Examining women as victims of the 1994 Genocide

Although men don’t run away from the wrath of war and Genocide, women suffer from the effects of war and Genocide in an unusual way. Considering the specific dangers of war and Genocide during and after the Genocide, the Humanitarian law would have a specific way to handle the weak vessels. Suffering confronting women in wartime and Genocide, whose plight could be improved if the rules of humanitarian law were fully respected. Women face war as well as related resource materials and links to other sites concerning women. Countless women and girls were raped during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. As if this was not enough, some were pierced through their private parts until they died. The Humanitarian bodies should have a more iron handed way to handle such beast hearted people who did that in the Genocide. Any woman should be respected for every one has undergone the care of women. Those who were not catered by their mothers, at least they were born by a woman. So it would carry sense if we respected women though weak and edible to some. Crimes against females spread like wild fires, all over the world; women suffer the trauma of war - as widows or orphans, perhaps displaced from their homes. When it comes to Rwanda and the Tutsi Genocide, it is another abnormal case. In Rwanda, they were separated from loved ones and became victims of violence and threats. They were threatened by young boys, their fellow women and all categories of male age. Some Hutu men who tried to rescue them ended abusing them as their concubines. Others watched their brothers kill their children saying they had produced with a forbidden ethnic group. They were defenseless. In most cases they are civilians caught in the crossfire, and show astonishing resourcefulness and resilience in coping with the disintegration of their families, the loss of their home and their belongings and the destruction of their lives. On the other side we should remember that women can also be fighters, and as such should have the same respect as men when wounded or captured. They are also bound by the same rules prohibiting illegal acts against other fighters or civilians. International humanitarian law, which grants general protection to all war victims, regardless of gender, provides extensive specific protection for women in war. If these rules were better observed, the suffering faced by women in war would be greatly reduced. Rape and sexual assault were committed on a regular basis by Interahamwe militia in the Genocide. After the Genocide many Genocide survivors have suffered the consequences of the sexual violence. They are victims of trauma and the HIV/AIDS. Some of these crimes go unpunished. Agnés Mukangolorero was raped immediately after giving birth by interahamwe militia in the 1994 Genocide. Her bones and body were still weak that it has up to now affected her ways of living. She cannot move in normal way because she was shattered. He came and found me where I was lying, after one day of birth. He then pulled me and his colleague told him to leave me saying that it would be a curse to rape me after birth, but the man refused and went ahead to do what he wanted, she narrates with agony. She says no man can punish such a person in a way worth the crime, but the almighty God will do it. Mukangolorero says the incidence happened to her when she had not even had anything to eat, so it was adding an injury to an insult. No wonder such people do not live a happy life though think they did what they had longed for, for long. She says that after the 1994 Genocide she tested HIV positive and the government has helped her to take retroviral drugs. She says she has forgiven the people that killed her husband and family as well as the one who raped her. Mukangolorero says the 1994 Genocide left her as a helpless lady since she lost all her children and the entire family at once. She also says that she has to nurse the physical and internal wounds. Presently Rwanda has a number of Genocide widows, of whom some are suffering from trauma and others have no family. Nonetheless, the government under the ministry of gender has helped poor women to access savings through loans given by banks. It has also helped women to open different associations, co-operations so as to boost their development and run away from isolation.Ends