Kuwait Times

Published Date: July 19, 2010
By Evelyn Kiapi

Grace Lagulu was 15 years old when she was abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army. She was forced to become a sex slave and bore two sons by a rebel commander, who is now dead. "I was abducted along with my brother, who was later killed in captivity. I was severely beaten," she said. Even after regaining her freedom, Lagulu was stigmatized by her community. Recently, she was diagnosed as HIV positive. "I don't see a future ahead of me. I don't know what will happen to my children when I die," she said.

More than anything else, however, Lagulu wants those who kidnapped and abused her to be brought to justice. "I am now calling for justice," she said. "I feel the perpetrators should be punished." Women's rights groups agree. At the recent conference reviewing the impact of the International Criminal Court, the Women's Initiative for Gender Justice, a non-governmental organization, demanded the court prosecute those accused of sexual violence. "Women want national and international prosecutions for gender-b
ased crimes," said Brigid Inder, executive director of the organization.

Women's rights groups have expressed disappointment that Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, currently on trial in The Hague on war-crimes charges, was never charged with sexual violence crimes. Last year, victims' lawyers tried to introduce the charge of sexual slavery to Lubanga's existing charges of conscripting child soldiers, but the judges ruled that such a charge would prejudice the defendant's right to a fair trial.

The ruling was particularly disappointing for women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rape has been widely deployed as a weapon of war. "For many women, (the ICC) is their greatest hope, for some perhaps their only chance for justice, for someone to be held accountable for what happened to them, with the hope that this should not happen to others," Inder said.

Gladys Oyat Ayot, a member of the Greater North Women's Voices for Peace, a non-governmental organization in northern Uganda, said that being able to access justice is an important part of the recovery process for women who have suffered gender-based crimes. "Women in armed conflicts suffer physical, psychological and emotional pain, which they live with for many years, long after the conflict has ended," she said. "In most cases, such suffering is increased when the women fail to get redress.

To date, the ICC has opened investigations in the Central African Republic, Sudan, Uganda, the Congo and Kenya. Although the majority of cases before the ICC include some form of gender-based crime, Inder complains that many of the charges have been watered down and that the underlying ICC strategy for gender crimes is not robust enough. "So long as the perpetrators are out there, these women sleep with one eye open and the other one closed," said Jane Adong, legal officer for Women's Initiative for Gender
Justice. "They know that any time these perpetrators can come back.

NOTE: Evelyn Kiapi is a reporter in Uganda who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict - MCT