THE SITUATION OF MEN AND WOMEN IN ARMED CONFLICT

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

Men tend to be more aggressive than women on issues to do with manifestation of power, and make war decisions that turn out to be disastrous to women and children. Probably, if they participated in war decisions, being the more sensitive about safety, they would have worked to prevent war.

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

Reports from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) indicated that men were raped by fellow men as a war humiliating weapon. This, though, was an isolated case compared to reports about women raped during armed conflict.

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

Men fate as an outcome of separation due to war is not as depressing –as culturally they are backed to always find new wives –when they needed to –and expand the family size. At the end of the war, such is understood and accepted, but not if it they were women. The women (wives) automatically lose their husbands –who will not easily stomach the fact that their wives were only forced to marry and bare children elsewhere due to war and separation.

Men, who tend to be most active in politics, run away for their dear lives –leaving women and children behind to pay for their sins in the hands of their captors. Unless the international humanitarian law took its course, the remaining family would be used to lure back the wanted politician.

Brigadier Chris Opon Otiak, a former senior officer in Obote government was forced to return after years away from his family. Only he met upon arrival was his notorious death at the hands of 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 on an attack on their family, they will fight to see it safe. However, when they fail, they are killed –leaving behind a fatherless and husband-less house.

It can be a horrible beginning for the family upon the event. To merely humiliate the husbands and fathers –especially, the non-violent ones, attackers resort to raping wives and daughters to humiliate husbands.