THE HAGUE (1 June) – Rape victims should receive aid in the form of reparations and material support such as rehabilitation Donor governments should contribute generously to the Trust Fund for Victims of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was established to provide support to rape-victims.The fund to date contains a hardly significant ‘paltry total’ of under 2 million dollar. This say the Physicians for Human Rights and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative in their report about rape of Darfuri women called ‘Nowhere to Turn’. It says that ICC Trust Fund for Victims should immediately make use of its powers to solicit and use resources for programs providing physical or psychological rehabilitation or material support to benefit victims and their families, including meeting the needs of Darfuri survivors of sexual violence. The report is based on interviews with 88 women from Darfur living in the Chadian Farchana Refugee Camp of the UNHCR. The researchers counted 29 cases of rape, 15 while living in Chad and 17 before they left Darfur. Most women were from the Masaliit tribe and few from the Zaghawa people. In seven cases the women were gang raped by Janjaweed militia. The cases in Chad happened by Chadian civilians and Chadian soldiers who are supposed to protect the women. Almost all rape took place while the women were fetching water outside the camp. The researchers are surprised about the lack of protection the UN Refugee organisation UNHCR can provide. ‘The women report that Chadian soldiers are among the assailants; they are allowed to come into the camp and evidently are insufficiently trained in their protection obligations. These violations are occurring under the presiding authority of the international NGOs and ultimately UNHCR’, the report states. The report writers had also the impression that ‘NGOs tried to obstruct the team’s access to the camps. One NGO requested that the team not visit the two camps where it was the operational authority.’ Government officials threatened and intimidated the team also. In the long-term, the scientists of Physicians for Human Rights are convinced that justice for victims is critical to ensure post-conflict peace and security in Darfur. ‘For the victims of rape and sexual violence, successful prosecutions not only acknowledge that rape is a terrible crime, but they enable victims and their families to see the perpetrators punished. Failure to prosecute the crimes of systemic rape in Darfur and further widespread rapes in Chad may give license to would-be perpetrators of such crimes not only in Chad and Sudan but in other conflict settings as well’. For more about the report: http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/sudan/news/nowhere-to-turn.pdf
حركة العدل و المساواة السودانية
موقع متخصص بنقل آخر الأخبار و البيانات و القرارات لحركة العدل و المساواة السودانية