KAYA, Burkina Faso (AP) – A 20-year-old woman was no longer able to live in her village amid the mounting violence caused by Islamic extremists. But she had to come back and collect the family’s cows, hoping to sell them.
If her husband went, jihadists would almost certainly kill him. She went instead, and was dragged into the bush, beaten, and raped on the point of a knife.
“I screamed, but I couldn’t catch up, so I cried,” she recalls in a telephone interview from the town of Barsalogho in the Central North region where she now lives. The Associated Press does not identify victims of sexual assault.
Extremist violence in Burkina Faso linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group is increasing sexual violence against women, especially against women displaced by attacks. Many are attacked while trying to collect belongings they left behind.
According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, more than 2,000 people were killed last year. It has also displaced more than 1 million people.
According to a report by humanitarian groups, including the United Nations, the number of sexual assaults in Burkina Faso in the Central North region rose from two to ten over a three-month period last year. About 85% of the survivors were internally displaced persons, living mainly in makeshift camps in the towns of Barsalogho and Kaya.
Women in Kaya told AP they were afraid of being attacked while getting firewood for cooking.
“I don’t farm more than 4 kilometers outside of Kaya because I’m afraid for my safety,” said Kotim Sawadogo. The 37-year-old fled Dablo in August and struggles to pay for food for her four children. In September 2019, her niece was raped by jihadists while farming outside the village, she said.
“They will not be murdered, but they will be raped, which is like being murdered inside anyway,” said Fatimata Sawadogo, who was driven from Dablo to Kaya last year and knows women who have been raped by jihadists while farming. Women often assume that the rapists are jihadists because they wear guns and masks.
Sometimes after attacking 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 organizations say that jihadists are not the only perpetrators and that there is an increase in domestic violence and exploitation of displaced women by host communities.
“This reality is exacerbated by the lack of economic opportunity for women, the shortage of food and shelter for women and the lack of access to quality health care,” said Jennifer Overton, West Africa Regional Director for Catholic Relief Services.
Earlier this month, a woman in Kaya said she’d had sex with a community leader twice, in June and November, as he promised he could add her name to a list to receive food. “I regret it, but I thought I was going to get food and I never did,” she said, remaining anonymous for her safety.
Before the violence, Burkina Faso did not have specialized services aimed at sexual violence. Now humanitarians are struggling to cope, said Awa Nebie, a specialist on gender-based violence at the United Nations Population Fund.
This year, the Humanitarian Response Plan for Burkina Faso estimates that more than 660,000 people will need protection from gender-based violence, Nebie said.
Since August, the organization has created six safe spaces in the center of Noord to help women and girls talk freely about their experiences, but that’s not enough, she said. And some parts of the country, such as the Sahel and the eastern regions, are difficult to access due to insecurity.
Local government officials say the daily influx of displaced people is straining resources and endangering women by forcing them to venture further into the wilderness to gather wood for cooking.
“In the past, women could find resources two or three kilometers (one to two miles) away, but as the number increases, they go further and further and that is very concerning,” said Saidou Wily, chief of social services at Barsalogho. .
The government has increased security around the city and is advising women not to go into the bush alone.
But mothers who try to feed their children say they have little choice.
Last year, a 40-year-old mother of seven was raped by a group at gunpoint by two masked men who dragged her into an abandoned farm while trying to return to her city in the Sahel to fetch food, she said.
She now lives in Kaya and is too scared to leave, but she has no money to support her family.
“I think about it a lot and I don’t even know what I’m thinking about, I’m just crying,” she said. “It’s misery.”