"If You Leave Your Country You Have No Life!" Rape, Suicide, and Violence: The Voices of Ethiopian, Somali, and Sudanese Female Refugees in Kenyan Refugee Camps
- “If You Leave Your Country You Have No Life!” Rape, Suicide, and Violence:The Voices of Ethiopian, Somali, and Sudanese Female Refugees in Kenyan Refugee Camps
On the first day that I arrived in Kakuma Refugee Camp to conduct my field research, the camp authorities had a dilemma. A Dinka Sudanese woman had hung herself. But no one wanted to touch the dead body. The Kenyan personnel vehemently refused, particularly the women, claiming, "in our culture we cannot touch dead bodies!"1
In war zones, militarism intensifies women's subordination and violence against females escalates. It is often assumed that once women have fled the conflict zones of their homelands to "safe havens" in a neighboring country, security will prevail. Insecurity and violence, however, often intensify. In foreign refugee camps changes take place in the core relationships between women and men, and the legal and societal rules and laws that prevail in the home country break down.2 Thus, refugee women are often further victimized once they flee into foreign lands.
Women's voices concerning the violent episodes in refugee camps are often muted and left unheard. Aid personnel and camp authorities are often overwhelmed with merely providing the basic necessities of life; they have little time to listen. Further, male refugees are often the representatives [End Page 69] and go-betweens for their own communities to the official authorities and United Nations personnel. Thus, many of the women in refugee camps in recent times have come to live in fear and isolation.3 This paper presents the voices of women from three conflict zones—Ethiopia, Somalia, and South Sudan—living in Kenyan refugee camps.
The Most Troubled Part of Africa
The Horn is perhaps Africa's most troubled region. Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia have been conflict zones for many years and the refugee situation in this part of Africa has developed into one of the world's largest, most intractable, and most complex human tragedies.4 Every woman who has escaped with her life from one of these warring countries has had a unique experience.
Brief Overview of the Conflict in Ethiopia
Historically, Ethiopia has only been a nation-state for a few years. In 1974 Mengistu Haile Mariam overthrew the world's last empire under Haile Selassie. A major factor triggering the coup was the government's inaction from 1972 to 1974 when famine swept across the northern provinces, claiming 200,000 lives. The overthrow of the old order was welcomed by most Ethiopians. Unfortunately, what began as a promising revolutionary transformation quickly degenerated into a repressive dictatorship that pushed the nation into chronic instability and distress. By the end of 1974, after the first in a series of bloody purges within its ranks, the Derg had embraced Marxism as its guiding philosophy. By 1977 the Derg itself had been transformed from a collective decision-making body to a small clique loyal to Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, who became a presidential dictator. From 1974 to 1991 Ethiopians suffered through civil war. In the face of oppressive central authority, ethnic-based resistance movements became increasingly effective in their struggles throughout much of the country. Having seized the lands of the old ruling classes, the Mengistu regime, in accordance with its Marxist-Leninist precepts, invested most of its agricultural inputs in large state farms, whose productivity was abysmal. In 1991, after years of struggle, [End Page 70] Meles Zenawi overthrew Mengistu Haile Mariam's Marxist-oriented military dictatorship. Ethiopians have paid a terrible price for their nation's conflicts, particularly the women.
Flight out of Ethiopia
Misrak, a Gurage, came from a small village, Yerer, north of Addis Ababa in Shewa province.5 She grew up with other Gurage, Oromo, and Amhara peoples. The few years before the 1974 revolution and the years following it were radically different, and Misrak's account lends a view of village life under the late Haile Selassie and early Mengistu regimes:
We were seven in the family. My primary school was run by the government. It was a mixed school of Amharic speakers. There was no religious instruction. . . . I was born in 1969. . . . Before Mengistu everything was cheap: food, clothes, even people...
