaking process.
Sexual violence needs to be taken seriously by officials and become a punishable crime in practice instead of in theory. Above all, women and citizens of the world need to speak out about this violence.
We must raise our voices and demand that a woman's body does not become a battlefield in times of conflict or peace.
Please get involved today. This is what you can do:
1. Donate to We-ACTx, an organization supporting Rwandan clinics treating women who contracted HIV during the 1994 genocide.
2. Hear Dr. Mardge Cohen, a physician in Stroger Hospital who has started a fund to help HIV positive women in Rwanda, speak at Evanston Township High School at 8:30 p.m. May 22.
3. Donate to stop the atrocities occurring today in Darfur, Sudan at www.savedarfur.org.
4. Write elected officials to demand continued support for African Union troops in Darfur and for international pressure to allow UN troops into the country.
5. Stay informed of the hidden side of violent conflict and speak out to protect women around the world.
Anne Marie Williams is an Evanston Township High School senior and the co-president of the school's Amnesty International club. She also studied the effects of war on women as a part of an independent senior project. She will be attending Tufts University next year, where she will continue her commitment to human rights activism.
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