Background
Methods
Study site
Study populations
In-depth interviews with survivors | |||
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Locations and context
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No. of participants
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Represented country/ies of origin
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Age range
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Urban setting: Addis Ababa
| 17 | Burundi, DRC, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan | 15 - 48 yrs. |
Camp 1
| 7 | Somalia | 23 - 43 yrs. |
Camp 2
| 7 | Somalia | 17 - 39 yrs. |
Camp 3
| 6 | Somalia | 20 - 38 yrs. |
Total interview participants
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37
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Focus Group Discussions
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Locations and context
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No. of groups (participants)
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Represented service type or organization
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Urban setting: Addis Ababa
| 2 (10) | Health services; Protection | |
Camp 1
| 2 (22) | Women and youth organizations; GBV services and social work | |
Camp 2
| 2 (14) | Women and youth organizations; GBV services and social work | |
Camp 3
| 2 (16) | Women and youth organizations; GBV services and social work | |
Combined participants across camps
| 3 (15) | Health services; Protection; GBV services | |
Total
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11 (77)
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Service providers and community organizations
Measures and analysis
Human subjects protection
Results
Location where violence was reported to occur | ||||
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Violence construct
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Country of origin
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Transit to or within host country
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Host country – urban and camp settings
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Psychological violence
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General threats of violence or rape by armed actors, threats against family
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Coercion for assistance with transportation or shelter
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Threats of violence, kidnapping
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- Armed actors | - Strangers, acquaintances | - Intimate partner, family, family of partner (based in host country, other displaced setting, or country of origin) | ||
Forced witness of murder rape, including that of family members or neighbors
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Forced witness of rape of others in transit
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Threats of withholding finances or food assistance
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- Armed actors, strangers | - Intimate partner, employer | |||
- Armed actors | - NGO officer (camp) | |||
Type
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Social stigmatization or isolation on the basis of single marital status, marital choice, FGM choice
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Coercion for assistance with finances, food assistance, or shelter
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- Perpetrator(s) | ||||
- Home community, family, religious affiliates | - Intimate partner, employer | |||
- Other male refugee camp resident, | ||||
Social stigmatization or isolation on the basis of sexual violence experience
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Social stigmatization or isolation on the basis of single marital status, marital choice, FGM choice
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- Home community, family, religious affiliates | - Refugee community, family, religious affiliates | |||
Social stigmatization or isolation with emphasis on religious, ethnic differences
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Social stigmatization or isolation on the basis of sexual violence experience
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- Armed actors, home community | - Community, family, religious affiliates, refugee community, | |||
Social stigmatization or isolation due to religious, ethnic, clan differences
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- Refugee community, host community | ||||
Physical violence
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Physical violence including beatings or torture
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General physical violence,
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General physical violence
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- Armed actors, religious leaders or affiliates, | - Strangers, | - Strangers, family, partner's family | ||
-Host community, other refugee community member(s), other clan or ethnic group, | ||||
Type
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Imprisonment
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Imprisonment
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- Perpetrator(s) | - Armed actors | - Strangers | ||
Kidnapping/abduction
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Kidnapping/abduction
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-Armed actors, partner's family | - Strangers, partner's family | |||
Intimate partner violence
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Intimate partner violence
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- Husband, ex-husband, boyfriend | - Husband, ex-husband, boyfriend | |||
Other violence
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Re-victimization after reporting or disclosure of GBV
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- Family, partner's family, other ethnic group/clan | - Prior perpetrator (including but not limited to husband, ex-husband, boyfriend, neighbor/refugee community member) | |||
Violence during pregnancy
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Violence during pregnancy
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- Armed actors | - Husband, ex-husband, boyfriend | |||
Sexual exploitation and violence
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Coerced sex
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Coerced sex
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Coerced sex
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- Armed actors | - Strangers (including those providing assistance with transit), acquaintances | - Strangers | ||
- Other refugee community member, employer, NGO staff member (camp) | ||||
Type
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Rape
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Rape
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Rape
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- Perpetrator(s) | -Armed actors, family or partner's family, stranger, religious leader or affiliate, other community member | - Armed actors, strangers (including those providing assistance with transit) | - Intimate partner, family or partner's family member, stranger, religious leader or affiliate, other neighbor or community member. | |
Gang rape
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Gang rape
| -Host community member, religious leader or affiliate, employer, NGO staff leader (camp) | ||
- Armed actors | - Armed actors | |||
Rape during pregnancy
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- Armed actors | ||||
Widow inheritance
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Gang rape
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- Husband’s family, home community | - Strangers | |||
Unwanted sexual touching- |
Unwanted sexual touching
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Armed actors, family or partner's family, stranger, religious leader or affiliate, other community member | - Intimate partner, family or partner's family member, stranger, religious leader or affiliate, other neighbor or community member. | |||
Financial control
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- Husband, boyfriend | ||||
Other violence types
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FGM or pressure to complete FGM on child
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FGM or pressure to complete FGM on child
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- Home community, family, religious affiliates | - Refugee community, family, partner's family, religious affiliates | |||
Early or forced marriage
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- Perpetrator(s) | - Pressure by family, extended family, refugee community (camp) |
Types of violence
There are also many other different types of violence that women experience, like rape and sometimes forced sex from your husband. Sometimes also, early marriage, because we don’t have any choice. Our parents have to make the decision of our marriage. - Somali GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
… when girls just go out of the camps, to fetch water, they threaten them to rape them right there, but we just tell them, okay, we just give you our ration. Please leave us, and then they just leave us alone, but unless we give them the ration, they will just run and then find us and then rape us. So threat is just used as one means. –Sudanese GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
So one day I was at home, I was two months pregnant. Some people came in the house, my husband was at work. They came and they arrested me, they took me to the place, which I don't know. They started beating me; they said that me and my people, we are against them. I said, "Who are those people?" They are accusing me for being from Rwanda. I told them I'm not from Rwanda… They were beating me and I told them, "What you are doing? I'm pregnant." They are going to kill me and kill my child. And their [response] was like ‘that child is not __, he can die any time, we don't care about him. So they put me in that place, one of my neighbors called to my husband and told him that they raped me… At the place they put me, I don't know if it was prison or what, every night anyone can come and sleep with me. If I tell them that, "I'm pregnant, why are you doing this to me?" they will be beat me and do it by force. –Congolese GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
[When asked what kinds of violence the service providers see in the camps:] Domestic violence. Like hit them with a really big stick. And they beat them, or kick them… And the husband knows if she goes out and tries to find work, he's going to say to her, “Where were you? Were you being a slut? Like staying over there in the streets? What are you doing?” … There is also denial of resources. – Service Provider FGD Participant, Camp
Locations and contexts
…inside Congo now, before I decided to come. There were different people, sometimes you can meet soldiers and they took you in the camp, soldier camp, military camp and they can rape you there. I was raped by seven, seven people at the border. And once I was just -- I was unconscious, when I woke up I found myself full of blood. And from that day I have this bleeding problem. That way I had also this sexual transmitted disease. –Congolese GBV survivor, Addis AbabaI remember a lot of women who were raped when I was in Somalia. Even when I was raped, I was not the only person who was raped on that truck. There were two other women who were raped with me. So it's not a new thing for me and it's not like I heard from the people. I actually faced it, I actually experienced it, and I saw other women who were raped in front of me and they get pregnant because of these things. I was raped in Somalia and then I run away from Somalia and I was raped while I was on my journey from Somalia to Ethiopia, and I entered the border and I was just newly [gave birth to] my child. – Somali GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
[Here], if the woman or the girl has a boyfriend and has a relation, and she get pregnant without marriage, she will be excommunicated from her community, no one can talk to her, no one can shake her hands, no one can provide any help for her, like she is very dead to them. Here, it’s not like Somalia. In Somalia they might beat you and hurt you physically. But here, they can just want to stare you, and point to you, and assault you and talking behind you, but they cannot hurt you so much, because there is a government.– Somali GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
My daughter is sick, because when she was 16, some man saw her and he took her and she stayed a year with him. [Interviewer: How did he take her?] He said to her, “I love you and I want to marry you,” and he took her. But when he had sex, he just made her wash after… When she gave birth to one child, he kept the child and he kicked her out. [Interviewer: Was he from the camp?] Yes, at the time. He took her [the baby] to Somalia to give to his mother. – Somali GBV survivor, Camp
There is a lot of youth in the wedding. The perpetrator can just come in and nobody would notice. One of them is going to come up to the girl and say, "Can I talk to you?" and when he takes her into a place alone, they just kidnap her. Yeah, most of the cases are like this. – Somali GBV survivor, Camp 1
On that evening when the wedding was done. There was someone who attacked [me in] my home [in the camp]… beating me up and like mercilessly and he is kicking me all over the place. I felt deeply unconscious this time it is like in coma and then in the morning I woke up and when the sun light like beaming sun rise I opened my eyes and see my daughter been also raped and also being tied up in the same way I was tied up that was like the biggest shock for me. – Somali GBV Survivor, Camp 2
While I was living here [in Addis Ababa] with my father and with my sister and then I was just having my life, just going to school and taking care of my sister, I was raped. I was kidnapped and then they raped me and then, later on, when my father and my brother, they came and it was like a fighting … and then my father tried to [tell] the boys that ‘she's under 18 and she is very young, she's 14 years old. She cannot be married to anyone and she has to live here with us’. So it was a fight… Then those men took them within that taxi. I was raped from all six men. I was living with them around about two months and my mother tried to follow me …later on, she found me. And my mother took me to her [town] because I can stay there and I can work as a housemaid from family to family so that I can get support myself. At the same time, I will not be hurt from the other family members because I was raped. And when my mom left me, I spent three years working from family to family but the problem is, the majority clan was living in there… they do have kind of like a revenge and they hate any person from my clan. So they were, hurting me, sometimes they would beat me. Sometimes they would cut my hair. I faced a lot of problems. My life is a mess. -Somali GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
Perpetrators
I was raped. I was raped in Addis by this man, and they did send me for HIV and I returned positive and I have a child. I was raped because I was with my friends and then they just asked me to go with them to this man’s house. And then I thought that we were just going together, and then after I went and they all left, and then he forced me to have sex with him. He raped me…[I] was 15 years old. –GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
Sometimes women, when they are very sick and they don’t want to have sex, and they are very exhausted because of the children and taking care of the children, the husband will force them to have sex with them, and if she refuse, he will beat her and hurt her. He will beat her so much until she gets so weak, and then he will have sex with her forcefully. – Somali GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
The man I work for, with him, in the office, I’m cleaning the office [near the camp], and he forced me to have sex. “If you don’t allow me, you will not work.” So I said to him, I can’t leave this job…He said also to people who came to him [after it was reported], “She wants to start something in the office. That’s why. I didn’t ask her anything.”… But the head of this office, he said, “We’ll let him to go another office, so you can stay in the office to clean.” - Somali GBV survivor, Camp 3
Barriers to reporting
Believe me, the [rape] numbers that [are known by] UNHCR, other organizations, and other refugee committees are small. It [the rape numbers] will be triple or even sometimes maybe double. There are people who are hiding it and not telling anybody. –Somali GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
They would make excuse and say, “I was hit with a stone.” Or, “I fell.” Making excuses. Even if their neighbors know that she was beaten and she would deny it. Just one or two, or it's a like a lot of variety of things. [Facilitator: ‘Why do they deny it?’] She was ashamed to say, “My husband beat me.”–Service Provider FGD, Camp
I went to the hospital in [camp] and I could not tell them what happened to me because there were some-- few families from Burundi were there, they know that my husband is in Addis. When I told this family or in the health center maybe they will tell my husband who is living in Addis that I was raped and I couldn't tell them, I kept secret. –Burundi GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
For example, she might not get the kind of trust from the person that she's come to tell. Maybe that person might tell to other people in order to insult. That's going to be one challenge. Another thing, you know, everybody will hurt her again saying that, “Oh, you've been raped. So you are kind of useless.”–Service Provider FGD, Camp
Most of the men who are raping the girls they are from Al-Shabaab group, and you cannot tell anybody that the one who did this to you is from Al-Shabaab, because they are religious people. You cannot say that Al-Shabaab raped me, because I remember one young Somali girl she was raped by two men from Al-Shabaab and when she came to the City and she told the people that she was raped by Al-Shabaab, immediately Al-Shabaab group in that City called her and they asked her family to dig a hole, and they put her there in that hole, and they asked everyone to throw a very heavy stone at her until she died. So even they will not kill you in a very good way, they do it so that you will feel not feel a lot of pain, like shooting you. They will kill you so will suffer and have a bleeding and then you will die.–Somali GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
…they [the community] said to me like ‘you have AIDS, you were raped’ and then I told them ‘there is test let us go there to see. I was raped, that is true, but you are a woman like me. It is unluckily and it is an accident. I don’t have AIDS and you should not insult me like this.’ –Somali GBV survivor, Camp 2
I don't tell them even if they ask me. I get scared and I don't tell them that my daughter doesn't have a father. Because I am sure that they cannot provide any help to me regarding this issue so I prefer to keep quiet than tell them without doing anything. If I even get a trustful person, I feel, if I told them my story, that they will just be surprised or shocked and they cannot keep this secret from others, they will try to share it with other people. So I prefer to keep it to myself and don't tell anybody. – GBV Survivor, Addis Ababa
There is this incident two months ago a girl who was raped and after that she never reported anything like that and then she went home after she became pregnant and after that she told the mother there is rule that if you rape the girl you are going to marry her. They married the rapist to the girl…this happened in [camp]. – Somali GBV survivor, Camp 2
…[I think] am I the only woman, only girl who was raped and was pregnant and underage? And for me it was a shame. I couldn’t tell anybody this. That’s why I keep it as a secret myself.–Congolese GBV survivor, Addis Ababa
Yeah and because I live in this camp, because of that, I had second thoughts. I wouldn’t have regretted it if the NGO had helped me to have my daughter’s card. If they did anything like that, I wouldn’t have regretted. But, since I am now being threatened to be out of the camp, it’s my problem. It’s going to be my problem. I’m going to have to face and deal with this problem. –Somali GBV survivor, Camp 2
..when I went in hospital, they only closed my head [wound]. Then after that, they give me some painkillers and they said to me, “You have to leave, have to go home.”…The people in the hospital, they only gave me medication, or some painkiller. They didn’t even check me if I have other problem- only my head.-Somali GBV survivor, Camp 3Yes, I know for me personally, the number of patients I see in a day is great, so I just treat the emergency and give the medicine. You know, the clinician to patient ratio is just too low- that is one of the problems. And the other may be lack of awareness. Even with providers there is just lack of awareness. There is no kind of training [about] GBV. –Service Provider FGD, Camp
Some women they can go to meet with [name of organization], but it’s not easy to talk with a protection officer; you will need to have an interpreter and sometimes we cannot have enough assistance with enough money to give that translator money so that he can interpret for the officers. At the same time, while we are going to complain or to tell about our problems to the officers or to health cares, we have another problem inside our homes, like my daughter or my son is six, so if I left him, who will take care of him? Someone can come after me and take my child from me, I might lose many things while I’m going there to complain. And when I would complain, I never ever be seen any reaction or any action was taken; helpful action which might help you to stop this violence, except separating the assistance between the wife and the husband, which is itself a problem. – GBV survivor, Addis Ababa