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in human rights law as well as international law to be successful. They also needed to protect the girls and make sure they weren’t revictimized by theprocess. Once the child’s story has been documented by an officer, the lawyer can make the accusation in court, thus preventing the girls from being further traumatized.
    For five long days, they argued over how best to make the case. There were three choices: a civil claim, a criminal claim or a constitutional claim. Finally they decided that a constitutional challenge was the way to go. The Kenyan constitution guarantees equality rights for citizens. It promises protection for men and women. It governs the laws that deliver that protection. The lawyers will argue that the state failed to execute the constitutional rights of the girls. Then they set their sights on a court date. The journey they’re on together is about girls who dared to break the taboo on speaking out about sexual assault. It’s about women lawyers from two sides of the world supporting these youngsters in their quest for justice. It’s about the kids who were told they had no rights but insist that they do. It’s the push-back reaction that every woman and girl in the world has been waiting for. “This case is the beginning,” said Chidi. “It’ll be a long journey but now it has begun.” If they win, the victory will be a success for every girl and woman in Africa, maybe even the world.
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    The road they travel was paved by women who went before: those who were willing to cry foul rather than be silenced by shame; those who worked tirelessly to make the world understand that rape is not the right of men; those who insist rape is not the “fault” of women but a control issue among men who have failed to grasp the consequences of scarring a woman’s mind by assaulting her body.
    Like so many issues that have reached a turning point for women, rape has gone from being the crime no one wants to talk about to making headlines, to being a prominent subject in courts, in newly published books and in award-winning films. Among the first to go public on a world stage were the extraordinarily brave women from Bosnia who went to the International Criminal Court in The Hague in 1998; despite the very real possibility that they would be forever rejected by their families, they testified about what had happened to them: they had been rounded up, taken to enemy camps and gang-raped.
    Their story of sexual violence actually began when the USSR collapsed in 1991 and its sister state Yugoslavia (created at the end of the First World War from seven independent nations) erupted in a civil war in the Balkans so virulent that former neighbours, old friends and business partners attacked one another in a ferocious bloodbath that riveted the world’s attention. I began covering the story soon after that, which is how I came to meet some of the women who had been gang-raped. But getting their story published was a story in itself. Here’s what happened.
    In the fall of 1992, I was in Sarajevo to cover the effect of war on children. The siege of Sarajevo was like nothing I had ever seen before. Snipers and soldiers were waging a war against civilians. Targets of the shelling were hospitals, schools and playgrounds. Explosives made in the shape of children’s toys were maiming kids who picked them up. Families were forced to live in basements while soldiers took over the rest of the house. And all this was happening in a breathtaking setting, in a city that had played host to the Olympic Games, in a region that was picture-postcard beautiful. The towns had names that sound like songs. White stucco houses with red clay roofs dotted the landscape.The sun cast a glow on ancient hills that turn purple at dusk and glowed buttery yellow at dawn. But the streets were rife with the Devil’s work and there was peril at every corner.
    The day before I was to leave Sarajevo, I began to hear rumours about Bosnian Serb