NEWSBYJOCELYN KELLY

This guest post was written by Jocelyn Kelly of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

Rape in Congo: Now It's Everybody's Problem (actually, it was before too)

Jeffrey Gettleman’s piece in the New York Times about male rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo highlights a number of extremely difficult questions in a country that specializes in these. In a society where rape against women is still a taboo issue, how do you address rape against men, which is considered even more unthinkable? How do you bring attention to rape against men without diminishing awareness for women (who still represent the vast majority of cases)? How do you get men to access services when they are too ashamed to admit the attack in the first place?

In a strange case of déjà-vu, rape against men highlights many of the difficulties women face. The stigma of being a victim, the shame associated with seeking medical treatment afterwards, the community taunting which makes the aftermath of the attack even more unbearable. Female victims of rape are called the “wife of the Interahamwe.” So are the male victims.

There is widespread recognition in communities that rape against men has been occurring for years in the DRC. Both women and men have story after story of men who have been raped and sometimes mutilated afterward, though it seems that the recent upsurge in violence has brought an even more pronounced uptick in cases of male rape. Like women, men of all ages seem to be targeted.

This guest post was written by Jocelyn Kelly and Will Cragin of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

As was reported on a number of internet sites last week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lauded the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for figuring out something that almost everyone in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda already knew – that rape is a form of genocide.

The fact that the ICTR noted rape and sexual assault can constitute acts of genocide if committed with the “intent to destroy, in whole or part, a targeted group” nearly 10 years ago, in the 1998 trial against Jean Paul Akayesu, suggests that perhaps it is the recent noise made by the international community about the horrific level of sexual violence in eastern DRC that forced the Secretary-General speak up (or maybe it just shows the pace at which international institutions often operate).

In Rwanda, Bosnia, DRC and Darfur, it is clear that rape is one of the more destructive – and cheaper – ways to destabilize large areas. As an Amnesty International advertisement bluntly puts it “Rape is cheaper than Bullets.”

In focus groups in the DRC, men and women define rape as forcing someone to have sex against their will, but also much more broadly. As one man said, “The problem [of rape] is destroying our households and families, foreigners are coming and raping our wives, destroying them… That is why we say those people are destroying our communities."

This week, am asking people I respect a tremendous amount to weigh in on some of the more contentious humanitarian issues, everything from the costs and benefits of advocacy to the question of neutrality and legitimacy.

The piece below was written by Jocelyn Kelly, the Research Coordinator at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.  She has previously written for Humanitarian Relief on rape as a weapon of war.

Jocelyn's post below criticizes the assumption - often made by donors - that there's an easy dividing line between disaster and post-disaster, or conflict and post-conflict phases.

For musings from this week's other contributors, see here.

Definitions in grey: conflict vs. post-conflict phases

Last month, a study reported some pretty shocking results about how disaster and displacement influence rates of violence. Looking at people living in protracted displacement after Hurricane Katrina, Anastario et al found that rates of sexual violence were more than three times higher post-Katrina vs. pre-Katrina in 2006.

But the really surprising finding was that the rates of sexual violence didn’t decrease much in the year after the crisis was over –sexual violence rates in 2007 were still more than two times higher than the pre-hurricane rate.

This blog isn’t about sexual violence or Katrina, but it is about how we make the choice to say a disaster is “over”. I think we would all like to imagine disasters looking like an acute spike interrupting baseline – going from “normal” to “crisis” and back to “normal” in a symmetrical way.

During a research internship in Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2006, I watched the managers of my field office stay up until four in the morning preparing an unexpected presentation: it was to convince a very large government donor to continue giving them “disaster phase” funding as opposed to the “post-disaster” funding being pushed on them.

Some thoughts on the remembering the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide

When many people write about the conflict in the DRC (and I am guilty of this myself), they describe it as the "spillover" of the Rwandan genocide. Just to see what would happen, I typed "spillover Rwandan genocide" into Google. I got 37,800 hits.

The more I think about it, the more the phrase becomes the equivalent of a literary shrug: "Sometimes genocides leak - what are you going to do about a little spillage?" The CIA World Factbook on Rwanda actually calls the war in DRC the "nagging Hutu extremist insurgency across the border." The violence in Rwanda ended over a decade ago. Yet we still think it has a life-after death quality to continue leaking across borders.

Twelve years, five million conflict-related deaths, and one damning United Nations report later, I think we have to surrender the security blanket of "nagging" accidental violence. For one thing, accidents aren't led by generals who wear Chanel sunglasses.

With his penchant for theatrics and designer eyewear, General Laurent Nkunda has been a favorite subject of media reports. He has hung out with Ben Affleck. He likes taking his silver-tipped scepter and his lamb called "Betty" (she signifies peace) to media interviews. He claims his group, the CNDP, is protecting the Tutsis in DRC from the evil men who led the Rwandan genocide. To do this, apparently you have to massacre Congolese civilians, especially children, repeatedly over long periods of time and at random. His forces were so well organized they were easily able to outgun and out-maneuver the Congolese National Military and repeatedly embarrass UN peacekeeping troops. Regional governments clicked their tongues and shrugged, saying they could do little about the CNDP or any of the dozens of other rebel groups in the region.

The piece below was written by Jocelyn Kelly, the Research Coordinator at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, as part of this week's theme looking at rape as a weapon of war.

Jocelyn writes about interviewing soldiers who've committed rape, in an attempt to better understand how to prevent rape in the future.

The conflict that has torn apart communities in eastern DRC is unimaginable to many of us. Hearing stories from the region, people wonder how it is possible that humans find such varied ways to hurt each other. But viewing such violence as incomprehensible or unimaginable can keep us from predicting, addressing and preventing it in the future.

Many of us confronted with a tragic event will ask, “How could something like this happen?” It is a question posed almost rhetorically, a way to vocalize shock and incomprehension. In the field of humanitarian research, however, we seek to answer this question. It is not rhetorical, but imperative.

This past December, I traveled with a team of Congolese mental health workers to interview members of the Mai Mai militia, a local rebel movement. Talking with one of the many armed groups in the region is a way to begin the long process of studying how sexual violence in eastern Congo has become so common and virulent. To truly understand a conflict, it is necessary to ask questions not only of those who experience violence, but also of those who perpetrate it. And to realize these are not two distinct groups.

Our team rented a house in a mining town in Eastern DRC near a forest where many Mai Mai rebels scrape out a living. With goats peering in the windows and sound of children playing in the background, we conducted one-on-one interviews with soldiers to find out about their experiences with the war. Almost everyone we talked to spoke of the traumatic experience that fueled his decision to join the the Mai Mai, a local group ostensibly created to protect the civilian population.

Story after story told of the violent death of a loved one during the war and the feelings of rage and helplessness that caused men to join the militia group. Violence begets violence, however. The Mai Mai have long been implicated in the same acts of raping and looting that that were meant to defend against.

In our interviews, we asked only general questions about a respondent’s experiences with the war: what his daily life is like, what his greatest problems are. At the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative where I work, we aren’t concerned with whether a particular man committed a particular crime. That is the realm of the ICC and national court systems, not of a research organization.

We are concerned, however, with landscape of conflict and violence. We would like to identify trends in soldiers’ responses, to understand what their lives look like and perhaps identify points for intervention to mitigate violence.

Though it is clear that sexual violence is rampant in the DRC, it remains unclear who the worst offenders are and how the conflict has evolved over time. Roughly 21 distinct armies, rebel factions and local militia have been identified in the region, and there could well be other splinter groups that pass under the international radar. Alliances and ideologies within and amongst the groups shift fluidly to achieve the ultimate goals of survival and wealth accumulation. The profile of violence in each group may be different, just as their reasons for committing violence may vary.

The next step of our research will be to speak with other armed factions to find the differences and similarities between these groups. One of the ultimate goals of the project is to understand the reasons and motivations behind the highly brutalized forms of rape that have proliferated in eastern DRC.

The tangled web of allegiances, the unrestricted impunity and a need to one-up the next armed group on brutality may account for the brutal rapes in the region. But we cannot take for granted we understand the impetus for this violence. Men may rape because there is opportunity, because they are compelled by their commanders and peers, or because there is a clear order to try to morally destroy communities. All of these motivations may play a role in the conflict and all need to be addressed differently. Each carries specific implications for protection of women and ways to prevent violence

The question of “how could something like this happen?” has morphed in this context. We must now ask, “How did something like this happen?” and more importantly, “What can we do about it?

[To read other pieces in this week's series, see here.]

[Mai Mai soldiers in Congo - Photo from The Guardian / EPA]