bers. Alongside battery, rape creates a climate of
terror and oppression in the domestic sphere that
damages both physical and mental health. Rarely
criminalized, marital rape commonly falls under
the principle of “marital exemption” by which the
private sphere is protected from state intervention.
While laws prohibiting marital rape do exist in a
handful of countries, including Ghana, Zimbabwe,
and South Africa, they are rarely enforced.
Gender violence is also a common feature of
large-scale conflict in Africa. In Burundi, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda,
Sierra Leone, and Somalia, rape is part of women’s
everyday experience of violence. In Burundi’s civil
conflict, for example, soldiers and members of
armed political groups have used rape to humiliate
and terrorize the population. The stigma attached
to rape can also do long-term damage to a woman’s
position in her family and community. In Rwanda,
children born to Tutsi women raped by Hutu men
have become outcastes. Refugees from Africa’s
conflicts, living in desperate conditions and far
from family and community mechanisms that may
mitigate abuse, are especially vulnerable to both
rape and battering.
The impact of domestic
violence on health
Battering and rape directly threaten the health of
women and girls. Rape also facilitates the spread of
HIV/AIDS and other diseases, and results in un-
wanted and high-risk pregnancy. In Swaziland and
Uganda, for example, high rates of HIV infection
among girls and women correlate with the inci-
dence of both marital rape and domestic violence.
Controversy surrounds the question of whether
female genital cutting, in its mild and severe forms,
constitutes violence against girls and women or a
defensible cultural custom. In Kenya, for example,
local activists protest against the practice while
many Gikuyu women see it as an essential rite of
passage. However, its widespread negative impact
on women’s health and sexuality shares much in
common with battery and rape. Alongside the pain
of the procedure and subsequent painful sexual
activity, the risk of infection, HIV transmission,
and complications during childbirth are all associ-
ated with the practice. The range of efforts to limit
this procedure centers on challenging the miscon-
ception that it is a requirement of Islam, finding
alternative employment for professional circum-
cisers, educating people about the health risks,
medicalizing the procedure to make it safer, and
criminalization.
sub-saharan africa 127Legal responses to domestic
violence
Africa possesses a broad array of non-state dispute
resolution mechanisms and formal legal processes
that vary from country to country, most of which
contain a blend of customary, religious, and Euro-
pean law. Traditional sanctions against gender vio-
lence remain an invaluable resource in much of
Africa, but they have weakened in the face of
urbanization, economic crisis, forced migration,
and war. The common mediation approach to fam-
ily disputes may backfire when battered women are
compelled to respond in a conciliatory manner.
Throughout Africa, criminal rape prosecutions
are rare, and with few exceptions marital rape and
domestic violence are not crimes. Where such laws
do exist, there are typically problems with both
police and judicial enforcement. In South Africa,
for example, police systematically treat domestic
violence as less serious than other types of assault.
In Senegal, judges discourage women from seeking
divorce as a way out of a violent marriage. In coun-
tries such as Nigeria, where the Sharì≠a plays a
major role in family law, prosecutions have been
rare as some legal activists apply Islamic legal prin-
ciples in domestic violence cases, while others
appeal to international human rights law.
Gender violence entered international human
rights discourse in force with the United Nations
Decade for Women ending in 1985, and while ab-
sent from the original Convention on the Elimina-
tion of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
(CEDAW) in 1979, new language was adopted in
1992 and 2003 declaring gender violence as a human
rights violation. In 1998, the United Nations Inter-
national Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ruled that
rape is a form of genocide, and in the same year the
International Criminal Court listed sexual violence
as a crime falling within its jurisdiction. The human
rights approach to gender violence in Africa must
contend with the charge of many Africansthat inter-
national standards exhibit Western bias and disre-
spect for African cultures. Activists inside and
outside Africa respond that the goal of ending gen-
der violence should be in harmony with African
cultural values, and that any disharmony indicates
the need for change. Ultimately, the effectiveness of
national and international struggles in ending
domestic violence in Africa must draw on existing
cultural resources while working to transform the
economic, political, and legal context in which
African women live.Bibliography
Amnesty International, Burundi. Rape – the hidden rights
abuse, New York 2004.