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Factbook on Global Sexual
Exploitation
Rwanda
Organized and
Institutionalized Sexual Exploitation and Violence
Rape was used as an act of terrorism on thousands
of women during the genocide in Rwanda. Only one person has been charged with the rapes
against women. The women are systematically told, "You should be glad that
you’re alive." (Connie Ngondi, executive director of Kenya's branch of the
International Commission of Jurists, Arusha-based U.N. tribunal, Muringi, "Seeking
Gender Role in International Court Debate," United Nations, 12 August 1997)
Rape
has been defined as a genocidal crime for the first time by an international tribunal.
United Nations judges also said that sexual violence is not limited to "physical
invasion" of the body and may not even require physical contact. Acts of sexual
violence brutally wielded during Rwanda's 1994 bloodbath "constitute genocide, the
same as any other act," Judge Laity Kama of Senegal said as he read nine guilty
judgments against a former Rwandan village mayor, Jean-Paul Akayesu. Women's groups hailed
the decision as historic, saying it would pave the way for prosecuting crimes of sexual
violence committed in the course of armed conflict.
Akayesu was found guilty of genocide, murder, rape and torture in
presiding over the slaughter of 2,000 minority Tutsis who had sought his protection. While
no one accused Akayesu of personally raping any women, the court ruled he was criminally
responsible because he witnessed and encouraged the sexual violence of militiamen and
police. Acts of sexual violence generally were accompanied by explicit threats of death or
bodily harm, and that meant Tutsi women lived in constant fear, the court said. (Karin
Davies, Associated Press, 2 September 1998)
Factbook Table of Contents
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Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation
Donna M. Hughes, Laura Joy Sporcic, Nadine Z. Mendelsohn and Vanessa Chirgwin
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