UN: Indigenous Women Victims of Violence

Guardian

Friday March 11, 2005 11:16 AM
By EDITH M. LEDERER

Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATION (AP) - A human rights activist from Kenya claimed British soldiers have raped hundreds of women from her Somber tribe. A Canadian lawyer said over 500 indigenous women have died as a result of sexual violence in the last 20 years. A Nicaraguan surgeon accused Honduran soldiers and farmers of raping women from her Miskita tribe.

As a two-week meeting on the world's progress toward gender equality neared an end, indigenous women described the double discrimination they are subjected to and the high level of violence it produces.

``For indigenous women, gender-based violence is fueled by racism and discrimination as well as sexism,'' said Elissavet Stamatopoulou, chief of the secretariat of the U.N.'s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She said violence is perpetuated by policies that deny indigenous women access to education, health care and the justice systems....

Rebecca Lolosoli, who founded the Umoja Uaso Women's Group in northern Kenya over 10 years ago to help woman who were allegedly raped by British soldiers, accused the Kenyan and British governments of not supporting Samburu women subjected to sexual attacks - or their children, many of them white.

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