News from the Field
In Focus: Democratic Republic of the Congo
Sexual Violence in the DRC
The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is formally over, but women and girls remain targets for violence. Physical and economic insecurity still characterize the lives of women and girls.
Today, the Congolese army, security sector personnel, and several armed groups still use sexual violence as a weapon of war in the DRC.Further, international actors, including UN personnel, have been implicated in perpetrating sexual violence in the DRC.Armed actors have targetted women and girls in the streets, fields, and homes.These assaults take many forms, including sexual slavery, kidnapping, forced recruitment, forced prostitution, and rape. The Congolese victims of sexual violence also include men and boys, who have suffered rape, sexual humiliation, and genital mutilation.Read More
War's other victims - The scale of an unspeakable horror
From The Economist print edition
FROM Bosnia's rape camps and the horrors of Rwanda's genocide in the 1990s to the atrocities being perpetrated daily in northern Congo and Sudan's Darfur region, the tally of body bags runs alongside another grim body count: the numbers of women and girls, but in some places men and boys too, subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence.
Hundreds of thousands of women raped for being on the wrong side
Chris McGreal, The Guardian, November 12, 2007
Rape has been used to terrorise and punish civilians in Congo who support the "wrong side", and it is perhaps no coincidence that it was also a tool of genocide in the mass murder of the Tutsis.
DR Congo: UN official decries sexual violence, urges stronger response
UN News, November 06, 2007
UN member states were Tuesday urged to do more to protect women from pervasive sexual violence in armed conflict and to give them a greater voice in matters of war and peace.
Stop using women's bodies as 'battleground' in wartime: UN
AFP in Turkish Press, October 23, 2007
UN member states were Tuesday urged to do more to protect women from pervasive sexual violence in armed conflict and to give them a greater voice in matters of war and peace.
Security Council Deeply Concerned About ‘Pervasive’ Gender-Based Violence, as it Holds Day-long Debate on Women, Peace, and Security
UN Press release (DPI), 23 October 2007
In a statement read out by Akwasi Ose-Adjei, Foreign Minister of Ghana, which holds the rotating presidency for October, the Council said such acts had become systematic in some situations, reaching “appalling levels of atrocity.
Congo's rape war
John Holmes, October 11, 2007
Despite many warnings, nothing quite prepared me for what I heard last month from survivors of a sexual violence so brutal it staggers the imagination and mocked my notions of human decency.
Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War
Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times, October 7, 2007
Stephen Lewis calls for a new UN initiative to end sexual violence in the eastern region of the DRC
Press conference, September 13, 2007
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There are many non-governmental organizations that address the issue of sexual violence in armed conflict and post-conflict situations. Donate to one of the organizations listed here
