Robinson in stark warning over rape
The human rights activist said her work in the past year had repeatedly brought to her attention examples of rape being used to further crush people already left extremely vulnerable by hunger and displacement.
Mrs Robinson visited the world’s largest refugee camp, the Dadaab camp in Kenya, in July to see the conditions awaiting people fleeing famine and violence in neighbouring Somalia.
Aid workers told her it was common for women and girls to arrive destitute, starving, grieving the loss of family members and suffering the trauma of rape.
“I was with Oxfam Ireland and they were dealing with 63,000 people who were not in the camp at all. They were in open fields. That’s a nightmare situation for women and girls,” Mrs Robinson said.
She also visited a Save the Children project focusing on child mothers, many no older than 13 or 14, whose babies were often the product of rape.
“You have to ask, why is this so endemic, and I think it’s that women have such second-class status in many fragile states. They are not equal in any sense. They are seen as fair game, they are seen as powerless, they are seen as voiceless.”
Mrs Robinson yesterday helped to launch Ireland’s National Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence, which aims to make the protection of women and children against rape, violence and discrimination an everyday part of Irish foreign policy and Irish Aid-supported projects.
