WUNRN
Cote d'Ivoire - Ivory Coast
Direct Website Link to Report:
(Abidjan, August 2, 2007) – Pro-government and rebel forces in Côte d’Ivoire have subjected thousands of women and girls to rape and other brutal sexual assaults with impunity, Human Rights Watch said in a new report issued today. Despite recent progress in the peace process, the latest accord fails to address this widespread sexual violence or the need for accountability.
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While
the worst sexual violence took place during the height of the armed conflict
from 2002 to 2004, women and girls continue to be subjected to acts of sexual
violence.
“Sexual violence has been the silent crime of Côte d’Ivoire’s military and
political crisis,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director of Human Rights
Watch. “Combatants responsible for rape and other acts of sexual violence have
enjoyed almost complete impunity, while the survivors have been denied both
justice and medical attention.”
The 135-page report, “My Heart
is Cut": Sexual Violence by Rebels and Pro-Government Forces in Côte
d’Ivoire, details the widespread nature of sexual violence throughout the
five-year military-political crisis. The report, which is based on interviews
with more than 180 victims and witnesses, documents how women and girls have
been subjected to individual and gang rape, sexual slavery, forced incest and
other egregious sexual assaults.
Fighters on both sides have raped women old enough to be their grandmothers,
girls as young as 6, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers. They have also
inserted guns, sticks, pens, and other objects into their victims’ vaginas.
Combatants have abducted women and girls to serve as sex slaves, and have
forcibly conscripted them into the fighting forces. Sexual violence has been
often accompanied by other gross human rights violations against the victims,
their families and their communities, including torture, killing, mutilation
and even cannibalism.
Côte d’Ivoire – once considered a pillar of stability and progress in West
Africa – has for at least seven years been consumed by a political and military
crisis rooted in ethnic, religious, political and economic issues. Efforts to
resolve the armed conflict between the government and northern-based rebels
have produced a string of unfulfilled peace agreements, the deployment of more
than 11,000 foreign peacekeeping troops, and the imposition of a UN arms
embargo and travel and economic sanctions. In March, the government and rebels
signed the Ouagadougou Agreement, envisioned to bring about an end to the
crisis and lead to elections later this year. To date, both sides have taken
encouraging steps toward its implementation, but the peace process has not
resolved key issues that have contributed to the breakdown of previous accords
in the past, particularly the criteria for establishing Ivorian citizenship,
disarmament, and accountability for abuses by all sides.
Victims of sexual violence told Human Rights Watch about the acute physical and
psychological distress they suffered as a result of rape. The report details
how some rape victims died because of the sexual violence they endured. Others
were raped so violently that they suffered serious bleeding, tearing in the
genital area, long-term incontinence, and severe infections. Others suffered
from botched abortions following the sexual assault. Many complained of
bleeding, deep abdominal aches, and burning pains. Countless victims suffered
from sexually transmitted infections and were put at high risk for the
transmission of HIV/AIDS. Deterred by shame and poverty, few survivors of sexual
violence ever receive the medical help they need.
The Ivorian government and the rebel New Forces (Forces Nouvelles) have made
scant efforts to investigate or prosecute perpetrators of even the most heinous
crimes involving sexual violence. This failure has contributed to an
environment of increasingly entrenched lawlessness where impunity prevails. For
its part, the international community has consistently sidelined initiatives to
combat impunity in Côte d’Ivoire, presumably due to a fear of upsetting
negotiation efforts.
“The government and the rebels alike have turned a blind eye to rape and other
abuses committed by their forces,” said Takirambudde. “This has only emboldened
perpetrators on both sides of the military divide.”
Sexual violence took place throughout Côte d’Ivoire, especially in the hotly
contested western regions, which experienced the most fighting. Mixed groups of
Liberian and Sierra Leonean fighters – operating as mercenaries in support of
both the Ivorian government and rebel forces – were guilty of especially
egregious and widespread sexual abuse. However, even after the end of active
hostilities, from 2004 onwards, sexual violence has remained a significant
problem throughout both rebel- and government-held areas.
In rebel-held territory, and particularly in the west, some women were targeted
for abuse because of their ethnicity or perceived pro-government affiliation,
often because their husband, father or another male relative worked for the
state. Many others appeared to have been targeted randomly for sexual assault.
Women and girls were subjected to sexual violence in their homes, as they
sought refuge after being found hiding in forests, when stopped at military
checkpoints, while working on farms, and at places of worship. Numerous women
and girls were abducted and subjected to sexual slavery in rebel camps where
they endured sexual abuse over extended periods of time. Resistance was
frequently met with horrific punishment or even death. Some sex slaves,
intimidated by their captors and the other circumstances, felt powerless to
escape their life of sexual slavery. An unknown number of such women and girls
remain with their captors.
Pro-government forces – including members of the gendarmerie, police, army, and
militias – were widely responsible for rape and other forms of sexual abuse
against women and girls, especially in the heavily contested western region and
along frontlines. In addition to sexual violence associated with open
hostilities, pro-government forces targeted women and girls whom they suspected
of supporting the rebels, particularly women who were Muslim, came from the
north or from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, or were thought to support
opposition political parties. Law enforcement officers, militia men, and other
pro-government forces abused women at checkpoints, during raids, in makeshift
prisons, and in marketplaces. The scale of violations by pro-government forces
appeared to increase during periods of heightened political tension.
Human Rights Watch called on the Ivorian government and rebels to investigate
and punish perpetrators in accordance with international standards. The United
Nations Security Council should expedite the publication of the report of the
2004 UN Commission of Inquiry into human rights violations committed since
2002, and should discuss its findings and recommendations. The Ivorian
government and its development partners must act promptly to provide
much-needed medical, psychological and social services to the countless
survivors of sexual assault. Lastly, given the fact that rights abuses have
very often escalated during periods of heightened political tension, Human
Rights Watch emphasized that drawdown or withdrawal of United Nations
peacekeepers must wait until after presidential and legislative elections.
“Ivorian and rebel authorities must demonstrate their commitment to the rule of
law now and in the future by committing to prosecute key individuals
responsible for atrocities, including those atrocities documented in this
report,” said Takirambudde. “The organizations and governments working to
consolidate peace, namely the United Nations, the French government and the
African Union, must assist them in developing a concrete strategy for doing
this.”
Selected testimony from victims interviewed for the report:
One young woman who was in her late teens when she was detained in 2003 as a
sex slave in a rebel camp recounted:
They
took me and for a week they raped me all the time, they locked me in a home.
They used to tie me up with my legs spread apart and arms tied behind me to
rape me. They’d rape me three or four in the night, they would put their guns
next to you and if you refuse they kill you. They killed one of my friends and
made us bury her. We were about 10 or 15 girls there, being raped.
A mother who was raped and whose two adolescent daughters had firewood
shoved into their vaginas by rebels in 2002 described her agony:
Frankly
I don’t know how I will cope. They took sticks to put in the vaginas of my two
daughters ... When they took out the wood they put their hands in. Really, they
ruined my children. The blood was running ... they told me to wipe it up. Wood,
hands ... when they were done ... they beat my girls again and said they will
kill us. I had to clean up the blood from my daughters.
A woman of Malian origin, living in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood of
Abidjan, described how she was raped by soldiers in front of her husband on
March 25, 2004:
During
the crisis which followed the opposition march, I was raped by the military.
They came into our house. My husband was in the living room and my three
children were in their rooms. The soldiers locked the kids up. I was just
coming out from the shower. They forced my husband to sit and watch them raping
me under the threat of their guns. This shame prevents me from looking at my
husband today.
A Muslim woman of Malian origin described the gang-rape of her sister by
seven uniformed pro-government soldiers who wanted to ascertain the whereabouts
of their brother, an opposition activist:
My
big brother was in the RDR ... They came looking for him. We [my sisters and I]
said “he is out.” They said, “we will kill the three of you if you don’t get
him to come.” They found a notebook with his number and called him. He said “I
am coming, just take some money, please don’t hurt them.” They hit me with a
gun and broke my arm. Then they took my beautiful tallest older sister, tied
her up and raped her over and over.
A woman who had been raped for over a year during the war by rebels in
Bouake explained her appalling physical condition after managing to escape:
I
could hardly walk, was bleeding all the time. I had no money for cloths to stop
the bleeding or even for food ... I was so sick, they chased me away from the
hospital, my living conditions were awful, I smelled bad, I couldn’t sleep, I
crawled like a baby because I couldn’t walk, I felt so bad, I didn’t have
anyone to help me.
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