Even the most well resourced nation is almost always caught off guard by an emergency. An emergency can cause a humanitarian crisis which leads to a total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from conflict. In many cases, an international response is required.
The year 2010, on the 20th of January, Haiti was struck by a devastating earthquake. Here was a country the international news agencies affectionately called the poorest country in the western hemisphere, already crippled by poor governance, weak infrastructure and social services, being torn apart by a natural disaster.
As ever in human society, women and children bear the brunt of it all, as within a week of the disaster reports of sexual violence started to filter through. The appreciation of gender based violence (GBV) in emergencies is best done during these times of crisis.
GBV in emergencies is often neglected and put aside, but why do we care about it? We care because emergencies can happen anywhere and anytime. As such, it is imperative that countries have in place setups that prepare for any emergency. Why do we look at GBV and not just violence in these situations? It is because women and girls are the most vulnerable members of society in such times.
The simplest line of thought in my youthful mind is that our moral fibre as beings just does not allow us to be harmful or watch the harming of the very people we call mothers of our very existence. I am not much of a member of the praying kind but somebody say ‘Amen!’
Think of the women that get raped daily in the eastern DR Congo. Sexual violence has been used there as a weapon of war since 1996! It is so bad that it is known as the rape capital of the world. It is estimated that many as 400,000 rape survivors live there today.
Earlier this year, popular video sharing website YouTube recorded the most viral video ever in the form of Uganda’s rebel leader Joseph Kony’s warfare tactics. Whether you liked it or not, what matters is that at least 100 million people watched it in just 6 days! This is a 30 minute video which by the way has competition for the top ten viral accolade in the form of 3 minute videos from your Lady Gaga’s and Justin Bieber’s. In one instance during the video, Kony is immortalised holding on to young girls as if they were his seasoned concubines! For me, that moment in that video single handed illustrated how vulnerable girls are.
My main concern right now are places without conflict and how ill-preparedness could leave a country found wanting. Following the 2007-2008 post election violence in Kenya, apart from the over 1000 that died, over 3000 cases from rape, to defilement, sodomy, incest and abduction were recorded by the police.
Who knows about the unrecorded ones? That is the thing about GBV – it is difficult to report by survivors and thus many cases go unrecorded. As Kenya braces for elections in 2013, risk of a repeat violence has become a frequent topic of conversation.
Conflict brings with it the displacement of people. Back in Haiti, the number of internally displaced people which stood at 1,5 million then has only been reduced to 400,000. While that is great news, it is still a huge figure to deal with. In Kenya, the number then was over 350,000.
Displaced people are followed by all sorts of social problems and women and girls become easy targets for sexual violence.
As hard as GBV is to report, one thing sure cannot be hidden – pregnancy. The most notable thing in emergencies is that women don’t stop getting pregnant. This is where legendary images of Somali women and their kids are splashed on front pages of newspapers or that stranded child crawling in a Sudanese landscape with a vulture lurking nearby.
Responding to GBV must be recognized as an urgent, lifesaving concern in emergencies, and addressed as a core element of disaster response. Input has to be focused on human, technical, material and financial resources dedicated to it in the first days of an emergency.
Image: USAID/Leah Werchick
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