Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Next Wednesday, 25 November, is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. It is then timely to raise the example of the extreme and wide-scale violence that has received too little media coverage; violence against women that is continuing to take place as part of a state policy in Darfur.

The Washington Post had an articled that was republished in Monday’s Australian which said, ‘Darfur is no longer a trendy global cause.’ That does not mean that the suffering of civilians, particularly women, has ceased. A horrific example of that sort of violence taking place in Darfur, as mentioned in the Australian, was near the al-Hamadiya camp in Zalingei where a woman was collecting firewood on 15 May this year. Three armed men in khaki uniforms raped her, stabbed her in the leg and left her bleeding. She spent 45 days in hospital. In 2003, the same woman had been raped and shot while fleeing her village. Rape is prevalent throughout the crisis in Darfur. Doctors Without Borders reported treating nearly 500 rape survivors from October 2004 to February 2005. In late 2006 the International Rescue Committee recorded that there had been more than 200 sexual assaults within a five-week period around one IDP camp.

Rebecca Hamilton, an Open Society Fellow, said that the international community did, to some extent, respond to this particular facet of the Darfur crises. She said in the New Republic:

A decentralized and largely informal network of GBV—

gender based violence—

support services grew painstakingly over five years, and it included some of the world’s most well-respected aid organizations. The U.N. relied on the network’s agencies to share information so that referral pathways could be developed to meet GBV survivors’ needs. As a result, women who braved the social stigma associated with reporting rape in Darfur’s Muslim society could receive medical care—from life-saving emergency assistance for injuries sustained during brutal attacks (often involving multiple assailants) to HIV/AIDS prophylactic treatment to psychological support.

However, even these support services, as fragile as they were, have been swept away. This occurred in March this year when the Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. His response to the indictment was to eject 13 international aid agencies from Darfur and to disband three other domestic relief groups. Khartoum claims that the organisations were sharing information with the International Criminal Court, which both the groups and the court deny. The void left, however, by the ousted organisations means that the emergency measures to help provide food, water and vital aid for the rape survivors is virtually decimated. As Ms Hamilton explained:

After the expulsions, the message was clear—work on GBV, and you’ll be kicked out—

by the government of Sudan. In dealing with this particularly despotic regime in Khartoum the international community is often faced with such dilemmas. Actions intended to affect the rulers often impact on the vulnerable as well. While Al Bashir is most definitely deserving of prosecution, clearly international policy needs to be modified to take in the plight of many Darfuri women not addressed by the expulsion issue.

I must say that to me it is extraordinary that the international community does not pay more attention to this crisis in Darfur. Since the beginning of 2000 we have seen more than 300,000 people killed, massive camps being set up in Chad and ongoing support of the Sudanese government for the Janjaweed militia, including their ability to hang around the camps set up by the United Nations to continue to perpetrate the gender based violence against the women of Darfur. These crimes are described by many of the victims as being not just sexually but racially motivated, and they have a particularly odious aspect to them if those two things are mixed together.

On Wednesday next week, when 300,000 white ribbons will be distributed in Australia for International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, I will be wearing one with special thoughts for the women of Darfur.