A mother's impossible choice: risk rape to feed your family, or starve
Updated 10:51 AM ET, Fri August 3, 2018
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CNN is committed to covering gender inequality wherever it occurs in the world. This story is part of As Equals, a year-long series.
Juba, South Sudan — On a dirt path dotted with bright-red bougainvillea, women in ankle-length dresses gather in groups of five or more before venturing into the forest.
Right outside the largest refugee camp in Juba, South Sudan's capital, sickles readied in their hands to cut firewood, the women say banding together offers a tiny sense of security, a little protection and the reassurance that if something happens to them inside the forest one of them might escape to tell someone.
In four or five hours, they'll be back at the camp, one of them says.
"If God is willing," another adds.
In the five years of South Sudan's civil war, 1.9 million have fled to camps within the country, where the UN provides physical protection as well as food rations amidst an ongoing famine.
South Sudanese women wait for others to join on the way to the forest to get firewood.
To cook the food rations, firewood must be collected -- a task that falls to the women.
"If you're in the forest to collect firewood and the soldiers see you, they will rape you," Nykeer Mut, the women's leader of one of the camp's zones, said.
"But what are we supposed to do?"
The women know of the dangers, she said. They've heard of those who, far from the protection of the camp's razor wire and UN soldiers, were raped, tortured and kidnapped. Or they have experienced it themselves.
Based on interviews, the UN estimates that 70% of women living in camps have been raped. Since the beginning of the conflict in 2013, South Sudanese army soldiers have been accused of using rape and other forms of sexual violence as a tactic of war, aimed at systematically traumatizing and humiliating entire ethnic groups. Outside the refugee camp, when the women get to the forest, soldiers are often already waiting for them, hiding behind tall grass and tree trunks, Mut said.
The day soldiers raped Mut, she recounted that the grass was high and everyone in her group was focused on the task at hand, hoping to return to the camp as quickly as possible. Nobody had seen the soldiers coming, she said.
Nykeer Mut, a women's leader of one of the camp's zones, says she was raped on her way to get firewood.
When the soldiers jumped out of the grass, the women screamed to alert others. They ran for their lives, but the grown soldiers' steps easily outpaced those of Mut's 10-year-old daughter, who had come to the forest to help. The soldiers grabbed the girl. Mut turned around. "I couldn't leave my daughter," she said.
As they tied Mut's hands behind her back, they talked about how young the girl looked, Mut said.
"They said: 'Let's just rape the mother.'"
One soldier pushed Mut to the ground. Two others pinned down the girl, forcing her to watch.