RIGHTS-WEST AFRICA: Women Feel The Impact Of Conflict

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Apr 27 2001 (IPS) - The impact of the decade-long conflict on Sierra Leone’s women has been catastrophic especially as it borders on their fundamental rights.

Since the outbreak of the war in 1991, armed groups have particularly targeted women, forcefully conscripting them as combatants, using them as both domestic slaves and carriers of looted items as well as transforming them into sex chattels.

Says Christiana Thorpe, the executive director of the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), “We have been rehabilitating more than 300 girls and women who are victims of rape and other forms of abuses, as a direct result of the war.”

The rebel forces, marouding parts of the West African country, abducted the women and the girls, Thorne says, at the height of the Sierra Leonean conflict. “Some of them were gang-raped and now carry unwanted pregnancies or babies. We had to find doctors for them as well as counsellors,” she says.

At FAWE, the women survivors of the war are enrolled in schools, as well as taught vocational skills like dyeing, soap making and sewing, among others.

Some of the women recount horrific tales of abuses committed against them by rebels, especially those from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

Marie (not her real name) is an 18-year old girl who was abducted by rebels in January 1999 when they invaded Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Explaining her ordeal to IPS, she says amidst tears: “They (rebels) took along six of us, girls, to the jungle hideout after they were dislodged by government forces. While there, we were routinely raped by a gang of rebels to the extent that one of the girls bled to death.”

Another, Fatou (also not her real name) says: “While in the jungle, I saw hundreds of women and girls doing all sorts of menial jobs for the rebels. Myself, I was impregnated by one commando, who forcefully took possession of me claiming he would protect me. I still have painful memories about that incident.”

Abuses against women were not limited to rebel-held areas. In the early days of the war, government forces too did attack, rape and dispossess women in their counter-insurgency campaigns against the rebels.

And, clearly, this pattern is not peculiar to the Sierra Leonean crisis.

In neighbouring Liberia, where civil war first broke out in 1989, abuses against women were a common feature of the conflict. Many teenage girls were abducted and forcefully conscripted to serve as armed combatants and some indiscriminately murdered.

Rape and terror became weapons of war and to date, women there are still struggling to get over the experiences they suffered at the hands of the rebels.

Also in Guinea, women suffered tremendously as a direct consequence of the war. Caught up in the middle of fierce battles between government forces and armed dissidents since fighting erupted in that country last September, rape, torture and killings became useful weapons of the conflict.

Of the quarter million refugees from Liberia and Sierra Leone, about 80 per cent were thought to be women, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR).

When fighting was at its peak, the refugees were abandoned by humanitarian agencies to fend for themselves in the jungles. Hunger, disease and starvation took a toll on them and up until now, more than 100,000 are still stranded in the “parrots beak” region where the common borders of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone converge.

One returnee woman from the area told IPS “Ours was hell on earth. We were raped, detained, beaten and tortured by Guinean security forces. I managed to escape through the forests into Sierra Leone.”

Her story is no different from the accounts given by many returning refugees from Guinea. They complain about rising violence and xenophobia against women in particular and refugees in general.

Rights groups have been quick to point out the grave impact of the civil conflicts in the sub-region on women. Many, according to facts released, have been widowed and now look after their orphaned children while picking up the pieces of their broken lives.

Paul Allen of the National Forum for Human Rights says women are deliberately targeted as a weapon of war. “In all of the three conflicts, women have been the most victims. Their farming and small-scale industrial ventures stifled by war and many have had their lives shattered,” Allen says.

However, with the war in Sierra Leone showing signs of letting up, women have taken a front-seat in peace-building initiatives. The Sierra Leone Women’s Forum, the Sierra Leone Association of University Women, FAWE and many others are involved in peacekeeping programmes, often with the support of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL).

Women groups also have organised rallies and workshops to sensitise the communities as well as the ex-combatants on the need to stop the war and start the process of national reconciliation.

Coping with the disastrous impact of the war has not been an easy task for the women in the sub-region. Cross-border trading activities have grounded because of general insecurity in the region.

The donor-supported Sierra Leonean government also has been giving out micro-credit to the women to rebuild their lives. This has accounted for the proliferation of vocational skills training, farming activities and petty trading.