We know that there are men among victims too. But we work under a series of constraints, like the lack of staff training, or the fact that not all of our intervention and support procedures have been updated to mainstream male survivors’ needs, and so on. And let’s be honest, I am not sure we would have the financial means to provide adequate support to male survivors, like separate facilities, for instance. (International Rescue Committee 2014, interview)
The provision of support to male survivors of wartime sexual violence is an increasingly important issue for humanitarian organizations located outside of conflict zones too, in particular for organizations supporting refugees who have been victims of sexual torture. In Lebanon, for instance, organizations like the Danish Refugee Council, International Medical Corps (IMC), UNHCR and UNRWA have established male-focused centers (UNHCR 2017a, 43). In Western countries, however, where the arrival of refugees fleeing war in the Middle East and in Afghanistan has recently attracted a lot of media attention, the general level of awareness of the occurrence and prevalence of sexual torture is still very low. There are some specialized institutions that help survivors dealing with the consequences of torture, mostly at the psychological level, like, for instance, Freedom from Torture, based in the United Kingdom, or the Centre for Torture Survivors in Finland. None of them is specifically targeting survivors of sexual torture, but this is certainly an issue they are familiar with, including when it has been perpetrated on men (Halla 2016, interview). Other major institutions such as the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, located in Denmark, have developed training programs such as the project PROTECT-ABLE,[2] which aims at improving the access to psychological and medical care for asylum seekers and refugees who have been victims of torture. But stereotypes attached to who can, or cannot, be a victim of sexual violence linger on, especially with regards to asylum applications. This is particularly worrying since it has been estimated that in New York, for instance, male survivors of sexual assault make up at least 10% of asylum applications.[3] In a study conducted in 2002, Del Zotto and Jones (2002) examined thirty-six US asylum cases of women versus forty-four cases of men, and found that all but two women were asked whether or not they would face sexual danger in their country of origin, whereas none of the men were asked equivalent questions. Unfortunately, more than fifteen years afterwards, these trends seem to have remained unchanged (Halla 2016, interview).
Progress is even slower at the level of local clinics and NGOs, which remain almost entirely focused on female survivors. Very few local organizations have included male survivors among their potential recipients, and even fewer have developed specific programs or premises dedicated to the support of male survivors. According to the study conducted by Del Zotto and Jones, at the beginning of the 2000 decade, out of more than four thousand non-governmental groups tackling conflict-related sexual violence, “only 3% mention the experiences of males at all in their programs and informational literature. About one quarter of the groups explicitly deny that male-on-male violence is a serious problem” (Del Zotto and Jones 2002). If changes in discourses have been visible over the past ten years or so, as explained by Lwambo (2013), they have so far failed to translate at the practical level. Programs addressing wartime sexual violence have sometimes been re-packaged as “gender-sensitive” as opposed to targeting women only, but they in fact still pursue a women-centered approach, whereby men (understood here as primarily military and local decision-makers) are only marginally included under the term “sensitization”. As a consequence they fail to properly address men’s needs, when they are not entirely ignoring them. In Burundi, for instance, where numerous cases of sexual torture against men have been documented over the past decades (see, for instance, Amnesty International 2015), organizations like Nturengaho still focus exclusively and explicitly on girls and women (Nturengaho 2012, interview). Sometimes this reluctance to offer support to male survivors can be explained by the agenda of donors who usually prioritize support to women, or by the religious background of these organizations. And, just like for international humanitarian organizations, funding is often lacking: “Many working on Gender-Based Violence against women and girls believe that funding for their work is inadequate to the need, and that extending work to include men and boys will further dilute these already inadequate resources” (UN 2013, 15).
In such a context, the emergence over the past five to ten years of structured groups of male survivors seeking to organize themselves and to provide support to other survivors constitutes a major development and a source of hope (Edström et al. 2016). These groups are rarely active in conflict areas themselves, but can be found in refugee camps located in neighboring countries, like in Uganda where, as we will see, a lot of Congolese men and women have taken refuge. These groups of survivors are also more likely to be set up in the post-conflict period, as in the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In many ways, male survivors’ organizations are well ahead of any public initiative or program in this field, in terms of both the quality and the innovative nature of the support they provide. However, their impact is limited geographically, and their initiatives face numerous practical, legal and financial constraints. Many of these groups are located in sub-Saharan Africa, and especially in Uganda. The Makerere University–based Refugee Law Project supports several of these survivors groups, like Men of Hope and Men of Courage, both funded in 2011, and Men of Peace, funded in 2013. Their membership varies from a few dozen to more than a hundred, almost all recruited in the refugee camps scattered throughout Uganda. These survivors-led organizations share similar goals, like raising awareness of wartime sexual violence against men and its consequences, protecting male survivors, advocating for them and providing medical and psychosocial support. In addition, most of them have set up educational programs for male survivors, in order to help them become more autonomous and self-confident. These organizations liaise with donors, and some also support projects for survivors with disabilities, like, for instance, building houses. In contrast to international initiatives, they are not mainly focused on initiating the prosecution of cases of sexual violence, or on obtaining reparations for survivors, which would in any case prove particularly complicated since many African countries do not recognize sexual violence against men as an offense. In countries like Uganda, where an Anti-Homosexuality Bill was passed by Parliament in December 2013, and where some judges refuse to distinguish between consensual and nonconsensual same-sex relationships, male survivors are often assumed to be homosexual, which threatens their security. Organizing collectively can help improve survivors’ psychological and material security, even though heightened security threats have sometimes been reported (see, for instance, Men of Peace Association 2014).
3
The Bellevue/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture in New York City has compiled 204 cases of sexual assault out of a total of 2,019 male asylum seekers or refugees since 1996 (Anderson 2015).