Rwanda Civil War Rape

This research paper will explore the topic of sexual violence in conflict, specifically analysing rape in the Rwandan civil war. I will explore experiences of life within conflict and draw out areas of interest relating to gendered violence within an Anthropological framework. I will look at victim testimonials from SURF Survivors Fund (2008-2013) and conclusions drawn from data collected in the form of interviews in The Lived Experience of Genocide Rape Survivors (2008) in order to comment on accounts of the use of rape and other violence of a sexual nature from Rwandan civil war survivors. I will assess explanations of sexual violence in war from ‘weapon of war’ theory and feminist theory in the understanding of masculinity and femininity

The Tutsi minority were favoured by colonial rulers as a superior race due to the suggestion that their physical features had closer ancestral lineage to Europeans. A rise of ethnic violence between both major groups from the 1950s lead to the eruption of systematic genocide of the Tutsis by extremist Hutu militias in 1994. This conflict resulted in around one million deaths and millions of Rwandan refugees in neighbouring countries. The nature of violent acts committed in this conflict primarily focuses on mass murder and execution on a large scale, with a secondary emphasis on the male rape of female civilians. The nature of sexual violence in the Rwandan civil war proved challenging for researchers to gather data on due to the reluctance of woman to disclose history because of the stigma associated with rape (Mukamana and Brysiewicz, 2008:380). Christopher Taylor (1999:42) explains that this conflict was unique in the way that women were targets of the violence as much as, if not more than men. This conflict was acknowledged as having very high rates of sexual violence against women including rape and militarized sex, or voluntary and coerced sexual activity between soldiers and civilians, and pressured sexual relationships with soldiers from within the supposed sanctuary of refugee camps (Burnet, 2012:98). Jennie Burnet’s (2012:98) research on sexual consent in Rwanda reports that 49.4 percent of Rwandan women had been raped in the 1994 genocide. Some testimonies, documented in the SURF Survivors Fund, include multiple accounts of rape from women who consented to talk about their experiences. One survivor, 52 year old Bernadette talks about her mother’s negotiation with a militia member in the attempt to bargain part of their family’s eucalyptus plantation for the life of her brother. She reports being unaware that the militia