Rwanda: Survivors Fund calls on international community to do more to prevent use of sexual violence as weapon of war

November 25, 2005 – (Pambazuka News) British-based charity Survivors Fund (SURF), which represents and supports survivors of the Rwandan genocide, called on the international community to do more to prevent the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war to mark today’s UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

It is estimated that over 25,000 women in Rwanda were raped and deliberately infected by HIV+ genocidaires in a systematic programme of sexual violence during the 1994 genocide, to ensure that they survived only to die a slow death from AIDS. Sexual violence and HIV/AIDS is now being used as a weapon of war in Darfur, as women again are being targeted in the genocidal campaign that is still ongoing.

Survivors Fund Founder and Director Mary Kayitesi Blewitt said on the appeal: “As seen in Rwanda, and now in Darfur, sexual violence and HIV/AIDS is increasingly being exploited as a weapon of war. The international community, so silent and inactive during the genocide in Rwanda when 1 million people were killed in just 100 days, remains indecisive as to what action to take to protect the women of Darfur. It must take responsibility, and learn the lessons of 1994 and ensure that women at risk are protected from the threat and action of sexual violence.”

On 7th December, the First Lady of Rwanda, Mrs Jeanette Kagame, will formally launch the Survivors Fund programme, funded by the Department for International Development, to provide 2500 women survivors raped and infected with HIV in 1994 with antiretroviral treatment. The support is timely, as this most vulnerable group of survivors has been decimated through premature death from AIDS related illness.

But survivors now face the renewed threat of sexual violence, as well as death, from the very men who raped them and killed their families, as genocidaires are released back into the community. The country no longer has the resource to continue to keep these men incarcerated, and so by admitting guilt at a local gacaca (community-based) trial they are now free.

For more information on The Survivors Fund, please see: http://www.survivors-fund.org.uk/

From: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30598