subscribe: Posts | Comments

Rape still a huge problem in DR Congo

0 comments

Summary of story from IPSNews, October 17, 2011

Villagers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) still live in fear of continuing attacks from militia who regularly sweep into villages raping or murdering anyone who gets in their way.

Despite the country officially being at peace since December 2002, bitter conflict still rages over the country’s natural resources of diamonds, cobalt and coltan, which is used to produce electronic components in computers and mobile phones (see WVoN story).

It is not just Congolese militant groups that are warring, though.

Rwandan rebels in the FDLR who withdrew to the forests and mountains of eastern Congo after their country’s 1994 genocide rely on looting villagers’ livestock and harvests to feed themselves.

The groups use rape as a means of psychological warfare to make the population terrified and submissive. Regularly all the women in a village will be subjected to mass rapes while the men are murdered in front of their eyes.

According to an as yet unpublished 2011 United Nations Population Fund report, 17500 people in DRC were raped in 2009 – that is 48 every day, making it the country with the highest number of rapes in the world, says Audrey Shematsi, women’s rights manager at Action Aid Goma in North Kivu.

But most rapes go unreported, thanks to the stigma attached to rape (see WVoN story), and families often reject women and girls who have been raped.

And they rarely find justice in the corrupt criminal system. Only 10 per cent of rapes are ever referred to the criminal courts, and even fewer result in a conviction.

So women in eastern DRC remain one of the most vulnerable population groups in the world.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *