War on Women in South Sudan

Many people do not know about the current crisis in South Sudan, and even fewer know how severely it is affecting women. Sudan has had a long history of conflict, and following its horrific twenty five year civil war, the newly independent South Sudanese hoped for aid, freedom, and security. However, in December of 2013, just over two years after its independence, South Sudan devolved into conflict. President Salva Kiir accused his vice president Reik Machar of orchestrating a coup, and when Machar denied the coup the fragile new country became the battleground for widespreadarmed conflict.  In the early summer of 2015, government forces launched another attack to recapture rebel lands, prolonging and intensifying this civil war. Since this new offensive, the treatment of women has become more abominable than ever; the stories of rape, murder, and torture are heart wrenching.

Women are mainly brutalized in two places, their villages and the displacement camps. The violence that government soldiers and rebel militia alike inflict on women in their villages is unparalleled. Human Rights Watch documents South Sudanese women saying that rape is “just a normal thing.” Anna is a victim of rape at the hands of a government soldier, however the sheer suffering that she experienced goes far beyond that. Anna was forced at gunpoint to watch soldiers gang rape and torture her two daughters. They killed her husband while he was trying to protect her cattle, because cattle are a symbol of pride and wealth, and shot her six year old step son in his bed. The soldiers then gang raped her and her other daughter. She did not plead for help or cry out because she said that “if you opened your mouth they would kill you.”

In an attempt to escape the horrors they will face at home, many women and children flee to UN displacement camps. But these displacement camps don’t offer the security one would hope they would. Mercy Corps writes that the camps “were not designed to host this many people for so long,” so food and shelter are unstable. In order to keep themselves and their families alive, many women venture into the bushes, a grassy desert landscape, to collect firewood to sell at the camps. The bushes are outside of the camp's jurisdiction, and as a result many women fall prey to crimes of sexual assault there.

The list of horror stories is endless, and everyday another atrocity occurs. Women and girls of all ages continue to be dehumanized and tortured at almost every encounter with a combatant. The use of rape and brutality of women as a tool, and in some demented cases a prize, of war is ingrained into this culture. This connects to Ms. Griffin’s “Feminist Utopia” that we recently discussed, where in order to escape abuse and violence women retreat into an almost, save male children, all-female society. Sadly, the women in South Sudan do not have that option, and have no choice but to carry on despite what they've been subjected to. In terms of our initial discussion on gender terminology and Middlesex where we saw examples of our society poorly treating people who are not definitively male or female, this story relates in that the South Sudanese government and social norms are treating women just as poorly and doing nothing to alleviate their suffering.

Discussion questions:

- Do you think that there is any hope for the brutality of women to be left out of future armed conflicts, specifically conflicts in that region? What would have to change in order for that to happen?

- Do you think it is the international community’s place to respond to such widespread violation of human rights?

- One victim of rape stated that if she was able to reunite with her husband, she would tell him that she was raped but “will understand if he leaves her.” How do you think this perspective plays into the sexual violence occurring, if at all?