The following is an excerpt from the authors paper: Rape as a Weapon of War and it’s Long-term Effects on Victims and Society. The paper looks at the following key questions: Does rape as a tool of war leave a country with less chance of a solid and stable political future? What are the long term effects on the society as a whole? What are the ongoing effects of stigmatizing, victims, including a look into the effects of marriages among victims. This also entails looking at the inequality and gender discrimination women face in times of war, including social exclusion, and how this symbolic form of violence affects that marginalization in the future and in times of peace. The paper concludes with recommendations on for more in depth analysis and studies on primary and secondary victims, as well as the rapist.
The longest lasting effect of rape as a weapon of war is the number of children it bears and the ripple effects it has, as children are both the consequences of the victim and society. According to a three part report, War Children of the World, tens of thousands of children have been born due to rape in conflict (Greig 2001). There are no true statistics on the number of children born as a result of rape as weapon in each conflict. Many women may be forced to bear multiple pregnancies, as in a testimony out of East Timor, where a woman had four children all born of rape (Williams and Lamont 1999, pg. 10).
The mother of a child born of rape faces a lifetime of turmoil over the conception, regardless of her
decision to raise the child, give the child up for adoption or terminate the pregnancy. A mother who keeps a child is often tormented and pulled between feelings of love and hate. These feeling of hate or shame of the victims own child thus only torment a mother more as she then feels guilt for having such thoughts about her own child. An adviser for the International Rescue Committee in Rwanda made the following statement: “Did you ever see the look in a woman’s eyes when she sees a child of rape? It’s a depth of sadness you cannot imagine. Mass rape forces the victims to live with the consequences, the damage, the children.” (Landesman 2002, pg. 7). A mother who gives a child up for adoption lives with the trauma of carrying and giving birth to her attackers child, she also lives with grief of separation and loss. Women who terminate pregnancies struggle with the feeling of hate and shame regarding the conception and may also face guilt and mental anguish for the loss of a child, or due to a conflict of moral or religious beliefs. A program assistant working with victims of rape as a weapon of war in Zagreb, stated in defense of abortion; “The fetus growing inside the women is a living reminder of the horror she has suffered, like a wound that keeps on growing” (Robson 1993, pg.2). The effects of all scenarios last a lifetime for both mother and child, as well as for family and community. A study of children born of rape in East Timor stated that, “…evidence suggests that such children are both at risk of abandonment to orphanages, and, if kept by their mothers likely to experience ostracization and impoverishment, due to the mothers low social status…(Rimmer 2006, pg.328)”. The direct correlation between a mothers well being and the well being of a child, physically and mentally, are well established.
Many children are never adopted and orphanages in conflict zones are often flooded with “rape babies”, as a conflict or post-conflict country leaves many who would be willing to adopt unable to due to instability, and/or poverty, thus the burden is placed on the state. More than ten years after rape was used as a weapon of war in the former Yugoslavia, the questions and impact is only beginning to emerge. Children who spend their lives in orphanages or foster homes, are more susceptible to sexual and mental abuse. Many of these children are turned away once they reach 16 or 18, with little education, money or support and are thus not only prone to abuse, but poverty and homelessness. Those who adopt children are faced with decision to tell their child the truth behind their birth, which can then lead to trauma and a sense of guilt on the adoptive parent, as was the case of one families trauma which unfolded in the short Bosnian documentary, “A Boy from a War Movie” (2004) directed by Šemsudin Gegic. “When his mother is raped by a Serb soldier and then sent to the other side of the border late in her pregnancy, 10-year-old Alen is abandoned in the middle of the Bosnian conflict.”
The response to children born as a result of rape as a weapon of war, has left children with much the same results, internally, by the mother and in society’s perception. They face endless struggles of identity and social hurdles both internally and externally. In many communities children who are the byproduct of rape as a weapon of war, such as in Rwanda, are labeled with names like; Enfants non-desires’ – unwanted children or ‘Enfants mauvais souvenir’- Children of bad memories. Children born of rape carry the burden of their traumatic conception and mothers pain with them. This can manifest into guilt, viewing their self as a source of misery, a mistake, tainted, and even often as evil as they see themselves as genetically connected to their rapist father and thus often feel they are predisposed to violence. Hate of what the man that fathered them and did to their mother can also manifest into anger. The social stigma placed on both the mothers and children who are born as a result of the use of rape as a weapon of war only “exemplifies the problem that international law fails to recognize the offense of forced maternity on behalf of the mother, or any offense with respect to the child” (Rimmer 2006, pg.331).
