Beneath the veneer of gunpowder, the thunders ignited by bombs echoing across the valleys and hills of the six North Rift counties and the flowing rivers of blood of innocent people, is a silent atrocity better known as sexual violence visited on the most vulnerable; women and girls.
Let’s lift the veil on this hushed vice. The blatant weaponising of rape and defilement to “punish” the enemy community is not a new phenomenon.
For years, perpetrators of conflict situations in whatever form, subject women and girls to untold sexual violence leaving a trail of broken bodies, souls and minds.
Women and girls bear the brunt of this pandemic with varying consequences. Even long after the conflict is over, these survivors continue to suffer in silence as they deal with the multiple effects of the vice.
The perpetrators brazenly engage in this vice with the full knowledge that they can never be brought to book. It is impunity in its raw form.
Last week, a reporter from a local TV station, reporting from one of the epicentres of the conflict in Yatya, Baringo county, interviewed a woman who appealed for psychosocial support because “I am going crazy” (sic).
Although the journalist did not probe further why the woman was in need of psychosocial support, it was crystal clear to me that there was more than meets the eye in the woman’s plea. Whatever she didn’t say to the reporter, was loudly said by her eyes and facial expressions. That was a woman in pain.
The Tugen still view sex topics as taboo. If a woman is sexually abused, she will never divulge it to anyone lest she is instantly divorced and branded loose. She fears losing her standing in society. Such a woman prefers to remain silent or die “slowly” rather than disclose the sexual violence meted on her just because she is a woman.
The perpetrators' psychology is that, by raping the women of the enemies, they will have trounced them and inflicted on them a long-lasting wound that will not easily be surmounted. Some of these women end up contracting sexually transmitted diseases and others get pregnant.
The real data of women and girls facing sexual violence in these counties can never be known because no one dares to visit them and listen to their grievances. NGOs who would have done this don’t have programmes in these counties and those who have, have not actually thought of it as a major problem.
No one has ever raised the alarm on this sensitive topic. We only hear of beefed-up security, food donation and the number of casualties and fatalities. No one ever talks about the suppressed voices suffering and muted in their cocoons.
The burden of women and girls in conflict can never be underestimated. Apart from carrying the blot of sexual violence, they are carers, nurturers and providers; work categorised as unpaid work. It doesn’t matter the amount of pain a woman undergoes as a result of rape; she is always expected to attend to her daily chores.
The survivors and victims of sexual atrocities don’t need any voodoo interventions. What they want is practical solutions to their problems. It is time the two-tier governments and civil society commenced deliberate psychosocial support and other interventions for these women and girls to save them from going crazy and dying of emotional turmoil.
Apart from the conflict, these so-called insecurity-prone counties are steeped in multiple challenges, most of which are detrimental to women and girls who are disproportionately affected in one way or the other.
Women in these counties grapple with acute water scarcity, lack of food, malnutrition and lack of healthcare. Add to this sexual violence and you get a snowballing recipe of mental anguish.
The repression will continue unabated for as long as duty-bearers remain unmoved as perpetrators escalate their sexual violence against women and girls. If they can have the temerity to attack and kill security agents, imagine what they do to hapless women and girls.
The bandits have shown that they don’t fear the government and its bombs and guns trained on them. They attack, rape and steal but we can never hear about sexual violence on the airwaves.
We only hear of 500 heads of cattle stolen but never the number of women and girls violated. Meanwhile, the bandits are ready for combat for the long haul and don’t give a damn what the government is thinking.
Women and girls have been left to their own devices.
