Memories continue to haunt those who suffered under the brutality of war. Children who witnessed atrocities and were themselves subjected to war crimes will struggle to cope with everyday life. Most live in abject poverty and face a future without prospect. The war these children faced is far from over.
Plan International released a study today that claims two-thirds of war orphans are at a high risk of suicide. Many have contracted HIV/AIDS. The study looked at 1,000 children aged 8 to 16 in six west African countries and revealed a cycle of poverty, prostitution, and sexually transmitted disease.
In Koindu, Sierra Leone, 16 year old Theresa lost her parents during the civil war. She's been in and out of refugee camps but now lives with her aunt. She sold her body to feed herself and now has a two-year old son. The father is not known.
"I feel like I have no purpose, like there is no meaning to it," she told IRIN news. "I have no idea who the child's father is. I have to struggle just to get clothes for us. I beg to eat."
On June 19, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution 1820 condemning sexual violence against women and girls as a tacit weapon of war that serves to “to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group.” The resolution in itself is a recognition of the culture of impunity that often surrounds the abuse women and girls suffer. However, much is to be done.
Last year, Dr.Yakin Erturk, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women released a thematic report (see A/HRC/4/34) on how culture based discourse fragment human rights issues facing women as a problem of the “other.” "We don't need campaigns. We need action," she says in a openDemocracy podcast.
Erturk says there is an increasing trend to view violence against women as a cultural phenomenon via cultural relativism especially in countries of the south. In the north, she says cultural essentialism promotes an image that violence against women is a problem of the south. These trends diverge from universal human rights standards and should not be categorized as “minority” issues.
Indeed, Theras’ story leads credence to this view. War, poverty, and the dissolution of social relations are instrumental.
"People have lost their cultural values and their sense of community," Lawrence James, a councilor who used to work in Koindu, tells IRIN news. He explains the lack of support for war orphans is a consequence of the breakdown of social relations in communities destroyed by war coupled with abject poverty.
Rape and sexual violence orchestrated towards women and girls is often used as tool to rip apart these communities. The former commander of UN peacekeeping troops in eastern Congo, Major-General Patrick Cammaert, says women and girls are specifically targeted to destroy communities.
