Rape as a Weapon of War in Congo and Liberia

by Michael Bear · 2009-02-10 17:51:00 UTC
Topics:

This Wednesday, Save Darfur is holding One Night, One Voice - an advocacy night to end violence against women in Darfur.  (To learn more about the Save Darfur campaign, see here.)  Free-riding on their initiative, thought I'd use this week to look at rape as a weapon of war in other conflicts, including Congo and Liberia.

This week will feature guest blogs from Harper McConnell of HEAL Africa and Jocelyn Kelly of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative writing about Congo, and Lizzie Goodfriend writing about Liberia.

To start off with Congo - New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has called eastern Congo the "rape capital of the world".  This legacy extends back to the mid-1990s, yet fighting this past fall threatened to make the problem even worse.

According to statistics gathered by CARE, women reported over 3,500 cases of sexual violence in North Kivu Province alone between January and September of this year.

These numbers, however, barely convey the brutal reality. According to Elisabeth Roesch, the Gender and Advocacy Advisor for CARE in the Congo:

"We know rape is typically under-reported, and feel that this number doesn’t even come close to reflecting the actual number of cases – the actual number is unimaginable. With this recent fighting, we won’t know the full extent right away, because there is such stigma around sexual violence. Women don’t come forward for fear of rejection, reprisal, and because of continued insecurity. They need safety, medical care, support and encouragement, and this is a crucial gap in DR Congo today.”

As Roesch describes: "It has been said that it’s more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in the DRC right now – that couldn’t be more true."

Harper's guest blog will be posted later tonight.

[Rape survivor in Congo - Photo from the BBC]

Michael Bear
PREVIOUS STORY:
IMCI and Parents
NEXT STORY:
Campaign about Apple Factories in China Gains Wide and Diverse Support

COMMENTS (4)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.