Breaking the silence: Industrial oil palm and rubber plantations bring harassment, sexual violence and abuse against women
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Life around industrial oil palm and rubber plantations is marked by violence. This is no different across West and Central Africa, where governments have handed out concessions to foreign plantation companies covering four million hectares of land for expansion of industrial oil palm plantations in recent years.
When these industrial plantations encroach onto community land, sexual violence, rape and abuse against women and girls increase dramatically. This happens wherever industrial plantations are established and irrespective of whether the plantation crop is palm oil or rubber.
Most women who suffer incidents of sexual violence in and around the industrial plantations suffer in silence. Few report incidents of assault, rape or sexual harassment for fear of retribution and further abuse by authorities and company personnel. This, in turn, exposes women to more sexual violence and abuse as the perpetrators face virtually no risk of being held to account for the violence they inflict on women. Cultural norms that stigmatize women who are raped, blame them for the assault and expose their families to shame, add insult to injury for these women. Too often, women suffer not only in silence but also alone.
Harassment and sexual violence affect women who work on industrial plantations as well as women and girls who live in and around these plantations and who have to use the roads that pass through the plantations in order to reach their fields, their water sources, the market town, the nearest school or their kin in neighbouring villages.
The plantation managers and security guards increase the risk of sexual violence, rape or harassment for women because they use their positions of power to carry out these acts or they allow such acts to happen without consequences for the abuser. "Our women cry a lot," a traditional chief in Cameroon once remarked. The situation of 'everybody knows but no-one talks about it' is pervasive – and it must end.
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Breaking the silence: Industrial oil palm and rubber plantations bring harassment, sexual violence and abuse against women
Contact information
RADD - Cameroon, radd2009@yahoo.fr
Muyissi Environnment – Gabon, missmouity@yahoo.fr
Natural Resource Women Platform – Liberia, nrwomenplatform@gmail.com
GRAIN, grain@grain.org
World Rainforest Movement (WRM), wrm@wrm.org.uy
Related Project:
Territories of Life
The Territories of Life toolkit is a series of 10 short videos that share stories of resistance, resilience and hope with communities on the front-line of the global rush for land. These videos, available in English, Spanish, French, Indonesian and Swalhili and are currently being disseminated widely by community facilitators.
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