ARMED CONFLICT AND GENDER: THE IMPACT, STRATEGIES, AND NEEDS OF WOMEN

Jacob Waiswa
Situation Health Analyst
Dishma-Inc.
P.O. Box 8885,
Kampala-Uganda
Tel. +256392614655/+256752542504
dishma.imhs@gmail.com
www.situationhealthanalysis.blogspot.com


Introduction:
Armed conflict is direct confrontation between two or more parties, and within a state or between states reinforced by fatal weaponry.

Gender is a term used to refer to aspects surrounding the fact that one is a man or woman, boy or girl. WHO (2011) defines gender as socially constructed roles, behavior, activities and attributes that a particular society considers appropriate for men and women. The distinct roles and behavior may give rise to gender inequalities.

The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action calls on governments, the international community, and civil society –including non-government organizations and private sector to take action in relation to the effects of conflict and other kinds of conflict on women (Gardam and Charlesworth, 2000:149).

How Armed Conflict Affects Women and Men Differently:
Indeed armed conflict affects men and women differently due to existing gender roles, perception and vulnerabilities.

Diminished Economic Roles of Women
Women in Uganda represent 80% of the agricultural labor force, responsible for 80% of food crop production, and 60% cash crop production. Such important contribution from women is undermined by armed conflict.

During that time, they are not in position to gather food to the family let alone the failure to contribute to the countries economic development. On top of the lack of incomes from agricultural produce, inflation becomes the order of the day –which worsens the poverty situation at household level.

The 1996 armed conflicts in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) caused an economic and social crisis –exacerbating poverty and the miserable living conditions of the most vulnerable groups. Reports indicate that a third of children under 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition (stunting), and 13 percent are affected by acute global malnutrition.

Annual gross domestic product per capita is US$119. As a consequence the country ranks 167th of 177 countries in the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Program (WFP, 2011). Victims mentioned for priority actions were women and children returnees, not men.

Traditionally, men are looked as bread winners. Such a role too is affected during armed conflict. Men flee away and leave the highly dependent women and children at the mercy of no one. Some of the men die in war and their bodies never accounted for nor even have the families of the deceased compensated.

The usually uneducated women are left to head families under very difficult conditions –including ensuring security for the remaining family members, their health and nutritional requirements. And, where such cannot be found, as expected in an armed conflict, they die of starvation or killed by warring groups.

Effect on Food Security
The children –who sit back home waiting for the mothers to return with food are put in difficult position during armed conflict –as they can no longer fend for their families. Malnutrition becomes the order of the day for them.

It was estimated that about 2.3 million children are chronically malnourished –a condition that affects their brains. (Wandera & Mashoo 2011). While the men who often act as treasurers in families run away with the family treasury, the poor women are left in dilemma, as hardly will they afford the highly priced food stuffs on the market during war time.

Economic sanctions add to the menace of economically handicapped and starving family. UN resolution VII provides for sanctions against any country considered to be a threat to international peace and security. Economic embargo on Iraq against the aggressive and defiant Saddam Hussein was only felt the civilian population in the forms of starvation.

Article 23 and 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention imposes obligation on the occupying states to provide protection and essential supplies to civilian population. However, this is often far from reality, as most often war damage is indiscriminate, and reparations are imposed on the vanquished with little regard to the detailed effect on the nation –wholesomely.

Culture and Femininity in Armed Conflict
Cultural orients women to be submissive and not-at-all aggressive. The business of aggression is left to men. While men can fight their way or defend themselves to safety, women will be left to meet the inhuman actions of militant groups and warring armies.

Those, in most cases, are subjected women to rape or forced marriage to senior ranking military officials as gifts or loots-to-share. According to UN report on the war in DRC, raping women –including minors was used as a terror tool. Ugandan was among those implicated in the murder of hundreds of Congolese civilians –on top of raping them, and burning some others, alive (Tabu, 2010).

An estimated 822 aged between 13 and 25 were raped in Bunia (MSF, 2003 in Tabu Report, 2010). In 2005, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported 1, 292 women –who were victims of sexual violence and as many again in the first six months of 2006 (MSF, 2006).

Forced impregnation were reported as highly eminent on Rwandan women (Green, 2002). With reports of doubled population since 1995, one wonders whether such pregnancies could have a link it –alongside the notion that it (doubled population) was an act of racial survival for the Tutsi. Children of rape have been reported with an estimated 2000 to 5000 women having given birth, and children immediately labeled: unwanted children.

Men also raped!
Reports from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) also indicated the men were raping fellow men as a war humiliating weapon. That, though, is (or was) an isolated case compared to reports about women raped during armed conflict.

That was confirmed in the New York Times (2009) that armed men broke into Kazungu Ziwa’s hut, placed a machete on his throat and pulled his trousers down. “…they raped me,” he said. “It was horrible, physically. I was dizzy. My thoughts just left me.” That reduced men like Ziwa into “women” –a feeling that is traumatic enough for an African man -who strongly believes that man is man, not woman.

Effects of Men Involvement in War
Traditionally, it is strong men who are called upon to engage in an open war. The direct costs of war are higher for men than women because of men's front line role during armed conflicts. Even in armies –where women are part, facing the enemy is the role of the man.

When war is over so many men will be killed and many women widowed. Women will be left without companions –something that denies them of their natural sex rights. The war in Iraq left the country with more than one million war widows. A strategy had to be developed to help meet their sex rights, among other things.

Aggression and War-mongering
From the sociological perspective, men tend to be more aggressive than women in aspects to do with manifestation of power and in war decision making that turn out to be disastrous to mostly women and children (as often reported). Probably, if they participate in decision making, being the most sensitive ones to safety concerns, they would have worked to prevent war.

For men, not until they suffer from combat burn-out would they rethink war or condemn it. The United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 recognizes that women and girls are most affected by armed conflict and, thus, calls for their participation in decision making.

Unconditional ‘Marriage’ to Warlords
As a means to negotiate safety, women often give in to their captors and offer them sex for pleasure and celebration of victory, and conditionally or unconditionally become their ‘wives.’ As they are forced to marry elsewhere, they are disengaged from their families (husband and children) they are most attached to. It is never possible to deal with the lost bond. In addition to the sex aggression and trauma that characterize armed conflicts, they suffer from chronic depression and anxieties resulting from lost family contact.

Separation Due to War
Men's fate as an outcome of separation due to war is not as depressing to them as culturally can be acceptably so to women. Men are traditionally backed to always find new wives when they need to, and to expand the family size.

At the end of the war such is understood and acceptable, but not if it were women in men's position. The women (wives) will automatically lose the former husbands –who hardily stomach the fact that his their wives were forced to marry and bare children elsewhere.

Safety Concerns in Armed Conflict
Men –who are mostly active politically will run away from hostile environments to save their dear lives –leaving women and children behind to pay for their (men's) sins in the hands of the enemy. Unless the international humanitarian law took its course, the remaining family would be used to lure back the wanted politician.

Brigadier Smith Opon Acak, a former senior army officer in Obote government was forced to return after years away from his family. But upon arrival, he met his death at the hands of the notorious NRA/M government soldiers.

One the other hand, the traditional nature of men (to be brave) turns them into defensive posts for families. In case of an attack on the family, they will fight to see it safe. However, when they fail, they are killed –leaving behind fatherless and husband-less household.

Families will be economically handicapped –unable to meet day-to-day bills for a functioning family life. It can be a horrible beginning for the family after the event. To humiliate the husbands and fathers, especially the peaceful ones, attackers could resort to raping wives and daughters in their presence.

Spread of HIV/AIDS
Because in armed conflict, rape is the order of the day, rather than negotiation for sex between men and women, or soldiers and their women captors, it is likely that they will catch HIV/AIDS. One HIV positive soldier could spread the infection to a thousand women in an area occupied by his militant or fighting group.

And the absence of reproductive health services even makes the situation worse. Services such as access to condoms and HIV testing will be hard-to-reach during conflict time, as health services like the entire economy would have collapsed. 1 in 3 women were raped in Northern Kivu, and over 30 of them have been infected with HIV/AIDS.

Unlike men, who are privileged with access to male condoms and can determine to use them or not, women condoms are rare on the market and not freely accessible by them. In armed conflict where negotiation for sex simply does not exist, women can hardly protect themselves from HIV/AIDS.

Henceforth, they are most likely to catch it than men let alone the other physiological vulnerability factor (s) like larger surface area of the vagina that eases HIV infection. No wonder, three young women are infected with AIDS for every one young man in Africa (Ezekwesil, 2011).

Media for Women in Armed, not Men
Majority media practitioners are women –who are most visible at conflict sites and have been very instrumental in reporting women concerns in armed conflict. Women journalists hardly report the costs of war on men –not even the male soldiers killed. That makes it difficult for the international community to account for the men lost in armed conflict side-by-side with women and children killed and are reported in the media.

Strategies for Peace in the Great Lakes Region:
The strategies for peace in the great lakes region are political, social, economic, regional and global.

Decentralized or Federalized System of Governance
Since Mobutu Sese Seko's time as President in Kinshasha, his government was highly centralized as a means to tighten his authority and be felt in the fragile country. Towards the end of his regime, his authority leaned most towards the capital only –while the rest of the country was with no felt authority. Such gave room for demands of autonomy and power in places like Kivu and Kisangani.

The size of the country too made control of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) territory difficult. It emerges today as the largest country in Africa and with largest water, forests and other natural resources in Africa.

Those natural environments generate conditions for banditry to shrive. Perpetrators of crimes against humanity as a cost to enrich them-selves are both local and international. Decentralization or federalism as recognized system of government would suit the nature of DRC to enable the authority there widen security tentacles and easily rid the country of violence.

Mass Education on Gender and Peace
Mass education of all citizens and at all levels of social functioning is ideal for post conflict countries in the great lakes region. In Rwanda, it has been the vision to help rewrite its history from a bi-racist country to a one people of Rwanda.

The education system in the region should be one that taps human rights and gender issues, patriotism and national cohesion –be it the military, at universities, or public service. Refresher programs for generations or professionals affected by the genocide or war in the region could help re-direct them to a future free of violence.

Gender Mainstreaming
Contrary to today, where different sectors of the countries are dominated by men, gender streamlining is ideal –focusing on involving women in all such sectors of development to give their side of opinion and expertise where needed along-side men.

That includes areas like the military and in policy making bodies –where decision making could leave a gap of women concerns; yet they are not only majority of the population, but contribute entirely to the wellbeing of communities –both in production and reproduction (or procreation).

Gender Laws in Armed Conflict
Gender might be an important theme on local and international legal documents, but their potency is a critical source of concern. There must be international pressure to prevail among states that take the issues of women in armed conflict less seriously.

States and governments should be pressured to incriminate culprits of gender based violence –even in rebel held areas. And, where they fail, commanders and governments get committed to the international institutions of justice like the international court of justice (ICJ) and international criminal court (ICC).

Women Needs:
Women needs are entirely community needs. It may be put that women are most concerned about those needs than men.

Peace and Security
Women are very much concerned about security, because it is under peaceful atmosphere that they will carry out their productive and reproductive roles, and raise their children. If women were given a chance to choose between war and peace –without other undue forces pressurizing them to respond otherwise, probably, they would chose peace as opposed to violence.

UN resolutions 1325 stresses that women and girls suffer the worst forms of violence in armed conflict and thus call for their participation in decision making, reconstruction and peace building efforts. It argues that there can not be sustainable peace if women are not participants in peace construction efforts.

Education of the Girl Child and Skills Training for the Adult Women
Modern education ought to cater for both informal and formal education. Modern education has tended to undermine the informal one that equipped women with critical skills of life and turned them into responsible parents and wives –the ingredients that modern education tends not to capture like the aspects of making love affair interesting and sustainable.

Formal education is also pertinent as it is a measure of employability. An employed woman will be in position to sustain the needs of the family –even if the husband died, unlike in a situation where she is not educated and merely a housewife.

It has also been conceived over time that educated women will want to see their children educated than the uneducated ones –who in their adolescence look out for who to marry. It can, in a long run, mean availability of skilled labor force for the nation to take advantage of.

As part of reconstruction and peace building efforts, women, who did not go far with education would need other basic skills training to reduce over dependence on the unreliable agricultural sector –which, if affected by drought they would have nothing to do, but to succumb to famine. Information technology, business and entrepreneurship can be essential skills to consider.

Employment Opportunities for Women
Once women are employed, it will not only mean family wellbeing, but a shield against abusive men –who treat their dependent housewives as sex objects and as punching bags –when stressed elsewhere.

Dependent women tend to loose their reproductive health rights and easily succumb to the infidelity of husbands -with no other options. It is very likely that a self-sufficient women will earn husband’s respect and less likely to be mistreated. In case of unavoidable divorce or separation, they easily cope compared to dependent housewives.

Clean and Health Environments
Women need clean and healthy environments to guard against diseases like malaria and dysentery –which are common in city slums and rural areas. In health centers and hospitals, maternal care services need to be improved to accommodate the ever increasing number of births per year. There must be qualified personnel to handle such cases and to provide quality care enough to prevent maternal-related deaths.

Conclusion:
Women suffer most in armed conflict influenced by their pre-war social, economic and cultural positions and roles. If such can be addressed to equal men, they with men will begin to suffer the same impact of war.

However, care must be taken to evaluate men's position over time, so that new structures aimed at eliminating women discrimination do not turn out to be very discriminative against men.