KAYA, Burkina Faso (AP) – A 20-year-old woman could no longer live in her town amid the escalating violence caused by Islamic extremists. But she had to come back and fetch the family’s cows in the hope of selling them.
If her husband were to go, jihadists would surely kill him. She went instead and was dragged into the bushes, beaten and raped at the knife point.
“I screamed, but I could not catch up with him, so I cried,” she recalled in a telephone interview from the northern region of Barsalogho, where she now lives. The Associated Press does not identify victims of sexual violence.
The extremist violence in Burkina Faso linked to the al-Qaeda group and the Islamic State is leading to an increase in sexual assaults against women, especially those displaced by attacks. Many become prey when they try to collect possessions they have left behind.
According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, more than 2,000 people died last year. It also displaced more than 1 million people.
In Burkina Faso’s north-central region, sexual assault cases have been on the rise for two months in two months, according to a report by humanitarian groups, including the United Nations. About 85% of the survivors were inland displaced people, living mainly in temporary camps in the villages of Barsalogho and Kaya.
Women in Kaya told AP they were afraid they would be attacked while fetching firewood for cooking.
“I will not farm more than 4 kilometers outside Kaya because I am afraid for my safety,” said Kotim Sawadogo. The 37-year-old fled Dablo in August and is struggling to afford food for her four children. In September 2019, her niece was raped by jihadists while farming outside the town, she said.
“They will not be killed, but will be raped, who will be killed like inside them anyway,” said Fatimata Sawadogo, who was displaced from Dablo to Kaya last year and knows women who were raped by jihadists while farmer. Women often assume that the rapists are jihadists because they carry guns and wear masks.
Sometimes, after assaulting the women, the jihadists burn their food, and yet some women are so desperate that they return the next day to save it, she said.
Aid groups believe that jihadists are not the only perpetrators and that there has been an increase in domestic violence and exploitation of displaced women by host communities.
“This reality is exacerbated by the lack of economic opportunities for women, the lack of food and shelter for women and the lack of access to quality health care,” said Jennifer Overton, regional director for Catholic Aid Services in West Africa.
Earlier this month, a woman in Kaya said she had sex with a community leader twice in June and November because he promised he could add her name to a list to receive food. “I’m sorry, but I thought I would get food, and I never did,” she said.
Prior to the violence, Burkina Faso did not have specialized services focused on sexual assault. Now humanitarian people are struggling to cope, said Awa Nebie, a gender-based violence specialist at the United Nations Population Fund.
The humanitarian response plan for Burkina Faso this year estimates that more than 660,000 people need protection against gender-based violence, Nebie said.
Since August, the organization has created six safe spaces in downtown North to help women and girls talk freely about their experiences, but that is inadequate, she said. And some areas of the country, such as the Sahel and Eastern regions, are difficult to access due to uncertainty.
Local government officials say the daily influx of displaced people is harnessing resources and putting women at risk by forcing them to venture further into the forest to collect wood for cooking.
“In the past, women could find resources two or three kilometers away, but with the increasing number, they are going further and that is very worrying,” said Saidou Wily, head of social welfare services at Barsalogho. .
The government has increased security in the city and advises women not to go into the woods alone.
But mothers who want to feed their children say they have little choice.
Last year, a 40-year-old mother of seven gangs was raped by two masked men who dragged her to an abandoned farmhouse while trying to return to her city in the Sahel region to get food, she said. .
She now lives in Kaya and is afraid to leave again, but she has no money to support her family.
“I think about it a lot and do not even know what I’m thinking, I’m just crying,” she said. “This is misery.”