“Nowhere to Turn: Failure to Protect, Support, and Assure Justice for Darfuri Women,” a new report from Physicians for Human Rights and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today released an important new report on the grim and persistent realities of sexual violence directed against Darfuri women in Darfur and Eastern Chad. In partnership with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), PHR has published “Nowhere to Turn: Failure to Protect, Support, and Assure Justice for Darfuri Women." There are twin emphases in the report: (a) the ongoing vulnerability of Darfuri women in refugee camps in Eastern Chad, with threats of sexual violence coming primarily from host communities that have grown increasingly hostile to those who fled violence in Darfur, and (b) the terrible prominence of sexual violence against women amidst genocidal destruction in Darfur itself. Indeed, the report provides further, compelling evidence of the use of rape as a deliberate weapon of genocidal warfare.
What gives particular significance to this systematic assessment of sexual assault is its attention to “the effects of [ ] war-related sexual violence” and its “document[ing of] how resulting trauma is exacerbated by current conditions of life.” Although insecurity precluded a study that would have given us a statistically significant overview of the prevalence of rape and gender-based violence in Darfur and Eastern Chad, the figures are still telling. For example, almost half the sample of 88 women in Farchana refugee camp (60 kilometers west/northwest of el-Geneina) continue to fear sexual violence. Approximately one third had been raped in Darfur or Chad. There are approximately 275,000 Darfuri refugees in Eastern Chad, in addition to the 2.7 million Internally Displaced Persons. Three million people, the majority women and children, who have been made homeless by Khartoum’s conduct of the war and its use of the Janjaweed militias.
The report also details ongoing insecurity and consequent fear in Farchana camp, and the striking deterioration in physical and mental health. On a 1-5 scale (1 being “very good” and 5 being “poor”), the PHR study found “a marked deterioration in self-reported mental health, where the average score in Chad was 4.90.” In the words of one respondent, “I am sad every day [since leaving Darfur]. I feel not well in my skin.”
The report should serve as a sobering reminder to those who have come to regard Darfur and Eastern Chad as “low-intensity conflict,” with putative signs of de-escalating violence, rural rebuilding, and “optimism” on the part of Darfuris. The growing effort to re-write the narrative of the Darfur genocide – minimizing overall mortality, speciously questioning the most conspicuous realities of genocide, denying significant violence and human destruction after 2004, refusing to see how desperate the overall humanitarian situation remains – hardly accommodates the individual narratives that we find in PHR’s path-breaking study.
The notion that somehow the crisis is ending or diminishing is powerfully belied by what can be found not only in the refugee camps of Eastern Chad, but the IDP camps in Darfur itself:
The PHR/HHI investigators found that after five years, the Darfuris living in the camps are reaching a ‘tipping point’ of physical misery, depression, and dissatisfaction in the camps. This is due to a variety of reasons, including the lack of physical security outside the camps, insufficient food rations, a yearning to return home, and a lack of opportunities for adults to earn money.
“Nowhere to Turn: Failure to Protect, Support, and Assure Justice for Darfuri Women” is a compelling complement to the earlier (January 2006) PHR study, “Darfur: Assault on Survival; Call for Security, Justice and Restitution." “Assault on Survival” remains the most intelligently researched human rights report addressing the question of genocide in Darfur; unsurprisingly, an ignoring of its findings is part of the deliberate re-writing of the Darfur narrative. This new report deserves the closest attention of those concerned with issues of justice, security, and a peaceful resolution to Darfur’s ongoing conflict.
