Enemies of the State: Curbing Women Activists Advocating Rape Reform in Sudan
2017; Bridgewater State University; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1539-8706
Autores Tópico(s)International Human Rights and Reproductive Law
ResumoIntroduction (2) Sudanese women activists launched a legal campaign in 2009, calling attention to how the country's Sharia-based Criminal Act of 1991 produced impunity for rape in the Darfur conflict in which the use of sexual violence as a war tactic has been widespread (see, for example, International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur 2004; United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 2005). Through the proxy of local Arab militias, known as Janjaweed or devils on horseback, the Sudanese regime has sexually attacked women and children from the African ethnic groups in Darfur since the eruption of the conflict in 2003 (ICC 2009). According to Sudanese women activists, the Criminal Act of the current Islamist regime does not clearly differentiate between rape and the crime of zina, that is sexual intercourse outside of a valid marriage contract; a moral crime prescribed in Islamic legal texts. Since rape is categorized as zina without consent, rape victims risk being prosecuted for zina; a crime punishable by stoning to death for married offenders and 100 lashes for unmarried offenders. This constitutes a serious legal obstacle for rape victims in Darfur and beyond. After years of women's legal mobilization, Sudan followed a range of African countries by enacting a rape reform in February 2015. The regime introduced a reform in which a new definition of rape appears clearly de-linked from zina. It came as a surprise to many observers, but has nonetheless been celebrated as a great achievement. While on the surface a success story, I understand this largely regime-controlled rape reform as an authoritarian state's struggle to keep an emerging independent women's movement under control, rather than protection of rape victims in Darfur and beyond. By situating the reform within the broader political dynamics of the International Criminal Courts' (ICC) arrest order against Sudan's sitting president for widespread and systematic rape of women and children in Darfur (ICC 2009), it becomes clear that this pushed Omar al-Bashir to severely clamp down on independent women's groups advocating rape reform. The 2015 reform materialized within a political environment of escalated state repression initiated against both international and national NGOs. Al-Bashir's immediate response to the ICC indictment was to expel 13 international and shut down three Sudanese NGOs. (3) Sexual violence became particularly politicized post-ICC and women's groups and NGOs working on rape reform were hit particularly hard. Not only did the reform process exclude women activists who initiated the campaign, but they were also framed as collaborators of the ICC and branded enemies of the state. The Islamist regime's targeting of an emerging independent women's movement has both short--and long-term implications. The short-term implication is that the regime has silenced the voices pointing to the several limitations of the 2015 rape reform as well as those actors most likely to watchdog its implementation. The long-term implication is that the suppression of an independent women's movement weakens what the literature (see, for example, Htun and Weldon 2012; Tripp et al 2009) identifies as critical for generating further policy change on violence against women. Fieldwork for this study was conducted in Khartoum, Sudan in May 2011, October 2012 and February/March, June/July, and November 2013 and October 2014. In total, 40 interviews were conducted in English and Arabic. The interviewees include international NGOs and UN agencies, representatives from political parties (both Islamist and from the opposition), and civil society organizations (both national and from Darfur), including two of the national NGOs that were expelled from Darfur in 2009 and women's groups, which have recently been shut down. I interviewed women activists based in Khartoum as well as in Darfur who were working as journalists, university employees, humanitarian workers, and politicians, members of NGOs, and lawyers who were working specifically with rape cases in Sudanese courts. …
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