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Issues and Trends in African Conflicts and their Implications for the Spread of HIV/Aids  

In Rwandan and Sierra Leonean Crises 

Okechukwu, Groupson-Paul UC.; Ukeje, Ikechukwu Ogeze; Prisca Chinyere Okechukwu 

 

ISSUES AND TRENDS IN AFRICAN CONFLICTS AND THEIR 

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SPREAD OF HIV/AIDS IN RWANDAN  

AND SIERRA LEONEAN CRISES  

 
Okechukwu, Groupson-Paul UC. PhD 

groupsonpaul@yahoo.com 

Department of Political Science 

Federal University Ndufu Alike Ikwo (FUNAI),                                                                                     

Ebonyi State, Nigeria, 

 

Ukeje, Ikechukwu Ogeze                                                                                          

ukejeike@gmail.com  

Department of Political Science 

Federal University Ndufu Alike Ikwo (FUNAI),                                                                                     

Ebonyi State, Nigeria 

  

Prisca Chinyere Okechukwu,  FMLSCN. 

 prispelladiag@gmail.com      

Center for Ultrasound Research and Education Cure, 

Medlag Consult, LUTH, Idi –Araba, agos, Nigeria 

 

Summary  

Background There have been scholarly responses to and peace-agents’ interventions to the 

reality of diseases spread in African conflict situations. The problem however, is a lack of 

adequate response to HIV/AIDs victims in the post-conflict era. This paper looks at the 

employment of HIV/AIDs transmission as a ‘New Instrument of Warfare’ (NIW) in Rwandan and 

Sierra Leonean conflicts and the challenges of the victims in the post-war period.     

 

Methods We conducted historical survey of African conflicts with special interest in Rwanda and 

Sierra Leone through a combination of content analysis, descriptive and comparative 

approaches. A review of extant literature revealed certain contradictions in conflict responses 

by African states and international organisations during and after conflicts in Africa.    

 

Findings In the emergence of HIV/AIDs transmission as a NIW in Africa especially as a form of 

ethnic cleansing strategy, the study finds speedy persistence of spread of HIV/AIDs and the 

unfortunate neglect of the vulnerable victims mostly women and children in the aftermath of war. 

 

Interpretation There is evidence of reoccurrence on the use of sexual violence and rape as 

weapon of warfare in Africa and the consequence in the spread of HIV/AIDs pandemic. The study 

observed that this act was deliberate meant purposely for ethnic cleansing. The study shows that 

women and under aged children who are infected with HIV/AIDs also suffer infirmities such as 

VVF and other STIs. Curtailing the growing number of such cases will require designing of post-

conflict collaborative response by peace agents to reduce the suffering of victims, provide access 

to Medicare, empowerment and education as disease control strategies.   

 

mailto:groupsonpaul@yahoo.com
mailto:ukejeike@gmail.com
mailto:prispelladiag@gmail.com


 

 

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Keywords: Conflict Zone, HIV/AIDS, Vulnerable, Eradication, Persistence, Rebels, weapon of 

war 

 

Introduction 

Conflicts, from the period of pre-

colonial conquest to wars of 

independences of states, supremacy, 

nationalism and subjugations had been 

an issues-based thoughts and adventure. 

However, in the period of cold war, 

where regimes change: alliances, 

suspicions, arms trafficking and 

leadership struggles among others were 

based on superiority – dominance; down 

to the end of cold war, the strategy of 

wars also changed. To which today, the 

events had turned into interplay of mix-

feelings and absurdity. The tones and 

directions of armed conflicts are now 

tailored into extreme annihilations and 

or perpetual destruction. This adventure 

meant to render the human race 

incapacitated and invalid becomes a 

theatre of warfare. Thus, adopting the 

view of Machiavelli (1640), that end 

justifies the means, to apply in most 

conflicts and crisis in the world. 

 

The language of war and chants of 

vengeance, carnage and destruction with 

hypocrisy and blackmail occasioned by 

hysteria propaganda cause or escalate 

many conflicts. With this global trends 

of conflicts wearing a new look at the 

end of the 20th century into the new 

millennium, the protagonists derive joy 

in taking the extreme contest to 

exacerbate battlefield casualties rate, 

especially where wars could not be won 

out-rightly, an indelible scares, marks 

and or pains are pictured on the forehead 

of the vanquished so that they would 

forever remember that they were once 

defeated, humiliated and or 

dehumanized.1,2 And since starvation 

was no longer one of the major weapons 

of war as seen in the Biafra-Nigeria civil 

war of 1967 to 1970, recent warfare had 

shown that such has been exchanged 

with rape, sexual assault and sexually 

transmitted diseases (STDs) like: 

Human Immuno-deficiency Virus 

(HIV), Acquired Immune Deficiency 

Syndromes (AIDs) and Sexually 

Transmitted Infections (STIs) among 

others, the battle is as good as having 

been won because the victims have been 

successfully dehumanized.3-7 With great 

disparities, the Iraq wars, Sri Lanka war, 

the war that dismembered the former 

Yugoslavia, Afghan war and Syrian war 

among others all differ from the many 

wars and conflicts in Africa. These kinds 

of wars/conflicts being a reoccurring 

decimal in the human indecision to 

despise fellow human, repeatedly 

occurred in several African conflict zone 

in the 1990s and 2000s, due to the 

character of warfare that has also 

changed2 admitted. Thus, this dread in 

itself, was over escalated to affecting 

almost the people of the continent owing 

to easy and free migrations within.  

 

Although, old had not totally gone 

contrary to the views above, nor that of,8 

but as a reflection of many African 

categorical problems,9 was quick to 

remind us that Africa have had its own 



 

 

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Issues and Trends in African Conflicts and their Implications for the Spread of HIV/Aids  

In Rwandan and Sierra Leonean Crises 

Okechukwu, Groupson-Paul UC.; Ukeje, Ikechukwu Ogeze; Prisca Chinyere Okechukwu 

 

shares of problems, with the issues of 

rebellion, political instability, religious 

fanaticism, economic recession, mass 

poverty and civil wars that were 

predominant. To which, according to,10 

as at 1996, an estimated 19 major 

internal conflicts were fought 

worldwide. Added to these are further 42 

lower intensity wars, of which a close 

review of the period shows that Africa, 

with 13 conflicts at home, was ranked 

amongst the highest in number of 

distributions of the world’s conflicts and 

crises with extreme form being 

displayed. Rwanda and Sierra Leone, 

specifically, being on the index of 

extreme conflict zones were classified so 

because sex, rape, sexual assaults and 

sexually transmitted HIV/AIDS were 

used as weapons of war. 

 

Thus,11 argued that mass sexual violence 

did not only serve as a weapon of 

genocide against the Tutsi ethnic group, 

but it was a strategic bait of external 

extermination of whatever that might 

remain of the Tutsi people. In the same 

vein, the level of sexual assault in Sierra 

Leone towns of Port Loko, Cambia, 

Rogbere and Mashaka among others 

demystified a nation without conscience, 

especially in the hand of the 

Revolutionary United Front (RUF). It 

further stated that there were act of 

sexual violence with severe medical and 

psycho-social pains visited on the 

women by the RUF rebels. Violence 

against women, especially rape, has 

added its own brand of shame to recent 

wars with systematic rape often used as 

a weapon of war in 'ethnic cleansing', 

just as occurred both in Sierra Leone and 

Rwanda, where women and girls 

contacted HIV/AIDS; faced with 

unwanted pregnancies and health 

complications resulting from botched 

abortion; suffer sexual mutilations and 

other injuries. 

 

Most often, opposition armed groups are 

fragmented with no unified command 

structure and always driven by 

particularistic/parochial interests rather 

than national goals and civilians, 

especially the vulnerable categories – 

the aged, women and children are 

victims of such armed conflicts. Dirty 

wars seek victory through horror rather 

than through battlefield strategies. 

Furthermore, civilian populations are the 

main targets of these conflicts, while 

fear, brutality and murder are the basis 

on which control is constructed. Thus, 

the actions of the RUF rebels, 

Intrahamwe rebels, Rwandan Armed 

Forces (RAF) and the Rwandan Patriotic 

Front (RPF) among others in the African 

conflicts zone were centered on horror. 

The perpetrators of the Rwandan 

genocide viewed sexual violence against 

the Tutsi women as an effective method 

to shame, humiliate and conquer the 

Tutsi populations.7 

 

Premised on these reasons, this study, 

particularly interested on the facts that 

victims of such atrocities in African 

conflict theatres as seen in Rwanda, 

Sudan – Darfur, Sierra Leone and Cote 

D’voire are either abandoned, neglected 

and or left to suffer their wounds to death 

become a source of worry to this study 



 

 

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as the survivors also waste no time to 

spreading the pandemic due to lack of 

check and control.6 An act that had 

combined both trend and bait to inflict 

pains and suffering on the vulnerable 

and innocent Africans in the conflict 

zone. This study, mindful of these lapses 

inherent in several conflict zones in 

Africa, considered Rwanda and Sierra 

Leone conflicts important in its 

investigation in the 

contemporary period.  Toward this end, 

African conflicts and the catalysis of 

war; the negative trends in African 

conflicts; HIV/AIDS as weapons of war 

of exterminations of the victims; the 

problems and effects in Rwanda and 

Sierra Leone; the scourge of the spread 

in Africa conflicts and the new idea 

(rape as a weapon) of war and the 

general implications among others were 

examined.  

 

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 

OF ANALYSIS 

The study adopts Frustration – 

Aggression theory and Top-Down 

Violence Model of the Political Conflict 

Theory to examine how long-time 

deprivation, suppression, oppression 

and leadership struggle occasioned by 

greed and dictatorship led to 

conflict/war of annihilation by any 

means (rape, sexual violence and STDs 

infection as weapon of war), especially 

against women and girls.  

 

(a). FRUSTRATION – AGRESSION 

THEORY: The scholars who employed 

the frustration-aggression model in their 

studies to explaining situation12-18,10 

among others, believes that the greater 

the frustration, the greater the quantity of 

aggression against the source of 

frustration. 

 

The intensity of frustration in the society 

can motivate men to either intense, 

short-term attack or to more prolonged, 

less severe attacks on the initiators of the 

thwarts.19 This implies that the severity 

of deprivation affects both intensity of 

violence, and the extent of human and 

physical damages. Mild deprivation 

motivates little violence, moderate 

deprivation push more across the 

threshold and very intense deprivation 

encourages large segments of political 

community actions.14 This is because, 

according to,15,18 destructive behavior, 

which is a fundamental property of the 

human organization of men and exposed 

to noxious stimuli that cannot be 

avoided or overcome, hence, having the 

innate disposition, to strike out at their 

sources. 

 

Striking out may or may not reduce the 

frustration, but it seems to be an 

inherently satisfying response to the 

tension built up through frustration for 

years.12 Arguing along the same line,18 

posited that the depraved may go all out 

to show how odious they are to the 

frustrations and their generations if not 

checkmated. As such action may be a 

mark of revenge or otherwise for the 

ultimate drive of all actions. The desire 

to release tension is not the only source 

of aggression, however, response to 

tension may themselves include the 

resort to violence.20 These actions are 



 

 

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Issues and Trends in African Conflicts and their Implications for the Spread of HIV/Aids  

In Rwandan and Sierra Leonean Crises 

Okechukwu, Groupson-Paul UC.; Ukeje, Ikechukwu Ogeze; Prisca Chinyere Okechukwu 

 

seen in those who rebels against their 

political community. Thus, implying 

that frustration–aggression relationship 

provides the dynamics for the 

relationship between intensity of 

deprivation and the potential for 

collective violence as witnessed in the 

Rwanda’s war in (1959-1994) and Sierra 

Leone’s armed conflict (1992-1998). 

 

As a sequel to these contentions, the 

following questions demand answer, 

viz, Could the rebelling against the Tutsi 

leadership as occurred in Rwanda 1959, 

against the Hutu leadership in 1988, 

1990 and 1994 among others, be due to 

the level of frustration suffered by both 

the Hutus from 1849 to 1959, and then 

the Tutsis from 1962 – 1994? Should we 

agree that it was due to the long denial 

and suppression that had availed the 

RUF to toe the line of action that they 

deemed possible in the period of civil 

war? Can the view of,18 above, be linked 

to the act of infecting the women and 

girls in Rwanda and Sierra Leone with 

HIV/AIDS as a way of shaming the 

respective governments and people7? 

Why do the rebels/warlords choose to 

humiliate the people with the kind of 

atrocities visited on the society? How 

has these long years of deprivation and 

frustration propelled the magnitude of 

aggression and destruction seen in these 

societies? Why should HIV/AIDS be 

seen as the most appropriate weapons of 

war to be used by the planners of the 

genocide in Rwanda and the warlords of 

Sierra Leone civil war?  Does the Hutus, 

in recounting their pains, frustration and 

dehumanization in the hand of the Tutsi 

oligarchy, despite their large population 

of about 84% afford them the 

opportunity to adopt and perpetuate the 

kind of leadership style they initiated? 

Does the imposition of forced labour and 

untold hardship and grievous 

exploitation of the people by the Tutsi 

oligarchy inform the Hutus to detest the 

Tutsis? During the period of the Tutsi 

oligarchy rule, the intrigues of cheat, 

hate, greed and forceful deprivation of 

their land, cattle, sheep, wives and 

daughters amongst others to the 

detriment of the depraved people was 

extolled. 

 

The Temines ethnic group of Sierra 

Leone, on the other hand, being the 

largest in population, the owners of the 

land where all the mineral resources like 

gold, diamond and cobalt among others 

are being mined are never allowed to 

rule the land since independence in 

1962. The minority Limbas, Krios and 

Fulas had ruled with treacherous 

dislocation of the Temine land. They are 

otherwise seen and treated as second 

class citizens upon their wealth. Their 

sons are not allowed to be promoted in 

the military, civil service and even 

political offices.  All these deprivations 

and ill treatments informed the kind of 

aggression and wanton destructions with 

infesting of the victims with HIV/AIDS 

as a way of revenge by the Temine 

owned RUF. 

 

(b). TOP–DOWN VIOLENCE 

MODEL: Such scholars as,13,21-23 sees 

the model as an instrument of the ruling 

class against their opposing subjects. 



 

 

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This occurs in the forms of instilling 

fear, intimidation, checkmating of 

opposition using hysteria propaganda, 

repression and suppression of the hated 

enemies and so on.  According to,22 top–

down violence model is when the act of 

violence or destruction are planned and 

mobilized from the top to the lower 

echelons of the society by political 

actors or leaders. It is usually funded by 

the political leaders and or 

entrepreneurs. This kind of action is 

always targeted against oppositions, 

threatening group and or at a particular 

ethnic, sect or religious groups. This 

consist of a powerful group who help to 

mobilizing violence from the top by 

creating large number of followers 

(recruits), who in turn helps to 

executing, re-recruiting and or using 

major coercion to actualizing the goal of 

the leaders.  

 

Top-down violence model, which is the 

same as disorderliness in conflict are 

manipulative scheme of wicked 

repression, used by seat-tight leaders to 

perpetually retain power by all means.13 

This, mostly seen among African leaders 

in the contemporary period is 

despicable. Agreeing to the above 

assertions,21 reiterated that it is mindless, 

mad and senseless act. Combined with 

hysteria propaganda, it tends to 

brainwash and even risk to death many 

in the name of protecting the nation 

state. It projects ethnic hatred, mindless 

violence and chaos by instilling fears on 

the mass-public while perpetrating evil–

annihilation. This act helps largely to 

abuse the civilian population, even when 

such is termed as being an unfortunate 

deviation from the laws of war or as a 

means to a military/rebel ends.24 In the 

case of Rwanda and Sierra Leone above, 

this study identified war and abuses like 

rape, sexual assault, sexual 

dehumanization and sexually 

transmitted diseases on the vulnerable 

by the perpetuators as a means of 

achieving their ends. 

 

The arising questions to this effect could 

be why should government plan the 

annihilation of its own citizen? What 

benefit do the government tend to gain 

by destroying the same people it wishes 

to govern? Why should hysteria 

propaganda and ethnic chant be used to 

destroy the society?  Why should the 

victims be neglected after haven 

suffered sexual assaults and rape? Was 

the sexual transmission of infectious 

diseases meant to reduce the population 

of the hated or otherwise? 

 

However, the two theories above have a 

great linkage with the study as it 

separately and expressly show that what 

informed the action of the RUF rebels, 

Interahamwe rebels, RPF rebels and the 

RAF was due to long years of suffering, 

frustration, deprivation an social neglect 

by government after government while 

the Top – Down violence approach of 

the Hutu Government officials after a 

concise plan and brainwashing was 

meant for the genocidires to expedite 

action using ethnic cleansing as 

instrument of hate to do away with the 

remains of the common enemies – the 

Tutsis.    



 

 

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Issues and Trends in African Conflicts and their Implications for the Spread of HIV/Aids  

In Rwandan and Sierra Leonean Crises 

Okechukwu, Groupson-Paul UC.; Ukeje, Ikechukwu Ogeze; Prisca Chinyere Okechukwu 

 

On the other hand, against the reasons 

that there had been many persistent 

neglects of victims of conflict years after 

the war has ended might also have 

indicated the degree of pains and 

challenges of the neglected people of 

Rwanda and Sierra Leone. This sorrow, 

bad and painful situations could be 

examined in two broad perspectives: the 

first is that of those victims who were 

already HIV/AIDS and other STDs 

carriers, which freely mix with the 

returnees from refugee camps and 

possibly spread the endemic diseases. 

Then, second are those who are aware of 

their status but out of the euphoria and or 

in the seek for greener pasture travels 

freely to other neighbouring countries, 

especially states’ in conflict to spreading 

the pandemic in the name of ad hoc 

workers, mercenaries, sex workers and 

Non-Governmental Organization 

(NGO) among others, thereby acting as 

both a baits and possibly peace agents or 

peacekeeping soldiers among others.  

    

AFRICAN CONFLICTS AND THE 

NEW IDEAS OF WAR 
Conflict is not new in Africa and it is 

inevitable.12,16,9 However, what 

becomes the necessary evil in such 

crises is not only the processes but the 

various trends and dimensions that 

accompanied its executions. This 

probably might have been followed by 

negative attitudes and wastages, 

especially as seen in the recent times, 

where wars are prosecuted against the 

victims and the vanquished. 

 

Perhaps also, truce on the catalysis or 

accompanying factors in most of the 

recent African conflicts are narrowed 

down into two spheres that might had 

made it a juicy venture or otherwise 

includes, one, total war of leadership 

struggle and the subsequent power 

sharing measures are at times assumed 

and adopted. Two, win or lose the war 

for an enthroned ethnicization against 

victims. These kinds, having been seen 

in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia and 

possibly the Democratic Republic of 

Congo DRC) and Darfur (in Sudan) 

among others tends to suggest that 

weapons, arms, armoured tanks, missiles 

and bombs are gradually been 

abandoned to a new phase of warfare. 

Where men trade infections like goods 

in order to exterminate or annihilate the 

unwanted races and people. An instance 

from Congo DR,25 revealed that the 

Congolese women in the 1997 war noted 

that the most insane fantasies have found 

their expression. When seven soldiers 

rape a women or little girl, and thrust a 

knife or fire shots into her vagina, for 

them the woman is no longer a human 

being, she is an object.  And since there 

are no longer any laws or rules, 

combatants pour out their anger and 

their madness on to women and little 

girls. 

 

According to the26, members of the Hutu 

Militias (interahamwe) and the National 

Army of Rwanda were noted to have 

targeted women and girls in the 

genocidal campaign of mass sexual 

violence. Similarly,7 reiterated that the 

perpetrators, the extremists themselves 



 

 

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viewed sexual violence against the Tutsi 

women as an effective method of shame 

and to conquer the Tutsi population, the 

moderate Hutu women supporters, 

mostly those who held opposing 

political views. In another instance,11 

argued that mass sexual violence did not 

only serve as weapon of war against the 

Tutsi ethnic group, but it was a strategic 

bait of external destruction of whatever 

that might remain of the Tutsi people. 

 

Different from the above observation,27 

it is noted that violence against women 

in Sierra Leone is a co-factor of 

HIV/AIDS infections and population 

reduction among the opposition to 

Temine ascendency. However, both 

Rwanda and Sierra Leone illustrate how 

war affects men and women differently. 

What form the catalysis (m) of war is 

that if gun cannot defeat the enemy, 

HIV/AIDS infections are used as a 

weapon of war by other means. There 

are links between conflict and the spread 

of HIV/AIDS in African armed 

conflicts. Although, quantifying that 

links is difficult, because reliable 

statistical data are not readily available, 

but evidence of the outcome of the 

pogrom has affirmed that most of the 

examined cases are tented towards that 

assumption.28  

 

It is evident that what constitute major 

issues in the Sierra Leonean and 

Rwandan armed conflicts/wars, apart 

from leadership struggle was hate and 

the ploy to do away with the arch-

enemies by any means, thereby 

requiring the adoption of the most 

inhuman tactic of infecting the victims 

with HIV/AIDS. This argument,29 noted 

that in the 1990s there was more focus 

on war-time sexual violence than ever 

before in the anal of African conflicts, to 

which it was affirmed that there were 

strong but complex relationship between 

sexual violence and war mostly targeted 

against the gender. 

 

Although, rape cases in war zone is not 

new as observed by30, because 

systematic and organized rape was a 

tactic of war. Agreeing to this notion,31 

reiterated that sexual violence is a 

common part of military conquest. In 

contemporary time men had treated 

women as spoils of war from the first 

expansionist societies. But the idea and 

outright usage of HIV/AIDS/STDs as a 

measure to cow the enemies or extinct 

them is new and very destructive. This 

also bring to fore the incessant and 

deplorable manner by which victims of 

war are abandoned, neglected or treated 

with disdain. 

 

In this paper, evidence from the 

literature review so far indicate that the 

events in Sierra Leonean town of 

(Magburunka), where Aminata Koroma 

and Khadijah Morgaui, two teenage girls 

between the ages of 15 and 16 years, 

who were infected with STDs, boils, 

swollen legs and black spots all over 

their bodies, beard their minds on the 

degrees of traumatization they went 

through since their predicaments. This 

ranging from abandonments to outright 

neglects by friends and immediate 

families, not to talk of the humanitarian 



 

 

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Issues and Trends in African Conflicts and their Implications for the Spread of HIV/Aids  

In Rwandan and Sierra Leonean Crises 

Okechukwu, Groupson-Paul UC.; Ukeje, Ikechukwu Ogeze; Prisca Chinyere Okechukwu 

 

groups who careless about them and 

failed to help. To these according to a 

field based research conducted by32, 

Sandra Koulabaye at Braihmon – 

County, recounted:  

It seems the war was still on and 

everyone is still hiding.  I suffered 

from VVF from the age 12 years 

owing to rape resulted pregnancy 

that kept me invalid for life due to 

poor handling and early neglect by 

all around me. At 22 years old, with 

HIV/AIDS positive, I still wet 

clothes and napkins at every 20 

minutes due to the infirmity. For 

Khadisah Bah and Rukiat Aluhassan 

at Masebi and Matutuka 

respectively… since we were taken 

into sex slavery by the RUF at the 

age 14 and 16 years, we had wished 

we never existed, because the men 

who infected them with 

HIV/AIDS/STDs and TB are no 

more and, here we are suffering the 

pains. Without ARV, which we 

cannot even afford today, it would 

have been over long ago. 

 

The questions that are pertinent here are: 

What happens to the voiceless in conflict 

zone? Why is it that only the known 

records, relatives, prominent persons 

and possibly those at refugee camps that 

are officially recognized as displaced or 

victims or conflicts, whereas their many 

suffering, passing through pains and 

trauma that are not heard of or care for? 

The answers may be unknown or simply 

put, African conflicts are always 

complex and the accompanying trends 

forms the complexity and catalysis of 

the war that goes along to affecting 

everything. 

 

HIV/AIDS AND CONFLICT 

FANNED MEDIUMS IN AFRICA 

Ideally, it is nullity to compare two 

different and major conflicts as having 

semblance, but one pertinent occurrence 

in most recent African conflicts has been 

the will of the indecent group to 

emulating the evil that their kind or party 

displayed while humiliating a perceived 

enemies or people. The Rwandan 

war/genocide and the Sierra Leonean 

war were both rooted in ethnicity and its 

manipulation by warlords for parochial 

gain.33,34 The functional mechanism of 

attaining this quest as nursed and desire 

were also centered on ethnicization35, 

which informed the actors to see rape, 

sexual violence and the act of infecting 

the victims with STDs, HIV/AIDS and 

TB among others as a bait to exercising 

their dominance over the lesser groups 

or enemies. This negative trend, which 

has become part of African states 

army/rebel warfare strategy portends a 

great danger as other upcoming crises 

like the Boko Haram insurgence in 

Nigeria, Tuareg rebels in Mali, the 

Central African rebel groups have 

adopted such heinous method of warfare 

to decimate the helpless civilian 

population, especially the vulnerable 

categories (women and girls). The 

Rwandan and Sierra Leonean wars are 

among the best classical cases of how 

the wars have resulted in the spread 

(both during and after the war) of 

HIV/AIDS.  

 



 

 

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THE RWANDAN EXPERIENCE 

With the end of the war/genocide, to 

which the combination of both theories 

above had a link not only to the events 

unfolding then in Rwanda but as clearly 

shown that the stage and reactions of the 

people portrayed as such, thereby 

leading to the kind of violence visited on 

the vulnerable and victims. The other 

also explains the action of the RPF 

rebels and the role of the seating Hutus’ 

government with the revisiting of the 

past treatment of the Hutus by the former 

Tutsi regime, resulting to war. The 

baseline survey of32 noted that an 

average Rwandan women and girls, on 

both side of the conflicts were beaten, 

raped, and tortured. The violence did not 

end either when the women arrived at 

the refugee camps, as rapes occurred 

frequently in and around the camp.35 As 

a result, a number of women became 

pregnant.33 The degree of sexual abuse 

resulting into easier HIV/AIDS 

transmission becomes more prevalent. 

 

According to36, citing the statement of 

Francisca, 

“the Rwandan Hutu militia at the 

barrier said they could protect me, 

but instead, they kept me and raped 

me in their homes. It was a case of 

one militia member who keep me for 

two or three days. And then another 

would choose me thereafter. If 

killers group approaches, they would 

say that I am their sister. I had to stay 

with these men because I would have 

been killed otherwise. A condition 

was very favourable for HIV 

transmission. After the attack by the 

rebels, I cried out and they stabbed 

me, carried me to forest where I meet 

other women and girls. A few years 

later, an RPF soldier came to my 

house and wanted to have sex with 

me. I tried to convince him that I was 

HIV positive and couldn’t have sex. 

It was like a rape because he was a 

soldier. I felt I could shout. He 

wanted to marry me and since he was 

a soldier, I felt I had no choice. I only 

made him have a test and he was 

already HIV positive. 

 

The Rwandan population, generally 

devastated by the genocide now have a 

25% population infected by HIV/AIDS 

virus with a steady daily increase of the 

infirmities on the people. The resultant 

effect of (HIV/AIDS endemic) on the 

people according to7, shows a dwindling 

life expectancy of 34 years amongst the 

women, while the average infant 

mortality rate has increased from 53% to 

81% death per every 1,000 live birth in 

the country. Over 10 million children 

between the age of 16 and 21 have lost 

one or both parents to HIV/AIDS.37 

Similarly,38 opined that the genocidares 

had two weapons, guns and machetes to 

infect victims with HIV/AIDS. Reacting 

to this situation, 39 opined that the Hutu 

extremist also accused the Tutsi women 

of being too proud and that the only way 

out is to use HIV/AIDs as part of their 

arsenal, raping them to infect them. 

Hence, the organizers orchestrated rape 

to humble the Tutsi. By and large, rape 

and HIV/AIDS infestation was alarming 

in the Rwandan conflict. It was a place 

where tears dried up, where the above 



 

 

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mentioned percentage of the women are 

HIV/AIDS carriers, with many 

emotionally traumatized. 

 

SIERRA LEONE SITUATION 

According to40, the Sierra Leone war, 

which initially was armed conflicts 

among men owing to leadership 

problems arising from long years of 

denial, suffering, frustration, deprivation 

and social neglect that later degenerated 

into violence against women and girls, 

as they were subjected into brutal forms 

of sexual violence, including sexual 

mutilation and killings. The Foday 

Sankoh led RUF and the Hunter Militias 

turned most women into sex slaves, 

where rape, sexual mutilation and 

dehumanization were in the extreme. 

The war which dragged from 1992 to 

2002 witnessed the worst atrocities 

against women and girls. Recounting the 

incidence in Port Loko, Matukuka, 

Mashebi and Cambia, the41 noted that in 

Sierra Leone alone, in the period of the 

conflict about 58% of the urban women 

and another 80% of the rural women and 

girls were infected with HIV/AIDS. Out 

of which about 33% of the girls suffered 

V.V.F with HIV/AIDs combined owing 

to rape and rupture of uterus. 

 

According to42 many of the young 

women who survived the civil war in 

Sierra Leone suffered sexual abuse of 

rape, sexual assault, forced pregnancy 

and some were kept as bush wives and 

dragged across the war front; and that 

many women suffered low-self-esteem, 

depression and infection among others, 

which are common outcome of 

HIV/AIDs. This mass rape and forced 

impregnation adopted as weapon of war 

saw non-Timene ethnic women, 

especially the Limbas suffer a great deal 

in the hand of their captors, the RUF 

rebels.32 A pathetic case is that of 

Aminata, an eleven-year-old Limba girl, 

which39 revealed that after the killing of 

her parents by the RUF at Gbologhun in 

Cambia district, she was raped 

consistently until Economic Community 

of West African State (ECOMOG) came 

to her rescue. Then, at eleven years, she 

was pregnant and abandoned. At the 

time of birth, she was told that the wall 

between her vagina and bladder may be 

affected, she suffered fistula, a broken 

and ruptured uterus, leading to 

uncontrolled bladder as urine run 

uncontrolled and the odd of soaking of 

clothes or pads became incessant. The 

above cases show the dehumanizing 

impacts of African conflicts on citizenry 

as the bad memories of what women and 

girls experiences in conflict zone is not 

only disturbing but lingers on for years. 

 

ISSUES IN AFRICAN CONFLICTS 

According to43, most African conflicts, 

either before or after independence, had 

not been on national issues as seen in 

them when agitating or struggling for 

freedom to attain independence. But like 

an act repeating itself, immediately after 

independence, they soon forget the pains 

of the trenches, the mould and early 

morning dews that they bath with. 

Struggle for power now take the center 

stage. Patriotism is thrown away. What 

each want to gain now become the bone 

of contest. Then conflict ensues. Of 



 

 

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interest, devious war strategies and 

tactics employed to dissipate the society. 

Some sees ethnic chanting and 

chauvinism as the best product to 

market, while some see ethnic 

humiliation, cleansing and ethnicization 

as the best tool to despise the enemies by 

employing the act of infecting captors 

with HIV/AIDs and STDs to show 

odiousness. The conflict in turn impede 

on human lives, the vision to protect the 

weak, the helpless and the vulnerable. 

Women and girls quickly become the 

victims of expected protectors as rape, 

sexual assault, abuse, mutilation, 

HIV/AIDs, fistula and unending 

traumatization become their nightmares.  

 

Thus,26 argued that there was an 

estimated 250,000 to 500,000 rape cases 

committed in Rwanda during the 

genocide, while women and girls in 

Sierra Leone were not different. They 

were systematically subjected to rape, 

gang rape, infected or otherwise killed or 

injured by having arrows, spears or other 

objects pushed into their vagina or being 

shut in the genitals.44 This kind of war 

strategies that has proved 

uncontrollable, but adopted as a new 

system of warfare are today seen in  

conflicts in the DRC,  Darfur (Sudan), 

Tuareg rebel uprising in Mali’s North, 

Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria , 

Central African Republic crisis and even 

other pockets of wars and protracted 

armed conflicts in Africa. Wars are no 

longer the act of testing the might of men 

but a desire to capture women and girls 

for sex slavery with the intent of 

infecting them with HIV/AIDs and other 

STDs viruses.3 Thus, agreeing with the 

research findings of,45 that the increase 

in African states conflicts that was 

initially high has though reduced 

drastically, but has not shown any 

change in the growth of HIV/AIDS 

scourge in Africa as it is still near 82% 

from the 1994 (45%) after the Rwanda 

and Somali crisis combined. For 

instance, a disclosure from an alleged 

escapee among the over two hundred 

Chibok school girls that was abducted 

by the Boko Haram armed group in the 

North-East Nigeria informed that “one 

of the girl was being raped 15 times by 

15 men every day … the girl is now 

traumatized and confused”.46  This new 

method of out-rightly using sex and 

infestation of HIV/AIDs transmission as 

a weapon of war had portrayed African 

in a bad light thereby projecting that the 

epidemics of AIDs virus and its casualty 

ratio in ten years’ time might place 

African as a risk zone; this time, not on 

poverty but on the dread of HIV/AIDs 

pandemonium as risk in African 

societies. 

 

TRENDS AND SPREAD 

Premised on this new dimension of war 

in Africa, targeted at mostly women and 

girls, it is evident that the following are 

noticeable in the processes: 

i. The scourge of HIV/AIDS might 

be by direct unprotected sex 

through rape, which is the highly 

adopted method; 

ii. Most victims were placed in a 

situation where they were forced 

to exchange sex for survival; 



 

 

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iii. Absence of food, shelter and 

security often encourage such 

act; 

iv. The act of intimidating partner 

by way of violence, thereby 

making it difficult to negotiate 

safe sex in relationship can lead 

to infesting of the victims easily 

with the dread disease. 

 

Hence, sexual violence, a widespread 

act, mostly in conflict zone as noted in 

Rwanda and Sierra Leone are 

problematic to the African people. It is 

apparent that economic disruption, war 

or conflict also exacerbates gender based 

violence in number of ways, but the 

recent occurrence in many of the African 

conflict zones, especially as examined in 

Rwanda and Sierra Leone left such to be 

desired. That is why, the true 

understanding of the extent of violence 

against women and girls at the hand of 

warlords/rebels in the name of war or 

conflicts are worrisome to all. 

 

IMPLICATIONS ON AFRICAN 

SOCIETY 

According to47,1 the systematic raping of 

women and girls in several of the 

African conflicts as a method of warfare 

is a gross human violation, portraying 

the actors of the wars as senseless 

fighters without any purpose other than 

looking for cheap manner of settling 

sexual urges. An intention that might 

have informed the assertion about the 

Hutu rebels, according to48, that their 

leaders asked them (troops) to rape the 

Tutsi women as part of their genocidal 

campaign, in order to quicken the 

transmission of HIV/AIDS, which is the 

fastest way of wiping out the Tutsi race 

from the face of the earth.  

 

Going by the various contentions above, 

it is evident that armed conflicts 

exacerbated the spread of HIV/AIDS in 

many ways. This is because it 

disintegrates countries, with negative 

consequences of societal dislocations 

and collapse of state institutions and 

social services among others. 

Specifically, the conflict in Rwanda and 

Sierra Leone contributed greatly to the 

spread of HIV/AIDS and other STDs. 

Noted to have aided this spread easily 

was the high incidence of refugees 

overflow and migration within that 

period. In Sierra Leone, for instance, 

over 62% of rural health units were non-

functional in the immediate aftermath of 

war in most of the above mentioned 

provinces. 

 

For Rwanda, especially schools, apart 

from classes being disrupted, children or 

pupils caught in the cross fire becomes 

immediate victims or booties of war, 

even when they are not taught the life 

skills that will protect them from 

HIV/AIDS, hence, they are consumed 

by the heat of war predators and agents 

of infections, the rebels.4 

 

Beside the complex nature of the 

Rwanda and Sierra Leone conflicts the 

war complicated the efforts at 

determining the accurate rate of 

HIV/AIDS victims, thereby making it 

easy for the fleeing refugees to spread 

the pandemic in their place of host so 



 

 

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easily. This also, to some extent, 

provided excuse for inaction and lack of 

political will to check or tackle the 

spread of HIV/AIDS as some receiving 

countries see their involvement as mere 

helping people in distress. 

 

Finally, the overwhelming implication 

of the widespread of HIV/AIDs in 

African conflicts uncontrolled indicates 

that rape, unprotected sex, sexual assault 

and forced pregnancy amongst others 

have been adopted as a way of life, 

thereby portend danger and great risk to 

the continent. This is because it does not 

only undermine the progress of stopping 

HIV/AIDs transmission but it also put 

the lives of the entire continent in serious 

danger. This negative act also directly 

affects women across the services, 

including methods of protecting self. 

The fallout also poses serious challenges 

to sexual negotiation like the use of 

condom, the prevention of the spread of 

HIV/AIDs and creates serious burden to 

healthcare system as it may impede on 

survival chances of carriers and new 

victims with low immune system.  

 

CONCLUSION AND 

RECOMMENDATION 

Going by the UN Security Council 

Resolutions 132549 and 130850 under 

and respectively, which argued that 

women and girls are disproportionately 

vulnerable to HIV infection during 

conflict and post-conflict periods. That 

is, they may be by fleeing home, loss of 

family members, loss of means of 

livelihood and may have little or no 

access to healthcare among others. It is 

to be argued that sex and HIV/AIDs 

transmission is a weapon of war in the 

modern African warfare. The study finds 

that the speedy persistence of the spread 

of the scourge in conflict zone had for 

long been neglected. The study revealed 

that in worst cases, under aged children 

who are infected with HIV/AIDs also 

suffers other infirmities like virginal 

vascular fistula (VVF). The study 

observed that the existed evidence of the 

menace exposed the growing number of 

carriers that are mostly women and 

children in African conflict zones and, 

are yet neglected and abandoned. A 

disheartening scenario that has clearly 

informed the crude state of African level 

of awareness compared to the western 

world where modern warfare is centered 

on technological know-how and not on 

consistent rape and virus transmission as 

a way of dissipating and dehumanizing 

the enemies. It is also obsolete in 

modern time to agree with31 that sexual 

violence is a common part of military 

conquest documented from earliest 

historical records to contemporary 

conflict. This study, would rather see the 

argument of,37 that sexual violence 

targeted against women and girls in the 

name of mass violence is brutal and 

invisible form of a systematic use of rape 

to serve a political ends as objective 

contention. That is why, this study 

would probably suggest the use of 

peacekeepers and other peace agents in 

tracking down the distributors of this 

pandemic. At the same time the 

exposure of the sufferers for treatment 

and curtailment is very necessary. 

           



 

 

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 The contention and usage of the two 

theories above showed that the populist 

were manipulated due to the evidence of 

deprivations, frustration, denial and 

social neglect, to which they were easily 

brainwashed by the government agents 

cum rebel leaders who used them to their 

own end in destroying the general 

society of Rwanda and Sierra Leone.   

 

Meanwhile, the actions of the 

perpetuators should not in any way, be 

accepted in scoring cheap political 

points either in the battlefield or peace 

time. Just as the mass rape organize as 

part of systematic violence campaign 

with physical and psychological torture 

on Rwandans by the Hutu Intrahamwe 

rebels were quickly dismantled by the 

opponents. 

 

 

 

 

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http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/#resolution

