Most child refugees in Africa's Great Lakes sexually abused
Pastor Dale Morgan
Tuesday February 27, 5:15 AM
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Most child refugees in Africa's Great Lakes sexually abused*
More than 50 percent of children in refugee camps around Africa's
volatile Great Lakes area have experienced some form of sexual abuse, a
humanitarian group said in report Monday.
World Vision said more than half of about 1.4 million children displaced
by a string of wars in one of the world's most violent regions were
victims of sexual exploitation and needed urgent help.
"The forms of abuse experienced include rape, attempted rape and threat
to be raped," according to the report, titled: "The future in our hands:
Children displaced by conflicts in Africas Great Lakes Region."
"Children are compelled to have sex in exchange of money to go to
hospital, to buy food, even sometimes for their families," added the
report released in Ugandan capital Kampala.
"The high vulnerability of girls to sexual abuse and exploitation has
roots in the social-cultural relations between male and females," the
report added.
In some communities, people even believe that having sex with virgins
helps cure deadly HIV/AIDS, which is sweeping across the region.
World Vision Regional Coordinator Valarie Kamatsiko said the situation
would worsen if the authorities did not step in.
"Sexual abuse was prevalent among displaced children in the camps that
were targeted (for study). The situation of children in these camps is
precarious," she said at the launch in Kampala.
The report, compiled from data collected in camps in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi, Tanzania, northern Uganda and Rwanda,
said widespread poverty made children vulnerable to abuses.
The study was compiled from 304 questionnaires that were distributed to
children between 10 and 18 years in age.
It said fellow refugees, security forces, teachers, medical and aid
workers, are to blame for many of the abuses.
"Data indicates that it is people known to children, people with whom
they closely interact with on a daily basis and trust that sexually
abuse them," the report explained.
World Vision pressed regional governments to introduce policies to
protect and help displaced people, to ensure that children have access
to basic health care and education, and to reunite and integrate
children with their families.
The report comes more than two months after African leaders signed a
landmark two-billion-dollar (1.5-billion-euro) security and development
pact in Nairobi to help forestall fresh violence in the region.
Of the package, 1.25 billion dollars will target economic development
and regional integration and 467 million dollars will be for internally
displaced people and social services' programmes.
Some 225 million dollars will be used for security with 23 million
dollars for democracy and good governance initiatives.
Millions of people have been killed and millions more displaced by years
of unrest in the Great Lakes, the theater for Rwanda's 1994 genocide,
Burundi's civil war and the 1998-2003 conflict that embroiled the DRC
and drew in a dozen other African nations.
Meanwhile in northern Uganda, a two decade conflict between the
government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels has displaced about
two million people, 80 percent of them women and children.