Rape fuels spread of HIV/Aids
2004-07-15 12:54
Bangkok - Tens of thousands of women and girls have been raped by fighters in African war zones in the last few months fuelling the spread of HIV/Aids, non-governmental groups said at the world Aids forum.
Testing and treatment is nearly non-existent in areas including Sudan's Darfur region, the Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Uganda, said US-based group Women's Equity In Access to Care and Treatment (WE-ACTx).
"The systematic use of rape seriously threatens to increase the spread of HIV in this region and harms ongoing prevention efforts within Sudan and neighbouring countries," warned Clare Martin who wrote a report on the problem for WE-ACTx.
In Congo alone, tens of thousands of girls and women have been raped since 1998 during years of war, unrest and strife, the group said.
In Sudan, pro-government militias have carried out brutal rapes of black African women in ethnic and racially-based attacks.
And in northern Uganda, the fundamentalist Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has stepped up murder, rape and mutilation of women as it fights to replace the secular government.
The group called for international action to protect the women and girls from rape and sexual torture and to help them get medical help.
It also called for help in post-war parts of Africa, where rates of infection are rising among the female population.
In Rwanda, 67% of some 250 000 women raped in the 1994 genocide directed against the ethnic Tutsis are HIV positive, but few have access to treatment, it said.
The women and girls desperately need anti-Aids antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and rape counselling, the group said.
"While the world's attention focuses on fighting the global Aids epidemic, immediate steps can and must be taken by governments and civil societies to stop these attacks on women and girls which increase their vulnerability to HIV," the group said in a statement.
Other groups said that their plight was heightened because of the difficulty of reaching the hardest-hit areas.
"There's nobody to speak for them. This is an emergency," said Beatrice Were from the National Community of Women Living with HIV/Aids in Uganda.