Survivors of Sexual Violence and the African Union: A Model to Follow?

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Doris Buss, who contributes this guest post)

Women’s civil society groups from across Africa met recently with state ambassadors in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as part of a now-annual meeting of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union with civil society.
The March 28 meeting included addresses by the various ‘office holders’ below: Margot Wallström (middle), the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Litha Musyimi-Ogana (left), the Director of the Women, Gender and Development Directorate of the African Union, and Dr. Mary Chinery-Hesse (right), from the AU’s Panel of the Wise.
But the real force of the meetings came from the “Survivors of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict”, who had traveled from Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The meeting included time for “first-hand accounts” from the survivors, as well as discussion of different models of civil society initiatives for rehabilitation and community reintegration.
At the end of the event the survivors of sexual violence released a Statement, which is a moving testament to the urgent health needs of sexual violence sufferers in Africa. The Statement makes a number of recommendations relating to health care, including, a call for “comprehensive medical care, including emergency surgery services, and trained medical workers on trauma management” and a recommendation that AU member states “ increase their health budget for our sexual and reproductive health complications and trauma management”.
The frustration of civil society actors in ‘post’ conflict negotiations is also clearly evident in the Statement:

We are deeply saddened by the fact that our violators and their apologists are often seated on these tables deciding our fate. We are therefore not surprised that post conflict processes do not include the concerns and priorities of survivors of sexual violence. Instead, we are often urged to let bygones be bygones and look to the future. We cannot look to the future when we are hurting physically and psychologically, and are unable to pick up the pieces of our lives.

Among the recommendations made is a call for the AU to “adopt sexual violence as a disqualifying criterion for leadership” in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1960.
As an example of civil society and state interactions, this annual meeting between the AU and victims of sexual violence may be a model to consider in other contexts. I wonder, for example, what would happen if members of the Canadian Parliament (or US House of Representatives), agreed to meet each year with a representative group of poor single mothers to hear about their lives and experiences over the past year?

On November 29

On this day in ...
... 1957, Janet Napolitano (left) was born in New York City. She grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and earned degrees from Santa Clara University and the University of Virginia School of Law. She began practicing law in Phoenix, and eventually became U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, Arizona's 1st woman Attorney General, and, since 2003, Governor of Arizona. She is said to be President-Elect Barack Obama's top choice to become Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
... 1984, on conclusion of a 3-day tour of the region, James P. Grant, Executive Director of the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), told The New York Times that more than 6 million people were "'in serious distress' as a result of the Ethiopian famine," adding that 1 million of them were children under the age of 4. Before its end a year later the famine would claim 1 million lives in the country whose flag is at right.

On October 7

On this day in ...

... 1935, 4 days after troops from Benito Mussolini-led Italy "swept into Ethiopia from Eritrea and Italian Somaliland and overwhelmed the Ethiopian army," the Council of the League of Nations "declared that Italy was the aggressor nation in the Ethiopian affair and made preparations to apply sanctions against the Italians." In fact League members did nothing, however, and within a year Ethiopia (known then as Abyssinia) accepted Italian rule. "This incident was not a minor one and has been regarded by history to be one of the thorns that led to the outbreak of World War II." (map credit)

... 1955, at the Six Gallery in San Francisco's Fillmore district, a 29-year-old "unknown poet from the East Coast," Allen Ginsberg, gave the 1st public reading of "Howl." He began:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness

and then continued with a poetic rant (full text here) that, in the words of an NPR retrospective, "gave voice to an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and alienation in Eisenhower's America." Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose City Lights press would publish the poem amid controversy, described the impact of this literary icon of the Beat Generation with more punch: "'Howl' knocked the sides out of things."

On September 12

On this day in ...

... 1992, Dr. Mae Carol Jemison became the 1st African-American woman in outer space, as a member of a NASA mission aboard the shuttle Endeavour. Born in Alabama, raised in Chicago, and educated at Stanford and Cornell universities, Jemison (right) earned her M.D. degree in 1981. She practiced medicine in Los Angeles and worked for the Peace Corps in Africa before beginning to train as an astronaut in 1987. Jemison left NASA a year after her shuttle mission, started a consulting group, and wrote a young readers' book, Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments from My Life (2001).

... 1974, a military junta led by Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam and known as the Derg, or Committee, seized control of Ethiopia from 82-year-old Emperor Haile Selassie I. Scores of political opponents were killed in the aftermath; the former emperor himself was strangled 11 months after the coup. The authoritarian regime lasted until May 1991, when Mengistu (left) "fled the country for asylum in Zimbabwe." Similar to the domestic judgment levied last month against Chad's former dictator (IntLawGrrls' post here), this past May a court in Ethiopia convicted Mengistu in absentia of genocide and sentenced him to death. It's a judgment that Mengistu might one day have to face, should the current crisis in his country of asylum, Zimbabwe, end with the departure of its longtime leader, Robert Mugabe.

Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission: Findings on allegations of rape during armed conflict

The Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission will conduct its final hearing -- the second of two hearings on damages -- on 19-30 May 2008. The EECC was established by agreement of Eritrea (flag below left) and Ethiopia (flag at right), as part of the peace process ending hostilities that broke out in May 1998. The jurisdiction of the EECC is to decide by binding arbitration claims that relate to the prior conflict and “result from violation of international humanitarian law, including the 1949 Geneva Conventions, or other violations of international law.” The commissioners are Hans van Houtte (President), George Aldrich, John Crook, James Paul and me, Lucy Reed. A description of the EECC and its proceedings appears at this page of the website of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the Hague-based institution that serves as the Commission's registrar.
As an arbitration tribunal determining post-war violations of international humanitarian law on a civil rather than a criminal basis, and proceeding with minimal resources and time, the EECC has understandably generated little coverage. It is therefore worth flagging that the EECC has addressed allegations of rape in several awards. (As a commissioner, I cannot comment, but merely quote from or refer to the awards.)
The following virtually identical “Comment on Rape” appears in the Partial Awards in the “Central Front” Claims (Ethiopia’s Claim 2; Eritrea’s Claims 2, 4, 6, 7, 8 & 12) (quoting from the latter, section D, pp. 9-11; footnote omitted, emphases supplied by the Commission):

36. The Commission considers that allegations of rape deserve separate general comment. Despite the incalculable suffering inflicted upon Ethiopian and Eritrean civilians alike in the course of this armed conflict, the Commission is gratified that there was no suggestion, much less evidence, that either Eritrea or Ethiopia used rape, forced pregnancy or other sexual violence as an instrument of war. Neither side alleged strategically systematic sexual violence against civilians in the course of the armed conflict and occupation of Central Front territories. Each side did, however, allege frequent rape of its women civilians by the other’s soldiers.

37. The Parties agree that rape of civilians by opposing or occupying forces is a violation of customary international law, as reflected in the Geneva Conventions. Under Common Article 3(1), States are obliged to ensure that women civilians are granted fundamental guarantees, including the prohibition against “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds,mutilation, cruel treatment and torture . . . outrages on personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” Article 27 of the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War ... provides:

"Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity.

"Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution or any form of indecent assault."

38. Article 76.1 of Protocol I adds: “Women shall be the object of special respect and shall be protected in particular against rape, forced prostitution and any other form of indecent assault.”

39. We turn now to the specific allegations and proffered evidence concerning rape of civilian women. Both Parties explained that rape is such a sensitive matter in their culture that victims are extremely unlikely to come forward, and when they or other witnesses do present testimony, the evidence available is likely to be far less detailed and explicit than for non-sexual offenses. The Commission accepts this, and has taken it into account in evaluating the evidence. To do otherwise would be to subscribe to the school of thought, now fortunately eroding, that rape is inevitable collateral damage in armed conflict.

40. Given these heightened cultural sensitivities, in addition to the typically secretive and hence unwitnessed nature of rape, the Commission has not required evidence of a pattern of frequent or pervasive rapes. The Commission reminds the Parties that, in its Partial Awards on Prisoners of War, it did not establish an invariable requirement of evidence of frequent or pervasive violations to prove liability. The relevant standard bears repeating ...:

"The Commission does not see its task to be the determination of liability of a Party for each individual incident of illegality suggested by the evidence. Rather, it is to determine liability for serious violations of the law by the Parties, which are usually illegal acts or omissions that were frequent or pervasive and consequently affected significant numbers of victims."

41. Rape, which by definition involves intentional and grievous harm to an individual civilian victim, is an illegal act that need not be frequent to support State responsibility. This is not to say that the Commission, which is not a criminal tribunal, could or has assessed government liability for isolated individual rapes or on the basis of entirely hearsay accounts. What the Commission has done is look for clear and convincing evidence of several rapes in specific geographic areas under specific circumstances.

42. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Commission has found such evidence, in the form of unrebutted prima facie cases, in the Central Front regions where large numbers of opposing troops were in closest proximity to civilian populations (disproportionately women, children and the elderly) for the longest periods of time – namely, Senafe Town in Eritrea and Irob Wereda in Ethiopia. Knowing, as they must, that such areas pose the greatest risk of opportunistic sexual violence by troops, Eritrea and Ethiopia were obligated to impose effective measures, as required by international humanitarian law, to prevent rape of civilian women. The clear and convincing evidence of several incidents of rape in these areas shows that, at a minimum, they failed to do so.

43. For other areas along the Central Front, although there was evidence of occasional rape (deserving of at least criminal investigation), the Commission did not find sufficient evidence on which to find either government liable for failing to protect civilian women from rape by its troops.

The main findings on rape appear in the Partial Awards in Eritrea’s Central Front Claims (paras 80-81); Ethiopia’s Central Front Claim (paras 83-84; Ethiopia’s Civilians Claim (paras 83-90); Ethiopia’s Western and Eastern Front Claims (paras 49-56); and Eritrea’s Prisoner of War Claim (paras. 139-142).

Striking hearts & minds in Somalia

Check out "Off Target," a Los Angeles Times commentary arguing that when the United States aims missiles at al Qaeda targets in places like Somalia -- as it did on March 3, 2008 -- it strikes resentment in law-abiding civilians.
The authors are 2 Human Rights Watch staffers: Jennifer Daskal (far left), senior counterterrorism counsel, and Leslie Lefkow (near left), senior researcher on the Horn of Africa. Stressing that the airstrikes missed their targets and "hit civilians instead," and offering a snapshot view of the turmoil between Somalia and Ethiopia, they warn that U.S. measures are resulting in

[a]n unsurprising growth in anti-Western and anti-American sentiment among Somalis who never supported radical Islamist movements before. ... Credible reports indicate that Islamist recruitment of Somali youth is growing, a backlash that will complicate U.S. counter-terrorism goals long into the future.

In the few days since this commentary was published, there've been additional news reports of dire straits in Somalia: deaths of Somali émigrés fleeing the country in precarious vessels; "runaway inflation"; and the kidnapping of 2 U.N. aid workers. Rather than continued efforts at "[e]liminating a few alleged terrorists," Daskal and Lefkow recommend a comprehensive, longer-term approach to problems in Somalia, an approach marked by:
►"ending Ethiopia's blank check to commit abuses"
►"conditioning support for Somalia's transitional government on evidence that it is no longer attacking civilians"
►"supporting and independent commission of inquiry to document the abuse"
►"meeting the humanitarian needs of thousands of internally displaced people"

(photo credits here and here; map credit here)

Ethnic conflict in Ethiopia

From Ethiopia, there are new reports of government troops forcing civilians out of their homes and burning and looting their property in the eastern Somali region, where the Ethiopian army is in active conflict with the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front. These reports are distressing evidence that Ethiopia’s innovative constitutional design, intended to prevent inter-ethnic strife, is not succeeding. With more than 80 ethnic groups and a history of inter-ethnic conflict, Ethiopia took the controversial step in its 1994 constitution of openly acknowledging ethnicity in its political structure. This openly ethnic model was defined by two elements: (1) “ethnic federalism,” the division of the country into regional states according to ethnicity, and (2) an inter-ethnic dispute resolution system centered in the upper house of the Ethiopian federal parliament, to which representatives are elected from each recognized ethnic group. The constitution also gave ethnic groups the rights to self-government, statehood, and even secession, through constitutionally defined processes. But a genuine trial of this experiment has yet to begin, for it can have no hope of succeeding without some modicum of good faith participation. Instead, the Ethiopian government has been criticized for oppression of ethnic groups that are inconveniently located near valuable resources or prone to political opposition, while the ONLF has relied on use of force in pursuit of its aspirations of independence.