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Salih Mahmoud Osman, Sudanese member of parliament and human rights lawyer:
You can image now the situation where rape is used as a weapon of war. Most of the rape offenses happened in front of or took place in front of the male relatives of the victim - that is the fathers the husbands, the brothers. It is much humiliation that is happening there and they are calling them slaves and there is always this issue of sexual violence like keeping young girls and women after the attacks like sexual enslavement.
The problem is that our penal code is very much in contradiction of the international standards. It is impossible for us to successfully bring cases against perpetrators who committed rape because law of evidence does not recognize the medical reports. The only way to prove a case of rape is that you have to bring in four male witnesses to testify to the effect that they have seen the offense happening in front of their eyes. That is not always possible.
We have three cases where the offense of rape was modified to be called to be commuted to be called gross indecency, which is insignificant. And gross indecency sometimes in case of conviction the penalty is six months or something. There is nothing more than that you can expect.
But despite these difficulties and constraints when we are filing these cases we are putting criminals into court (ph) and giving some satisfaction to the victims that they are not forgotten, that their suffering is documented. And that one day in the future who knows there may be circumstances that we can successfully bring the cases again against the perpetrators.
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