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Contributions from
the Column
Focus
Fundamentalists resent migration of women worker
The multiple worlds of Turkish women
Women and Islam in Northern Nigeria
Algeria: “We are very sceptical”
Helping women traumatised by civil strife
03/2005
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Help for war-traumatised women
Monday morning, 8 o’clock: staff of the Algerian Society for Psychological Research (SARP) take me to Sidi Musa, a small town southwest of Algiers, where the organisation runs a centre for psychosocial counselling. Providing long-term psychological, medical and social support for 150 women as well as 50 children and men, the facility is partly funded by the European Union.
The minibus bumps over the narrow country road. From a distance, the fertile landscape seems a picture of peace. But as we draw closer, the scars of war become obvious. Soot-blackened trees, walls riddled with bullet-holes, deserted farms and the charred remains of factories stand as stark reminders of the fighting that took place in the 1990s. Road signs point to Bentalha and Rais – once quiet little villages whose names are now associated in Algeria and beyond with horrific massacres that left hundreds dead.
“This is where the ‘liberated’ Islamic zone began”, says a sarcastic voice next to me. Such zones long ago ceased to exist. The civil war has been officially over since the Civil Harmony Act was promulgated in 1999 and amnesties were granted to Islamist fighters. However, year after year, the terrorism of armed groups still kills an estimated 1,000 people in Algeria – especially in remote areas. The civil war, which began in 1992 after the military suspended parliamentary elections, claimed around 150,000 lives.
The traumas remain – especially for the many women who were assaulted, raped and, in some cases, abducted and detained for months at Islamist camps in the 1990s. “What is even worse,” says SARP co-founder Cherifa Bouatta, “is that they are denied financial assistance by the government because they are women.” While the state provides compensation for some male victims of terrorism and helps repentant Islamists make a new start in life, female rape victims are explicitly excluded from such programmes on the grounds that state support could “stigmatise them and brand them as prostitutes”.
Official cynicism, widespread misogyny and a discriminatory family code add to the suffering of Algeria’s war-traumatised women – women like 45-year-old Yamina (not her real name), who has been regularly visiting the SARP centre in Sidi Musa for several months. Her husband, a taxi driver, has been “missing” since 1999. Since then, with a meagre state allowance of 8,000 dinars (around ¤ 100), she has had to feed and clothe a family of six all on her own. Yet she is treated by the authorities as a minor. When her children start school, when they need a doctor, when she applies for welfare assistance, Yamina needs the signature of her husband – because as long as he is not officially declared dead or shown to have wilfully abandoned the family, he is the only one with the legal right to take decisions concerning the children. All inquiries into her husband’s whereabouts have so far drawn a blank and Yamina struggles to cope without his signatures. Nonetheless, she is reluctant to have him officially declared missing because she doesn’t trust the police or the authorities.
And rightly so. In recent years, single mothers and their children have repeatedly become victims of pogroms in Algeria – and the security services have failed to protect them. On July 16, 2001, for example, 300 men rioted for hours in the southern “oil town” Hassi Messaoud, raping and beating women and torching their homes. In November 2004, the human rights organisation Amnesty International stated: “Legal discrimination against women in Algeria encourages acts of physical violence and legitimises the systematic injustice faced by women at all levels.” A SARP worker echoes that verdict today: “We can hand out drugs for depression and offer psychological support. But as long as women are denied their human rights, any therapeutic impact remains limited.”
Martina Sabra
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