I got an e-mail from a friend today indicating that the International Rescue Committee is trying to get this story publicized as widely as possible, hoping to solicit a more active response from governments and the UN:

Increased Sexual Assaults Signal Darfur’s Downward Slide

23 Aug 2006 - More than 200 women have been sexually assaulted in the last five weeks alone around Darfur’s largest displaced camp, Kalma, an alarming trend that is yet another sign of the region’s plummeting security situation.

The situation is so dire that about 300 women convened a meeting in Kalma on Aug. 7 to plead for more help from the outside world -- particularly from African Union troops mandated to protect civilians. 

 The figures presented in the report are staggering - an increase of in the rate of sexual assaults from 1 a week to 40, on average in Kalma camp.  The last five weeks have been horrible, but when you think about it, the situation before was pretty awful, too.  Think about how much fear there is around the threat of rape in the US, a country that experiences a reported rape rate of 0.4 rapes per 1,000 people on an annual basis.  I don't want to go drawing too many comparisons, because definitions (e.g. 'rape' vs. 'sexual assault') are just one difficulty here, but Kalma camp has a population of about 91,000 people,¹ so at the previous rate of 4 assaults per month at most, the rate per 1,000 people would have been .04.  Over the past five weeks, the rate of sexual assault has been 2.19 per 1,000 people - 5 times the annual rate for the entire the US and an increase of 50 times over the previous rate in Kalma.

I probably should've stayed away from the statistics, I'm sure I've screwed something up, either in calculations or comparison.   The IRC report illustrates the stark choice the women in Kalma camp have made.  They must leave the camp to collect firewood to cook with, a fact that is known by their attackers, who then can lie in wait for the women miles outside the camp:

If men went instead, they would be killed. “We … have chosen to risk being raped rather than let the men risk being killed,” one woman said at the Aug. 7 meeting

Women and girls have also been physically assaulted on their trips to gather firewood, at nearly the same rate as reported sexual assaults.  The report says that increased 'firewood patrols' by African Union peacekeeping forces are needed.  The number of such patrols has declined from a peak of three patrols per week - the way the report is written it isn't entirely clear whether there is one patrol per week now, or there has only been one patrol in total since mid-April.  What's interesting to me, in light of my research, is that it also isn't entirely clear whether the women asked for increased firewood patrols in their meeting, or whether this is a need identified by the IRC.  

This highlights yet again the need for stringent standards of behaviour on the part of peacekeeping forces.  Women who rely on peacekeepers for protection from attacks while miles away from camp collecting firewood must be able to trust that the peacekeepers themselves will not attempt to sexually assault or exploit them.  Sadly, this is not case: Refugees International has reported that there have been allegations of sexual abuse made against peacekeepers in Darfur.   RI commends the African Union for the speed of its response to these allegations, but is critical of the fact that systems were not put in place from the start of the mission to prevent abuses occurring.  It's discouraging that no prevention and protection system was put in place, particularly in light of the work that the UN has done in recent years to address its own systemic problems with abuse in peacekeeping missions, and the fact that few peacekeeping missions since the late 1990s have gone without allegations of sexual abuse against peacekeepers - it is a known risk that needs to be addressed.

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^₁ According to this recent position posting for a job in the Sudan

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