With the monsoon season fast approaching in Bangladesh,
United Nations agencies and their partners are struggling to protect nearly
700,000 Rohingya refugees from disaster and disease. Providing proper medical
care in the camps is a severe challenge at best, and one made more difficult by
the wrenching legacy of sexual violence.
The displaced population includes an estimated 40,000
pregnant women, UN Officials estimate, many of whom are expected to give birth
in coming weeks. An unknown but significant share of these pregnancies, aid
officials believe, resulted from rapes committed by members of the Myanmar army
and allied militants.
Pregnancies resulting from “what we believe could have
been a frenzy of sexual violence in August and September last year could come
to term very soon”, Andrew Gilmour, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for
Human Rights, told UN News. “So, we are expecting a surge of births.”
In March, Mr. Gilmour travelled to Cox’s Bazar on
Bangladesh’s south-east coast, where the refugees have settled in camps and
makeshift clearings after escaping violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
Pregnant women fear stigma
Fearing stigma, sometimes feeling depressed or shamed,
pregnant refugee women are often reluctant to admit that they were raped,
according to medical and aid workers in the camp. But these workers, from
non-governmental groups, told Mr. Gilmour that “they can just see from the
faces of the girls who are pregnant that something terrible happened”, he
reported.
“And there is no joy whatsoever,” he said, “and nor is
there any talk of a husband, either back home or with them in the camps.”
Tragic History of Rape in Myanmar - Reports UN Official https://youtu.be/HVlpVSF2_Bw
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority in mainly Buddhist Myanmar, where they have long been subjected to severe discrimination.
While more than 200,000 were already living in
neighbouring Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands more fled across the border
since last August as violence spiraled in northern Rakhine state.
Rohingya homes were looted, villages razed and civilians
killed in what the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said appeared to be: “a textbook example of ethnic
cleansing”. As in many past and current conflicts, women and girls were
priority targets. https://lnkd.in/gyxqrXn
Women 'profoundly traumatized'
The latest UN report on conflict-related sexual violence, issued in March,
charged that members of the Myanmar Armed Forces, at times acting jointly with
local militias, used rape, gang rape, forced public nudity and other sexual
attacks as part of a strategy to drive the Rohingya from their homes. https://undocs.org/en/S/2018/250
Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the
Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, flew to Bangladesh in
November to meet with refugees. All the Rohingya women and girls that she spoke
to, she said, reported either enduring sexual violence or witnessing it.
“I met a number of profoundly traumatized women who
related how their daughters were allegedly raped inside their home and left to
perish when the houses were torched,” Ms. Patten told the Security Council. https://youtu.be/6Uu9Zc2tWu4
“Some witnesses reported women and girls being tied to
either a rock or a tree before multiple soldiers literally raped them to
death,” she said. “Many reported having witnessed family members, friends and
neighbours being slaughtered in front of them. The two words that echoed across
every account I heard were ‘slaughter’ and ‘rape’.”
Ms. Patten had dispatched an expert team ahead of her
visit, comprising representatives of a UN inter-agency network that advocates
for ending conflict-related sexual violence and supporting survivors.
Her Chief of Staff, Tonderai Chikuhwa, who headed that
mission, said it was among the most shocking he has experienced. With a
continuing influx of desperate refugees, he recalled, the trauma was “so
visceral, so raw, so immediate”.
Sexual violence in conflict, such as rape as a weapon of
war, is “the most underreported human rights violation”, Mr. Chikuhwa said in
an interview with UN News.
The cycle of sexual violence and stigma is a repeating
one in conflicts around the world, and even has intergeneration impacts, he
said.
In Bosnia, he noted, Ms. Patten met with survivors of
wartime sexual violence that occurred 20 years before. The grown children of
those survivors still suffered from the stigma of their origins, leaving some
of them to “live on the margins of society”, he said.
In Bangladesh, Mr. Chikuhwa said, there are now fears
that women and children in the camps could fall victim to traffickers. That’s
one of the major concerns that Ms. Patten is looking into during a follow-up
mission to Cox’s Bazar this week, he noted.
Monsoon rains inflict further hardship
Although the monsoon season in Bangladesh does not
officially start until June, heavy rains and winds earlier this month had
Rohingya children scuttling
to the roofs of their family shelters to keep the plastic sheeting from
blowing away. https://news.un.org/en/audio/2018/05/1008632
And while Bangladesh has been praised for its support for
the refugees, conditions in Cox’s Bazar remain challenging due to the sheer
number of people crammed into what is now the world’s largest refugee camp. https://lnkd.in/gUaubjj
Mr. Gilmour fears monsoon conditions could inflict
further hardship on Rohingya women who have already suffered immensely and who
now lack access to adequate medical services as they approach childbirth.
“It will be even harder for them when the rains prevent
access because there will be serious flooding, we fear,” he said. “There may be
landslides, there may be a cholera outbreak, there may be many things that will
make it even harder for the girls to get the medical attention they so
desperately need,” he said.
Women and girls who have been raped also need to see that
justice is served.
Though difficult to achieve, it is not impossible, as
proven by the 2016
conviction of former Congolese rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba for crimes
committed by forces under his command in the Central African Republic. https://lnkd.in/gRaN3aV
The UN
Special Court for Sierra Leone http://www.rscsl.org/,
as well as UN tribunals
http://unictr.unmict.org/ for the
Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, have also prosecuted sexual violence cases.
Mr. Gilmour said the Rohingya refugees, themselves, have
made accountability a pre-condition for returning to Myanmar.
“Obviously, they don’t want to go back if they feel that
the soldiers who may have raped them, killed their relatives, burned their
houses, are going around with impunity and liable to do something similar
again,” he said.
“But on top of that, in a more general sense, it is vital
that there is accountability,” he said, “to send a message to other people who
might be tempted to carry out such horrific crimes in the future.”