Refugee camps are meant to be places of refuge, havens where the most persecuted can rest, safe in the knowledge that the worst is behind them. Yet every day, thousands of Darfuri women must choose between watching their families go hungry or risking rape whilst collecting firewood on the outskirts of the Chadian camps they now call home. Every night, in Haiti, women displaced by the recent earthquake fear sexual violence on their trips to makeshift, badly lit latrines. 

Sexual abuse has long been regarded as an effective weapon of war, and this violence has often followed women and girls into refugee camps. Disasters, too, can create complex emergencies in which the most vulnerable become even more exposed.  Many factors combine to create a climate of impunity in and around certain camps—camps which are often overcrowded, frequently chaotic and usually presided over by a predominantly male leadership. Resources are scarce, social structures have very often collapsed, and gender relations may not have been very equal within the displaced community to begin with.

As an Amnesty report released last September makes clear, Darfuri refugees in Eastern Chad face attacks by everyone from camp teachers, villagers living nearby and members of the Chadian military.  In April 2008, Human Rights Watch published a similarly damning report about internally displaced people (IDPs) living in Darfur itself.  As this recent story by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs illustrates, Haiti is the latest battleground in the fight for the bodies of refugees, but this is a struggle which continues around the world.

Statistics paint a grim picture: a 1997 survey by the International Rescue Committee found that more than one in four women in Tanzanian refugee camps had been raped since the start of the conflict, and that two-thirds of the rapes had occurred in or near the camps. Over 90% of displaced households surveyed in Sierra Leone in 2003 by the UN reported incidents of sexual assault, including rape, torture and sexual slavery.

More recently, one humanitarian organisation has reported treating almost 500 women and girls between October 2004 and February 2005 in South Darfur. Another reported that 200 women were assaulted in a five-week period around a single camp in 2006. In the same year, 7 600 cases of sexual assault worldwide were reported to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Because underreporting of incidents is rife, numbers like these tell only half the story. Survivors often have limited legal recourse for sexual violence, and police collusion or even involvement in attacks leave victims in fear of reprisals. Internally displaced women are particularly vulnerable, because the government tasked with protecting them is often the very government whose actions they have fled. As late as 2005, rape victims in Darfur who became pregnant faced imprisonment for having sexual relations outside of marriage.

Officials have also observed rapes against increasingly younger victims in Darfur. The Human Rights Watch report relays the story of an attack on an 11-year old girl: “I went to [the mountain] with my sister to collect grass. Three…men in civilian clothes with guns in their hands appeared. One of them grabbed my sister and two of them raped me.” The attack caused her to bleed so profusely that she had to be evacuated by helicopter.

Sexual violence during wartime may not be http://www.un.org/av/photo/" height="500" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4052/4417556066_0335c7e853.jpg" style="border: 10px solid white; margin: 10px; float: left;" title="Coping with Disasters" width="341" />new, but global recognition that female refugees are often fleeing widespread gender-based persecution had to wait until the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides of the mid-1990’s. And if the world was slow to see sexual violence as a matter of justice, it had even greater difficulties regarding it as a reproductive health issue. Humanitarian programmes serving refugees were designed to provide food, water, shelter and basic health care. Family planning services, prevention of sexual assaults and care for survivors were viewed as luxuries completely outside the realm of healthcare agencies.

However, the World Health Organisation estimates that unsafe abortions are responsible for 25 to 50% of pregnancy-related deaths in refugee settings, at least double the global rate. Some studies suggest that displaced women are often pressured into sex in order to “repopulate” their communities, resulting in high rates of unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion. In both the highest refugee-producing and refugee-hosting countries—including Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan—women have the highest chance of dying during pregnancy or childbirth. HIV rates rose sharply during and after the conflicts in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Clearly, sexual violence affects the overall health of the community, and the past decade has seen this realisation increasingly reflected in refugee programmes around the world. An example is the Reproductive Health Access, Information and Services in Emergencies (RAISE) initiative, initiated by Marie Stopes International and Columbia University to deliver reproductive health services in emergencies. In addition, in April 2008, UNHCR and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) agreed to collaborate in providing contraceptives and contraceptive training in camps. 

Steps taken to increase official accountability have also delivered positive results:  a UNDP-supported pilot initiative has sent 20 paralegals into Thai refugee camps to provide legal assistance to their Burmese inhabitants.  Within little over a year, 49 serious cases—many of them rape—ended up in Thai courts.  In an encouraging move, 2008 saw the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1820, which names sexual violence in conflict zones a matter of international peace and security.

Despite promising signs such as these, much remains to be done. The provision of contraception and abortion, even in the case of rape, remains politically sensitive and is one of the reasons the previous US administration withheld funding from the UNFPA. Marlou den Hollander of Marie Stopes told me that “the provision of family planning methods in camps settings continues to be minimal and ad hoc.” Furthermore, she says, “medical treatment and prevention of gender based violence…is still not perceived as an integral part of the humanitarian response.”  Even where the finances and political will does exist among donors, altering deeply-rooted attitudes among both refugees and their host populations takes time and organization—resources not usually in abundance in emergency situations. 

Nevertheless, this must change if the international community is to meet its duty towards those displaced by disaster and war worldwide.  The Amnesty and HRW reports suggest that any successful effort will involve refugees themselves and will address the culture of governmental and civilian impunity so common in the camps. They will introduce coordination mechanisms to prevent and respond to violence and train camp staff and the community. Most importantly, they will allocate enough resources so that the health, justice, security, and psychosocial sectors are all able to fulfil their roles in preventing further sexual violence. Only then will the women of Darfur be able to walk freely, and the women of Haiti sleep soundly at night.

Image Credits: "Coping with Disasters" - UN Photo / John Isaac ; "Darfur Refugees" - UNHCR / Nicolas Rost