Facts: Women, Conflict and Emergencies in Sub-Saharan Africa
July 2, 2003 National Press Club Briefing

Security has a particular meaning for women. Where five percent of casualties were civilians in wars a century ago, 90 percent are civilians now.1 During emergency situations, women's immediate concerns involve sexual violence, sexually transmitted and other infections, the safety of their children and conditions for safe childbirth. The World Bank estimates that more than 40 percent of women in the developing world are battered by their husbands or partners, and the rate goes up during emergencies. Yet many countries still have not criminalized domestic violence.

More women and children die from malnutrition, preventable diseases and complications of childbirth during conflict than die as a direct result of fighting.1 Yet women's particular needs are rarely considered in the rush to provide humanitarian aid. Women are rarely included in talks aimed at ending the fighting or maintaining peace, although they are critically affected.

• At the start of 2002, there 12 million refugees and an estimated 5.3 million internally displaced people in the world, most of them women and children.2
• As the health system crumbles during emergencies, maternal and infant mortality rates skyrocket, as do the rates of rape and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.
• Trafficking in women and girls was reported in 34 of 40 conflict zones studied by Save the Children, and all zones reported harmful psychological impacts. 1
• Women in emergency and refugee situations may be forced to trade sex for food and shelter for their families. Rarely are they able to negotiate the terms of sex, such as condom use.
• During emergencies, pregnant women may be unable to obtain medicine, health care of any kind, or safe and sanitary conditions in which to give birth.
• Children are routinely recruited as soldiers in sub-Saharan conflicts, especially those who are poor, uneducated and without other options or role models.
• During fighting in Sierra Leone, women were treated as rewards for soldiers, raped repeatedly and forced to cook and clean for their attackers. Of displaced families surveyed, 94 percent had suffered sexual assault, including rape, torture and sexual slavery.3

Sources:
1. Save the Children, State of the World's Mothers 2003:Protecting Women and Children in War and Conflict, Westport CT, 2003
2. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee, Refugees by Numbers 2002 (http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/basics)
3. Rehn, Elizabeth, and Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson, Women, War and Peace: The Independent Experts' Assessment of the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women's Role in Peace-Building, UNIFEM, New York, 2002, p. 11

For more information, contact: Micheline Carter, 202/326-8710, or go to www.PLANetWIRE.org, a journalist Web site on global population and health.

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