Data spreadsheet for:
Continuing Mass Rape of Girls in Darfur: The most heinous crime generates no international outrage, January 2016
The spreadsheet, with some 350 entries, covers sexual violence in the years 2014 and 2015, with Radio Dabanga and SUDO/UK as primary sources (the Human Rights Watch report on the mass rapes at Tabit is also employed). The spreadsheet is too large for this website and is available upon request.
An explanation of how the data was assembled, assessed, and organized appears below and as the last section of the framing narrative for this report:
DATA ON THE RAPE OF GIRLS
Despite international indifference, it is possible to quantify and map data on rape in Darfur, at least in part, using Radio Dabanga (RD) and SUDO/UK (SUDO) and their extraordinary range of sources on the ground as the basis for such an effort. A data spreadsheet, highlighting all reported rapes of girls over the past two years, may be found [above]. Also included in the spreadsheet, though not highlighted, are rapes of women ages 18 – 25—women of prime marriageable age, and for whom rape is of greatest significance in defining chances for marriage, or preserving a marriage and family. The spreadsheet also includes reports of the abductions of girls and women, unlikely to be for ransom (as would be the case with the abduction of boys and men). Thus, for example, many dispatches report sexual assaults and abductions that may or may not receive further clarification. For example, on December 27, 2015 Radio Dabanga reported:
On Friday [December 25, 2015], a group of militiamen abducted seven women from the Hamidiya camp for the displaced in Zalingei, capital of Central [formerly West] Darfur. The women were collecting firewood north of the camp early in the morning, when they were attacked, the coordinator of the Central Darfur camps told Radio Dabanga. He said that the incident was reported to the police and UNAMID, “but so far they did not move to rescue the women.”
These women—perhaps including girls—may be raped or kept as sexual slaves, possibly held for ransom (though unlikely), or may conceivably escape. It is extremely unlikely that UNAMID will move to rescue them.
We have no figures for the number of girls and women who have died from rape or their resistance to sexual assault. We do know that the condition of many reported rape victims, and the lack of access to medical care, ensures that there have been a very large number of fatalities resulting from sexual assault. Many more have been severely, often permenently injured. Often women are beaten by Arab militiamen simply because they are non-Arab women. For example, Radio Dabanga reports (October 21, 2014):
“Militiamen attacked more than 22 women who were working their farmlands. They beat the women with their whips and rifles butts. At least 22 women were injured, some of them seriously.” There was, however, no accompanying account of rape.
The quantification of the spreadsheet data on the three regional maps of Darfur makes conservative assumptions about how to interpret individual events with respect to the issue of rape; nonetheless, there is still a considerable degree of ambiguity, even as the two primary sources—Radio Dabanga and SUDO/UK—sometimes report different figures for the same incident. More problematic yet is SUDO/UK’s aggregation of data on rape for Darfur, South Kordofan, and Darfur, making those data unusable for present purposes.
The vast majority of rapes involve girls or women ages 18 – 26 (only 21 incidents of rape over the past two years do not fall in one of these two age categories, and they appear at the end of the data spreadsheet). Only incidents that include the rape of girl(s) are highlighted in yellow on the spreadsheet; if not highlighted, the reported incident(s) exclusively concerns sexual assault(s) on women 18 – 25—prime years of marriageability and child-bearing.
Large or unquantifiable accounts of data are highlighted in blue, and while most are highly significant in their own right, only a couple of these figure in the mapping of incidents on the three regional maps of Darfur, since the risk of redundancy in reporting and tabulating is too high. For example, Radio Dabanga reports that from mid-July to mid-August 2014:
45 women, including 12 minors, have been raped in the period between July 1 and mid-August… the government-backed militiamen are often not satisfied with raping alone. “They humiliate the victims even more, by shaving their heads, and mutilate their bodies.” “The 12 minors, who were raped, suffer from genital problems. Only four of them have been treated, for fistula, at El Fasher Teaching Hospital.”
But this represents an aggregation of data from earlier reports by Radio Dabanga; there is no indication that these incidents have previously gone unreported.
The spreadsheet has six columns: date of report or dispatch; date of event(s); location; age(s) of those assaulted; ethnicity of those attacked, if reported; number rape victims, as well as those abducted or physically assaulted; source. There are approximately 350 individual entries for the two-year survey (2014 and 2015), some representing a great many victims, such as the 220 girls and women raped at Tabit, North Darfur (October 31 – November 1, 2014).
Where the ethnicity of the victims is reported (by SUDO/UK) it is included with this other information. Most commonly reported as victims are girls and women who are Fur, Berti, Zaghawa, or Tunjur. For example:
October 28, 2015 | SUDO/UK (November Report)
A Janjaweed militia attacked Abu Zaid and Hawar Tator areas, which lies 20km to the west of Tabit. During the incident six women were raped, including one 13 year-old girl. The militia arrived to the areas at 11:00 on the back of 47 camels and 24 horses from Jebel Tarni wearing military uniform though hiding their faces with Al-Kamadol.
Upon finding the women present at their farms members of the militia informed the women that they had been told previously to not return to their farms otherwise face the consequences. They then began to open fire over the heads of the women and chased after them managing to catch six, who were then brutally raped multiple times by different aggressors. Following the mass rape the victims were beaten and left injured on the ground as the militia left.
The six women were aged 14, 29, 31, 46, 49, and 53 and include three Fur, one Zaghawa, and two Tunjur.
Again, all data from the spreadsheet are mapped onto three regional maps covering all of Darfur; all may be found here. (These data do not include the seven girls and women reported as raped in 2016). There are clear similarities in geographic patterns mapped in “‘Changing the Demography’: Violent Expropriation and Destruction of Farmlands in Darfur, November 2014 – November 2015” | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1P4.