Armed Conflict and Rape: When Women Painfully Refuse to get Justice

About four months ago, I was called to intervene in a case of rape of a 3 year old girl child by a 50+ year old man. This old man tricked this little girl to accompany him to the stream to fetch water and ended up raping this child. All tests carried out on this child confirmed that the child had actually been raped because the little girl was left with scars and bruises of a broken hymen. The mother of the child was in deep pain and agony and the little girl was in even much deeper physical pains. I still remember talking to the mother at length while she kept crying and cursing the rapist. She really wanted to get justice for her 3 year old but she was afraid to pursue the case.

Why was she afraid, you may ask?

Cameroon has been experiencing a violent and bloody socio-political crisis for the past 5 years. There has been constant confrontations and deadly clashes between forces loyal to the state and non-state armed separatist fighters. There are as well been terrible attacks of the population coming from the non-state and state armed men on the population and this has been pretty constant. Civilian population is caught at the crossroad of this conflict as those in possession of arms are using arms to intimidate, attack and even kill civilians. People are using the men and boys in arms to settle scores in the quarters. This has been a sad reality in the anglophone part of my country Cameroon. 

Now, the mother of the 3 year old wants justice but she has refused that the rapists should not be arrested or prosecuted. When asked why she has refused, she said she does not want the perpetrator to use armed men to attack her, her daughter or any member of her family.

"In as much as I am very sad about the thing that happened to my daughter, I will leave the rapist to God and to his conscience," she said. "I cannot put the life of my child and my entire family at risk because I want to seek justice for my daughter -- I don't want us to die." [This was a lose translation from pidgin to English]

The rapist is currently at large and the mother and her survivor daughter are living in pains. How can women and the entire population seek justice in a state of war where the civilian population are kind of living between the devil and the red sea. Everyone is afraid of their lives. Women are even more afraid as their income level is very low and this hinders them from relocating to safer grounds while they seek justice. As a weaker sex, in a world grappling with unequal power relations between the sexes, women will for a long time choose silence over justice for fear of being attacked.

War is evil!!!