Inside Geneva
A podcast from SWI swissinfo.ch, a multilingual international public service media company from Switzerland, where Imogen Foulkes puts big questions facing the world to the experts working to tackle them in Switzerland’s international city.
Inside Geneva
Summer profiles: Recognising and supporting survivors of sexual violence
Conflict-related sexual violence has existed for as long as war itself – forever.
“It is a weapon of war. I would say it’s a weapon of mass destruction. It is really maximising harm,” says Esther Dingemans, Executive Director of the Global Survivors Fund.
In Inside Geneva’s final summer profile, we talk to a woman working to support survivors of sexual violence…from Sudan, to Ukraine, to Syria, or Chad.
“Young girls have been raped in front of their parents. Fathers are bound to chairs and forced to watch that. Or that an older – a woman in her 80s is raped in front of her son-in-law,” says Dingemans.
The 1949 Geneva Convention prohibits wartime rape and enforced prostitution. But even today there are few prosecutions. And what about the survivors?
“Survivors doubt themselves. Most victims of sexual violence will always question themselves. ‘Am I to blame?’” explains Dingemans.
The Global Survivors Fund works for reparation – not just money, but health care, counselling, and above all, recognition of the harm done.
“What is really important, particularly for survivors of sexual violence - which is often surrounded by so much shame and stigma - is that they are acknowledged, that harm has been done to them, and that it was not their fault,” concludes Dingemans.
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Host: Imogen Foulkes
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This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, Imogen Fowlkes, and this is a production from Swissinfo, the international public media company of Switzerland.
Speaker 1:In today's programme. It is a weapon of war. I would say it's a weapon of mass destruction. It is really maximizing harm.
Speaker 3:I was raped three times. That man raped me. This is the first day, and then, after five days, also another one come.
Speaker 1:Young girls are being raped in front of their parents. Fathers are bound to chairs and forced to watch that.
Speaker 4:Sexual violence happens everywhere, in all the conflicts in the world or in other situations of violence. It is really something that is widespread and that we see happening in times of peace and therefore even more in times of conflict.
Speaker 1:Survivors doubt themselves. Most victims of sexual violence will always question themselves.
Speaker 5:Am.
Speaker 1:I to blame, etc.
Speaker 5:They will say why did you go there? Either they will kill me or they will send me to my parents and they will kill me. And so the mother of three suffers in silence. The stigma prevents many of the victims of sexual abuse from seeking help.
Speaker 1:It's really, really important to constantly hear no, you are not to blame and harm has been done to you.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Imogen Fowkes. Now, as you may have guessed from those opening voices, today's podcast won't be an easy listen. Conflict-related sexual violence has been with us for as long as war has been with us forever, but unlike other atrocities, it has not until quite recently received much attention. The early Geneva Conventions didn't mention rape during war. The post-World War II Nuremberg trials did not prosecute anyone for rape, despite receiving harrowing testimony. In 1949, the fourth Geneva Convention did at last clearly prohibit wartime rape and enforced prostitution, and in 1998, the International Tribunal for Rwanda introduced the landmark term genocidal rape to define systematic assaults designed to destroy a particular community. But even now, when the issue of sexual violence in conflict is much more widely recognised, there are very few prosecutions, let alone convictions, and even if there were, those are aimed at punishment of the perpetrators. But what about recovery and reparation for the victims? In today's Inside Geneva, we bring you our final summer profile where we talk to a woman who has dedicated herself to precisely that reparation for survivors of sexual violence.
Speaker 1:My name is Esther Dingemans and I'm the director of the Global Survivors Fund. Our organization focuses on conflict-related sexual violence and on a particular aspect of that, and that is to ensure that survivors of this type of violence have access to reparation. The organization was founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureates Dr Dennis Mukwege and Ms Nadia Murad, and they got the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for their fight against sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Speaker 4:We want to take you now to Oslo, Norway, where the winner of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize is about to be announced. Let's listen in.
Speaker 3:Their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict. Dennis McVeigh is the helper who has devoted his life to defending these victims. Nadia Murad is the witness who tells of the abuses perpetrated against herself and others.
Speaker 1:And it was after they received the Nobel Prize that we set up the organisation, using that momentum to really put this issue of reparation on the agenda.
Speaker 2:Tell me a bit about yourself first. I mean, what did you want to be when you were growing up and what did you work at before this?
Speaker 1:I wanted to be a social worker and I studied also educational science, slash child psychology, and I actually started working as a social worker in Holland. But it was not my profession. I was really affected by the work, working with refugees from around the world who were extremely isolated in Holland and very traumatized often, and I felt I couldn't really do much as an individual but really felt we need a more systemic approach and that is where I decided to go abroad. That's 25 years ago. I started working in Guinea, Guinea-Conakry, working with Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees, particularly with girls. It was very interesting actually, because that was the time early. What was it? 2002, when the first reports of sexual violence and exploitation came out. You may remember that.
Speaker 4:Four young girls at a safe house outside Monrovia, the Liberian capital.
Speaker 5:Four young girls who've been the victims of sexual violence, whose future chances in life teeter between hope and despair.
Speaker 1:And often the victims of this were very vulnerable girls, and I recall at the time that we did not really use at all the word conflict-related sexual violence. We saw this as sexual exploitation, which it was a form of gender-based violence, but we didn't really ask ourselves the question why these girls? Why are they the ones being exploited? And digging a little bit deeper, we discovered, really, these girls have experienced something else. They've experienced slavery by armed groups in Sierra Leone and in Liberia, which had rendered them very, very destitute in a way, with very little self-worth and spat out by their families and communities, which actually showed that underlying problem of conflict-related sexual violence. And it was a bit that start of the humanitarian actors looking into this issue.
Speaker 2:It's interesting you say that that was the start of it. It took another 16 years before there were media headlines and a Nobel Peace Prize, particularly related, of course, to what happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo and to Yazidi women. But this is in no way a new phenomenon. Do you think it's been something that's been relegated to pretty low down the agenda of concern of what happens in a war?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Of course. We're now 25 years further in time and there is resolution, security Council resolutions, there is legislation that governs also government's responsibility to act on this issue, but it's still a relatively invisible problem, although we know it's happening. So I think sometimes we may also not choose to see it. I remember also very well after West Africa I moved on to work in Darfur and I was there for around three years and sexual violence was a characteristic really of the Janjaweets strategy to really destroy communities.
Speaker 4:These women among millions seeking shelter from the fighting in Darfur. However, even in these camps, they constantly face the threat of rape and violence, as do their daughters.
Speaker 1:It was, in a way, very, very visible. I remember that we were working in the camps and basically at the end of the day there would be our teams waiting for how many girls came back from collecting fire, would have been subjected to rape, to gang rape, etc. So we couldn't deny that it was happening, but still, the attention that it got at the time by the international community is actually really shocking. Shocking little. And still, still today, history is repeating itself In Darfur, definitely Exactly, and it's still not making headlines.
Speaker 4:The United Nations says sexual violence is increasingly being used as a weapon of war in Sudan. Attacks have become widespread as the army and paramilitary rapid support forces battle for control. Do you think?
Speaker 2:I mean, we are two women together, so perhaps we do have some concept of this. But do you think among governments there's a misunderstanding of what sexual violence and conflict actually is? You know that it's not about sex, it's about power and destruction?
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, and that's where the word sexual violence as a weapon of war comes in, because that is really what it is. Not always, it can also be incidental, but in most conflict zones you can really draw that conclusion just from looking at the patterns, the numbers, the strategies, the language that comes with it, the targeting of, often, girls of a particular age group I was just in Chad, actually, and that, of course, hosts many refugees from Sudan right now and, like we just said, history repeating itself. Girls were really saying we have been targeted because of our reproductive age, so that's girls from 13 up to 25, that seems to be the largest group. So it is. It is a weapon of war. I would say it's a weapon of mass destruction. It is really maximizing harm, not to individuals, but also to their family members and then to the entire ecosystem around a person and, unfortunately, quite effective because the harms are really long-lasting and incredibly profound.
Speaker 2:I know you've just come back from Gaziantep in Turkey. Can you tell me a little bit, kind of practically tell our listeners, what you do on one of these field missions?
Speaker 1:Sure, sure. This was because I was looking at a project that the Global Survivors Fund is supporting there, looking at a project that the Global Survivors Fund is supporting there. We support national actors, often local NGOs, that are working with survivors of sexual violence In Gaziantep. These are survivors of sexual violence, either committed by ISIS, but most often by the Syrian regime in the detention centres. It has been two years, but Fauzia Khalaf says she can't forget watching government soldiers rape and kill four of her daughters. So these are refugees that have fled Syria and they are now in Gaziantep and surrounding cities.
Speaker 1:So our work is around reparation. Maybe I can just explain a little bit about that. So reparation is in fact a right. It is a right for every person that has suffered a human rights violation, and it can take different shapes. It can take the form of that's. The most known is financial compensation, but it's much more than that. It's also about rehabilitation. So medical services, psychological services, but also acknowledgement. What is really important, particularly for survivors of sexual violence that is often surrounded by so much shame and stigma, is to be acknowledged that harm has been done to them and that it was not their fault.
Speaker 1:So our work evolves around convincing governments actually to take up the responsibility to set up what we call domestic reparation programs to provide all of these measures to survivors of human rights violations. However, there's also governments that are not there yet and it's very unlikely that in the foreseeable future they will take up their responsibility. And that is where Syria comes in. In the next period we will not see a national reparation program in Syria. So what we then do is we support civil society organizations in providing what we call interim reparative measures. So they very much look like reparation. It's about financial compensation, livelihood support, education, psychological care, fistula operations, but also commemoration initiatives. So that's acknowledgement while we continue to push at an international level for government action. So our project there supports 800 survivors of sexual violence, many of them men, but also women, and often they have experienced years and years of sexual violence and other forms of torture.
Speaker 2:So you were talking about the importance just of acknowledgement, and it's interesting I have interviewed a few survivors of torture and many of them have said to me almost like the first step towards some form of healing is to sit down with somebody who says what happened to you was wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is that an experience you have as well in your work, yeah, and I think it's something very common, not only in my work but for all victims of sexual violence, no matter whether it is in conflict or in peace settings. Survivors doubt themselves. Most victims of sexual violence will always question themselves Am I to blame, etc. And it's really really important to constantly hear no, you are not to blame and harm has been done to you, and that can be particularly important when the perpetrator was, for example, of an enemy group. If we look at Ukraine at the moment, that really resonates what you just said with what I hear from survivors in Ukraine. They need to hear the harm has been done to you, which will also help them to protect themselves from being accused of being used but also siding with the enemy somehow.
Speaker 4:A quiet rural neighbourhood shattered by barbaric violence.
Speaker 1:A soldier entered our house. My husband and I were there At gunpoint. He took me to a neighboring house. He was ordering me take your clothes off or I'll shoot you.
Speaker 1:Then he started raping me, and maybe just on that one. So it's very important that they hear this, not only from first responders, but also publicly, and in that respect, I think the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenskaya, is a good example, because she understood this and very early in the conflict, she spoke out publicly on TV, on conferences, saying exactly that you're heard, you're not to blame and you have the right to be supported, the right to compensation. We're actually working with Ukrainian government on providing compensation, financial compensation to survivors, which is also not only about the material aspect right, it is also about that message Harm has been done to you and therefore we are supporting you, compensating you.
Speaker 2:I can imagine. The reparation, though, must also help towards healing some of the long-term consequences, because, you know, you often think okay, you're attacked or you're injured or you're raped in war, and that happens on a day and then it's over. But it's just not like that at all, is it?
Speaker 1:no, the the the patterns are of sexual violence are particularly brutal, I would say, and that is exactly with the intention to create maximum impact or maximum harm. So what that means? It means that young girls are being raped in front of their parents, that fathers are bound to chairs and forced to watch that, or that an older woman in her 80s is raped in front of her son-in-law, and this reminds me, actually, of someone who told me exactly that in Congo. So the scars are really profound. The psychological scars, because it does a lot in a family when that happens. And then there's, of course, sexual slavery. We work with girls that were victims of Boko Haram.
Speaker 5:Boko Haram. Roughly translated, it means Western education is a sin. In April it snatched around 276 schoolgirls from the northeastern town of Chubok. While dozens have escaped, more than 200 are still in captivity nearly six months later.
Speaker 1:And they were often taken into captivity at a very young age and stayed in captivity for years. So then we talk about years and years of rape, but also other hardship, same for the Yazidi community. So it is rare that it is an incidental rape, and of course there is no hierarchy in harms, but, yes, the scars last, sometimes generations, there's entire generations that are born from rape, who often suffer also again the same stigmatization that their mothers did.
Speaker 2:You did say earlier that reparation doesn't necessarily always mean money. It can be a lot of different things. It is difficult for survivors to talk and be open about what happened to them. But when you do talk to them, what did they say they want? Because surely that must be the most important thing is for them to steer their, their future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're saying something very crucial there and that is for them to steer, because reparation is not only about, let's say, the the product. It's also about the process, and survivors of sexual violence have sexual violence, have been stripped of all autonomy right. So for them to be really engaging in the process of defining what should reparation actually look like is really important. Maybe I can share with you the example of Nigeria. So we work in Nigeria with girls that were held captive by Boko Haram and we asked them or our partners, I should say, the question like, what does reparation look like for you? And they said for us, it's about education.
Speaker 1:They were captured because they were going to school. That was part of Boko Haram's ideology. So for them, going back to school, they were saying, going back to school is a form of reparation because it shows our defiance towards Boko Haram. So, like that, it can be very different in every context and that's, I think, important. Ask survivors what does it mean for you? There will be commonalities, but there's also very different desires by different survivor groups.
Speaker 2:The first time I heard about systematic rape as a weapon of war was when I was starting out in journalism, and that was in Bosnia. We hear more about it now. Do you think it's happening more, or are we?
Speaker 1:simply more aware? I think it is very hard to give an exact answer to that question, in all fairness, but I would lean towards we are more aware. It's true that there is hardly any conflict that I can think of where sexual violence has not been used, but I do think it is because we now have it on our radar, which is a positive thing. When there is a conflict, there are now activists, but also governments, that ask themselves the question what happened to the women and to the men? Because, of course, sexual violence can affect men and boys as well. So I think we are more aware.
Speaker 1:I also fear that we're only seeing a tip of the iceberg still. It's extremely hard, still today, for a survivor to come forward and seek help. Maybe just coming back to Chad, I was there a few weeks ago and we were talking with victims of sexual violence from Sudan, quite young girls, teenage girls, and some of them told us that they had not spoken to anyone yet about what had happened to them. They had not had received any medical care, and one girl said that her parents didn't even know. They're really, really still trying to hide it, fearing retaliation, fearing the consequences that it will have on their family, on their status, etc.
Speaker 2:I mean fearing they might be isolated for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1:maybe yes, and that is exactly, which, unfortunately, is sometimes a reality.
Speaker 1:I do want to add there the other side, and that is that we see that survivors some survivors are actually more outspoken than they were 20 years ago, and for me, actually an eye-opening moment here was Pansy Hospital in DRC in Congo, of which Dr Dennis Mugwege, our founder, who we spoke about, is the medical director, and when I first came to that hospital, I was really struck by the fact that survivors there of sexual violence were standing on stage taking the microphone and saying, yes, I've been raped and yes, this is a child, this is my child and she's born of rape, but I'm proud of her and I'm proud of myself, and I had not in all of these years working with survivors in any other context. I had seen that power also and that space that survivors took, but also thanks to a very enabling environment, and that's a positive thing. I think we're seeing that more and more and in our work we've really tried also to support survivor networks and create that space so they can amplify their own voices.
Speaker 2:Going forward, then what key things would you like to see Starting, apart from men stopping doing this?
Speaker 1:That, first of all, that would be a very good thing, and I think there is actually a lot of work to be done. It's not the area where we work on masculinities and gender norms directly, but it is really important work all around the world, not limited to conflict settings, of course, ending impunity. At some point, this impunity has to be stopped. Unfortunately, we are seeing the contrary. We just spoke about Sudan, the history repeating itself, which actually is very much linked to reparation as well, because one form of reparation is guarantees of non-repetition. But what we saw in Sudan was the opposite. It was actually a guarantee of crimes committed again, because the Janjawee, the perpetrators at the time, of crimes committed again because the Janjawee, the perpetrators at the time, were principally upgraded into the Sudanese army. So full impunity.
Speaker 1:I think there was a handful of court cases on sexual violence committed in Darfur, with fewer successful convictions, if any at all. And this is around the world. We, this is around the world. We see it in guatemala, we see it in nepal, we see it everywhere. So that's one very big thing, of course, because of our work, but I also truly believe in reparation. I listen to survivors over and over again saying this is something that we need to focus on. It is something that we're not looking at right now enough. It's usually still more about the prevention and the response, but that essential part of reparation being heard, being compensated, enabling people to rebuild their lives. That is something that I think we're making gains, but there's still a lot of work to do there.
Speaker 2:A lot of work indeed. My thanks to Esther Dingemans for sharing with us everything she and her colleagues are doing. If you have been affected by what you heard today and would like to contact the Global Survivors Fund, you can find them at wwwglobalsurvivorsfundorg. And if you want to comment or review this or any other episode of Inside Geneva, you can do that wherever you get your podcasts, or write to us at insidegeneva at swissinfoch. Don't forget to tune in next week for a special edition from the World Trade Organization where we hear why re-globalization is the new buzzword and why WTO officials think better, fairer trade can benefit all of us, from closing the poverty gap to tackling climate change. I'm Imogen Folks. Thanks again for joining us on Inside Geneva. Us and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our previous episodes, how the International Red Cross unites prisoners of war with their families, or why survivors of human rights violations turn to the UN in Geneva for justice. I'm Imogen Folks. Thanks again for listening.
