African women rebels get crash course in human rights

November 28, 2005 – (AFP) Current and former female rebels from guerrilla armies across Africa have just met in Ethiopia for an unusual course on human rights aimed a promoting women's empowerment during conflict and post-war situations.

About 35 female active and ex-members of rebel groups from Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe gathered at African Union (AU) headquarters for the unprecedented week-long conference, officials said.

"They are among many women who lack knowledge about their basic rights," said Elizabeth Reusse-Decrey, the head of the non-governmental group Geneva Call that organized the three-day meeting.

"Here, they can share experiences and get an awareness that they do have a role to play, particularly in eventual peace talks," she told AFP at the opening of the closed-door conference that ended on Saturday.

"The idea, is to help these women to empower themselves so that they have a place in society," Reusse-Decrey said.

To be sure, many African rebel groups are not known for their female-friendly ways although women have played significant roles -- militarily and otherwise -- in some insurgencies, notably in Eritrea.

But most are more well-known for shocking treatment of women and girls, particularly Uganda's notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) which is accused of turning kidnapped children into sex slaves for rebel commanders.

"They sexually abused me by giving me to a man," said Mary, now an 18-year-old, who was abducted by the LRA in 1998 at age 11. "I was 12 years old and that man was nineteen."

She and four friends were returning home from school in northern Uganda when they were kidnapped by the LRA, taken across the border to neighboring Sudan and trained to be fighters in the brutal 20-year-old insurgency.

Mary took advantage of a government amnesty program and left the LRA in 2002 and was one of three former female members at the conference, says now that committing human rights abuses was business as usual for the group.

"Once, I was forced to burn to death around 70 civilians inside their houses after I tried to escape," she told AFP, matter of factly recounting a blood-curdling atrocity. "I set them on fire and locked them inside."

While not all the course participants had such horror stories to tell, most confessed to bewilderment at their role within their rebel groups during wartime and then in transition periods that accompanied peace processes.

"I have the impression that this meeting was organized just for me, a woman from Darfur, because we are really the most marginalized people in the world," said 35-year-old Nimat Adam Ahmadi.

A member of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLA) that along with a smaller group is fighting pro-Khartoum militia's in the troubled western Sudanese region, Nimat is well aware that rape has been used as a weapon of war there.

"We are the first victims," she said, referring to sexual violence that human rights groups say is rampant in Darfur. "The majority of women live in camps and the main challenge is to get firewood without being raped or killed."

"I want to know how to get support for our cause and participate when the peace that we all want finally comes," Nimat said.

Nadine Nzomukunda, 28, a member of Burundi's ex-rebel Forces for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) that is currently in power, said her struggle had changed from liberation to women's empowerment when peace arrived.

"When I was young, I joined the rebellion to defend peace in my country," she told AFP. "Today, that war is finished, but another battle has started."

From: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051128/ts_afp/africaafricanunion