04522
November 29, 2004

Sudanese women describe how they are deliberate targets of violence  

by Callie Long
Ecumenical News International 

GENEVA — Christian and Muslim women spoke on Nov. 25 in Geneva of violence endured by women in Sudan, where they have been singled out as deliberate targets in a 21-year-long civil war. 

      That conflict has taken as many as 2 million lives, and a separate conflict unfurling in the country’s western Darfur region over the past two years has left another 50,000  estimated dead. 

      “Violence against women is at the core of the very existence of Sudan,” said Joy Kwaje, coordinator for the women’s program of the Sudan Council of Churches, at the launch of a 10-day-long campaign by the Geneva-based World Council of Churches to spotlight the issue of violence against women and children.  

      “When men and governments declare war, they target women,” said Kwaje. “When talking of violence against women, we talk of structural, institutional violence, in public and in private.”

      She referred to the “systemic rape, forced prostitution, sex slavery and abductions of women and children” and said violence against women was perpetrated “in the name of religion, norms and cultures.” 

      This constituted “the destruction of humanity, ‘ she said on the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (Nov. 25). 

      The UN day was created in memory of three political activists, the Mirabel sisters, who were murdered 44 years ago in the Dominican Republic for opposing dictator Rafael Trujillo. 

      Saffa Elayib Adam, a Muslim from Darfur but now based in Khartoum, said, “Women are targeted in the war. They are killed [along with men and children] during the bombings.” She noted that “they are raped, or kidnapped or trafficked. Theirs is a double suffering.”   

      Referring to the widespread rape of women in the Darfur region, she commented, “This is a sin. How can this be justified?” 

      Still, said Elayib Adam of the Khartoum-based Community Development Association, “I believe religion itself is not the problem. The problem is those who use religion to subordinate women.” 

      In launching the campaign, WCC general secretary the Rev. Samuel Kobia said violence against women was a question from which the churches could not escape. 

      He encouraged churches to engage in efforts to overturn such violence in all its forms in both church and society. The campaign has been endorsed by the WCC, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches — who’s president is Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly stated clerk the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the Lutheran World Federation and the Conference of European Churches.