Signs of a sick African culture

NY Times:

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“The prevalence of child rape in South Africa goes from really, really high to astronomically high,” said Dr. Rachel Jewkes, a specialist on sexual violence with South Africa’s Medical Research Council.

Africa is not unique in its high rates of abuse. While a survey of nine countries last year by the World Health Organization found the highest incidence of child sexual abuse in Namibia — more than one in five women there reported being sexually abused before age 15 — it also found frequent abuse in Peru, Japan and Brazil, among other nations. Relatives are frequent perpetrators in Africa, as in much of the world. But this continent’s children face added risks, especially at school. Half of Malawian schoolgirls surveyed in 2006 said male teachers or classmates had touched them in a sexual manner without their permission.

The number of abuse cases is rising in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone and other African countries, statistics show. Whether that means more children are being victimized or more are coming forward — or both — is impossible to determine, experts say.

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Increasingly, African nations are openly acknowledging the problem, partly because AIDS has made children more likely to fall ill or die from sexual abuse. Campaigns against abuse are under way in Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, Kenya, Sierra Leone and elsewhere.

The impact is apparent in Zimbabwe, where a child rights group estimates that at least 2,000 child rape victims have died of AIDS since 1998. “Literally for the first time in Zimbabwe’s history, child abuse is no longer a taboo subject,” said James Elder, a Unicef spokesman.

That said, the response is minuscule compared with the extent of abuse, said Pamela Shifman, a child protection specialist at Unicef headquarters in New York. “We see huge numbers of girls affected,” she said. “These crimes are still treated as the fault or the problem of the victim.”

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There is much more. The UN makes it own contribution by sending pedophile soldiers in as "peace keepers." There have been numerous reports of abuse these troops although none are highlighted in this story. Some of the cases have been caused by the ignorant belief that having intercourse with a virgin will cure AID's. It is just another indicator of a sick culture. Another reason the AID's virus spread so rapidly in Africa has to be a high rate of promiscuity particularly among men who then transmit the disease to their wives. To cure this problem in Africa the African culture has to change. It is unlikely that the multi culties at the UN will ever take on that responsibility.