Essay On Rape In Wartime

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Rape is sometimes difficult to be described but in simplest term of the Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI), defines rape as “Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” The second aspect of war is rape which is considered as a mode of attack in societies such as in Africa as it invests particular values in the family and in women, making them the bearers of the patriarchal honour, family honour and national identity. For Doris E. Buss: “Rape in wartime is not a simple by-product of war, but often a planned and targeted policy”. If we take the example of the widespread phenomenon of rape that took place during the violence and 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, is a holocaust of shame “in the weeks after April 6, 1994, 800,000 men, women, and children perished in the Rwandan genocide” . However, we still do not know the exact figure of how many people were reported dead, there are other untold stories but are not the stories of war outside, they are the real stories of the war within Africa. A silent war when …show more content…

On the other side of the coin, it even reaches to the President when it comes to sexual violence, for example, South Africa’s President: Thabo M. Mbeki is being often described as “lazy, liar, corrupt, violent, sexually depraved, animalistic, and rapist”. After independence, rape is continuing to persist as a main issue not just in South Africa, The Democratic Republic of Congo or Kenya but in every part of Africa. In fact, in the past decade rape has made its name as a global symbol of tolerance. Therefore, sexual violence is a tool used to prove power and to show dominance over victims and we wonder if the battle will end one