AFP, New York | Wednesday
THE UN refugee agency has been slated for failing to do enough for victims in refugee camps after investigations by a human rights organisation revealed rampant sexual and domestic brutality against Burundian women in camps in Tanzania.
“Widespread sexual and domestic abuse have left many of these women physically battered, psychologically traumatised, and fearful of their lives,” said the New-York based Human Rights Watch in a 151-page report.
The two-year investigation “documents the UNHCR’s and the Tanzanian government’s failure to address violence against women refugees in a timely and effective manner, despite ample evidence that women’s lives were in danger in their homes and in the general camp community,” said the report, which blamed Burundian and Tanzanian men for the abuse.
HRW said “the full extent of the violence was impossible to gauge… (as) statistics on rape and domestic violence in the Tanzanian refugee camps are unreliable.”
In May 1999, the US-based humanitarian organisation Refugees International reported that “one in four Burundian refugee women in northern Tanzania had been the victim of rape or serious sexual harassment,” the HRW report said.
There are an estimated 380 000 Burundian refugees living in Tanzanian camps.
Many of the refugee women “bore scars and other physical evidence of beatings by their husbands or partners. Some had received such severe injuries that they had required hospital treatment,” HRW said.
Women were also “liable to be attacked while carrying out routine, daily tasks, such as gathering firewood, collecting vegetables, or searching for employment in local Tanzanian villages.”
The human rights watchdog welcomed recent UN efforts to address the problem, insisting, however, that they were insufficient.
“In 1998, we found that some UNHCR staff were defense or dismissive about the problem of violence against owmen refugees. Some even tended to blame the victims, while others saw such violence as unfortunate, but ‘normal’ or attributed sexual violence to Burundian culture. At that time, UNHCR lacked both community services with relevant training, and dedicated programs to assist refugee women.”
In a statement released in Geneva, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said it “shared their concern of these problems.”
“It is an ongoing problem,” Kris Janowski, UNHCR spokesman said, adding the refugee agency had launched information campaigns to promote awareness in the camps and among Tanzanian police of the violence.