Chère amie, Cher ami,

Chère amie, Cher ami,

Je vous prie de trouver ci-après une série d'articles au sujet des violences qui ont cours en République Démocratique du Congo.

La situation est toujours aussi 'inquiètante' - pour reprendre l'expression 'officielle';

non seulement pour les femmes, les filles et les petites filles mais aussi pour toutes les populations. Déplacées, parquées dans des camps, en proie à la faim, la fatigue, à la détresse ... et j'en passe sur les morts et les disparus, les enlèvements, les viols, les enrôlements forcés d'enfants ...

Nous ne pourrons pas mettre fin aux violences que les femmes et les filles subissent pendant un conflit si nous n'abordons pas l'inégalité des sexes dans la société. Cette violence ne naît pas seulement des conditions de la guerre mais est directement liée à l'inégalité et à l'injustice dont les femmes souffrent en temps de paix.

Nous - l'Action des Femmes pour le Développement asbl, continuons à sensibiliser le public belge et de la diaspora congolaise en Belgique et pensons que :

en faisant suivre ces informations à vos contacts;

en soutenant l'application des lois sur la parité et des résolutions sur les femmes, la paix et la sécurité;

en enjoignant la communauté internationale (Nations Unies, Union Européenne) à prendre des mesures d'urgence pour mettre fin à la généralisation des violences sexuelles en RDC;

en apportant notre soutien aux ONG/associations/ groupes de femmes/societé civile présentes sur le terrain;

en multipliant les tribunes d'expression;

Nous briserons le silence qui accompagne ces violences et serons scandaleusement solidaires afin que nos filles et nos mères se réapproprient leur intégrité et leur dignité !!!!

Parce que

...le développement durable et équitable passe nécessairement par la participation pleine et entière des femmes

…les femmes, les filles et les petites filles ont le droit de mener une vie sans violence

…les violences sexuelles sont reconnues comme un problème de développement dans les pays affectés par les conflits

Pour AFEDE asbl,

Maddy Tiembe

Secrétaire Générale

Despite the presence of 18,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops in the Congo, fighting goes on, and violence against women and girls continues to be inflicted.²

RDC: Combattre les violences

sexuelles contre les femmes dans l’est

NAIROBI, 20 septembre 2007 (PlusNews) - La communauté internationale doit prendre des mesures d’urgence pour mettre fin à la généralisation des violences sexuelles dans la région orientale de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC) déchirée par la guerre, a prévenu Stephen Lewis, ancien envoyé spécial des Nations Unies pour le VIH/SIDA en Afrique.

« La multiplication des agressions sexuelles sur le continent africain donne froid dans le dos, et nulle part ailleurs la situation n’est aussi grave que dans l’est de la RDC », a déploré M. Lewis lors d’une conférence de presse tenue le 13 septembre à Nairobi, la capitale kényane. « Malgré la gravité de la situation, la communauté internationale ne semble pas très disposée à agir ».

Alors que le monde s’intéresse –à juste titre– à la crise du Darfour, la région occidentale du Soudan, la situation dans l’est de la RDC – où les 10 années de conflit ont fait 10 à 20 fois plus de victimes qu’au Darfour - n’est plus considérée comme une urgence, a souligné M. Lewis.

« Nulle part ailleurs sur cette planète les femmes et les jeunes filles ne sont confrontées à de telles horreurs », a expliqué M. Lewis.

Au mois de juillet, Yakin Erturk, rapporteuse spéciale du Conseil des droits de l’homme des Nations Unies sur la violence à l’égard des femmes, a indiqué que près de 4 500 cas de viols avaient été enregistrés dans la province du Sud-Kivu, dans l’est du pays, rien que pendant les six premiers mois de l’année 2007, et que bien d’autres viols n’avaient pas été rapportés.

Mme Erturk a également souligné que les violences sexuelles étaient considérées comme des actes « banals » par les communautés locales.

Quant à M. Lewis, très critique à l’égard du gouvernement de Kinshasa du président Joseph Kabila, il a noté l’« incapacité et le manque de détermination » des autorités congolaises à combattre les violences sexuelles dans l’est.

« Le gouvernement de Kinshasa a très peu d’influence sur les bandes de pillards qui sévissent dans l’est », a-t-il expliqué. « Malheureusement, les auteurs de ces violences sont souvent des hommes en uniforme ».

Face à l’ampleur de la brutalité en RDC, les mesures « préventives » telles que l’augmentation des effectifs militaires et l’implication de la Cour pénale internationale ont montré leur limite, s’est désolé M. Lewis.

Photo: Georgina Cranston/IRIN Près de 4 500 cas de viols ont été enregistrés dans la province du Sud-Kivu au cours du premier semestre 2007

Pour attaquer de front ce phénomène, a-t-il ajouté, il convient d’adopter des « mesures radicalement » différentes de celles mises en œuvre habituellement.

« Tout conflit impliquant des violences à l’égard des femmes ne disparaît pas simplement s’il est ignoré. Il finit par exploser », a-t-il affirmé. « Le [VIH/SIDA] se propage rapidement pendant un conflit armé. De même, les violences sexuelles sont fréquentes pendant un conflit armé. »

« Si nous ne faisons rien, ce sont le VIH/SIDA et les violences à l’égard des femmes qui l’emporteront

», a-t-il ajouté.

La RDC a un taux de séroprévalence de 3,2 pour cent, et les actions en faveur de la prévention et du traitement du VIH ont été gravement entravées par le conflit dans l’est.

Pour lutter efficacement contre ce phénomène, M. Lewis suggère la création d’une agence internationale des femmes au sein du système des Nations Unies.

« Avec une telle organisation, dirigée par un adjoint au Secrétaire général des Nations Unies, les problèmes des femmes ne risquent pas d’être ignorés », a-t-il affirmé.

« Nous invitons également les femmes spécialistes des questions liées au viol à présenter des recommandations sur la situation des femmes dans l’est de la RDC, car la communauté internationale ne semble pas en mesure de trouver des solutions pour faire face à cette situation », a-t-il conclu.

Le conflit en RDC a éclaté en 1998, et bien que le pays ait organisé avec succès des élections nationales en 2006, de nombreuses milices continuent de terroriser les populations civiles dans plusieurs régions de l’est.

A conversation with Eve Ensler : Feminicide in the Congo

... [T]he situation of women in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is about the worst situation I've seen of women anywhere in the world. The kind of atrocities that are being committed on women's bodies is nothing short of femicide. It is an all-out, systematic pattern of destruction toward the female species.

—Eve Ensler

Playwright and activist Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues and founder of V-Day, and activist Christine Schuler Deschryver talk to journalist Michele Kort of Ms. Magazine about the horrors of sexual violence and its aftermath in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Find out how you can help.

The following program was recorded on September 17, 2007.

Please note that this podcast contains graphic descriptions that some readers might find disturbing.

Michele Kort: This is Michelle Kort, senior editor of Ms.

Magazine, and I'm delighted to be speaking with Eve Ensler today.

Eve is the famed author of The Vagina Monologues, and head of the V-Day organization.

With her today is Christine Schuler Deschryver from Bukavu in the Congo, who is an activist against the sexual violence. We'll be talking about that today — specifically, we'll be talking about how sexual violence has led to an epidemic of fistula in women who have been raped.

Our talk today is inspired by the broadcast of the film "Lumo" on P.O.V. The film was directed by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Nelson Walker III.

Eve, could you explain what a fistula is?

Eve Ensler: Well, before I do that, I'd really like to talk a little bit about the context of rape and how it happens, because I can't really talk about fistula without doing that.

So what I'd like to say, having just been in the Congo in May, and having just done a big report for Glamour magazine that came out in August, is that the situation of women in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, or the Congo) is about the worst situation I've seen of women anywhere in the world. The kind of atrocities that are being committed on women's bodies is nothing short of femicide. It is an all- out, systematic pattern of destruction toward the female species.

I witnessed and heard stories of sexual torture, gang rapes, massive raping, guns up women's vaginas, sticks up women's vaginas, girls as young as 6 years old being gang- raped and destroyed.

The kind of fistula that people are seeing and addressing in the Congo, which comes from this kind of trauma, is usually when a woman has been raped so badly that there has been a hole punctured either between her vaginal wall and her bladder, or between her vaginal wall and her rectum. In both of those situations, what happens is that this terrible hole is created inside her. I actually sat in on a fistula operation and was, unfortunately, able to see this hole inside a woman, and it's like a hole inside her being, inside her soul, where everything falls out.

After a woman has a fistula, she's no longer able to hold her pee or her feces, and so things just fall out of her, which, as you can imagine, destroys a woman's life. She then begins to smell. She is exiled from the community. She begins to hate herself. There's incredible humiliation and shame and all kinds of terrible things associated with that.

It was particularly disturbing to see fistula in little girls, because they were incontinent, and boys were really cruel to them, and communities of children were very cruel to them.

Kort: Christine, you work at the center in Bukavu, Congo that treates women who have this condition?

Christine Schuler Deschryver: Yes, I work in the center in Bukavu, especially in going there, identifying the victims and listening to them. I also try to find some help for them through international lobbying. I'm in Bukavu at least three times a week and every weekend with these women.

Kort: Hopefully, the women can be physically healed. A lot of them sometimes have more than one operation to try to heal them. But what about healing the violence that's going on in that part of the world?

Ensler: One of the things that we are doing with the participation of DOCS in Goma (Editor's note: now known as HEAL Africa), an organization in Bukavu, and

organizations all over the eastern DRC is V-Day. UNICEF and the U.N. Action to Stop Rape has launched a national and international campaign to stop the raping of our greatest resources and to empower the women and girls of Congo. You can find out more about that campaign on vday.org/congo. What we're asking is for people to write letters to President Kabila to demand justice and protection for the women of eastern Congo, and for people to send in funds to support these efforts.

There's now a coalition of women's groups in eastern Congo, where this film was shot,

and DOCS is one of them. The coalition has agreed that the first facility they are going

to build is something called the City of Joy in Bukavu, which will be a center and a

place for women who have been survivors, and who have no place to go. These women

will be supported to become the next leaders of the Congo.

Kort: In the documentary, there was a very telling moment where someone said,

"We support you" as the women were marching against the violence. But they also said, "But you shouldn't dress in revealing ways." So obviously there's still a lot of education that needs to go on there. Would you agree that women are still being blamed for the violence against them?

Schuler Deschryver: Yes, of course. I think that the women feel they are still being blamed. Rape is still taboo in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the women only talk about rape and go to the hospitals when they don't have a choice anymore.

Otherwise, they don't talk about it because they are blamed for it.

Ensler: The situation for women in the Congo before the war started was terrible anyway. Women had very few rights. They are not perceived as equal citizens. In some cases, they had less status and less respect than gorillas, in my opinion.

I think what this femicide and these atrocities have done is to have, bizarrely,

normalized rape. So now it's not just the militias, the Interahamwe, the Congolese army and the factions that are raping the women; now it's becoming normalized. Domestic rape and domestic battery has wildly increased in families.

Because there has been no justice, because so few perpetrators have been held accountable for the crimes that they're committing, it's becoming as Christine said to me when we were there, like a country sport: rape.

It's the worst thing I've ever seen in the world, and if the world does not pay attention to this and if the international community does not put pressure on the president and people in that country to start respecting the women and protecting the women, we are going to see deaths like we have never seen. I can't even imagine the number of deaths that could occur because of the rise of AIDS, and the explosion of AIDS that's going to occur in the next 10 years.

Schuler Deschryver: We are talking about one of the worst humanitarian disasters in this world after the Second World War. Two years ago, the International Rescue Committee reported that more than 4 million people have died in the DRC during the conflict. Now we are waiting for the new report, and it will say, maybe, that 6 or 7 million people have died.

Today, in the eastern part of Congo, there are more than 200,000 victims of rape. In Bukavu we have victims ranging in age from 10-month-old babies to 87-year-old women. I think that the word Ms. Ensler used — femicide — is the right word to describe what is going on in the eastern part of Congo. And the world should wake up and do something before it's too late, because maybe one day, we'll talk about women in Congo like a species that is in the process of disappearing.

Kort: Eve, can you tell us about the United Nations, the International Violence Against Women Act and what that might do?

Ensler: One of the things that's really frightening in the Congo is that there's no law that's supporting women or providing justice. The United Nations, in my opinion, is

just simply not doing enough. I spoke at the Security Council a few months ago, and I now know that there's been a call by Steven Lewis to have a special initiative to end the sexual violence in eastern Congo. I think supporting that initiative would be a very good idea. I think getting the Security Council to make any violence against women in eastern Congo a central issue of their work would be a very good idea. And I think demanding that the U.N. get more peacekeepers and get more security forces in the region would be a very good idea.

Kort: What has the U.S. role been up to this point? Has the U.S. said anything about

Congo?

Ensler: I don't really think so. It's important to remember that the United States is allies with Uganda and Rwanda. And in Rwanda, during the genocide in the 1990s, the Interahamwe, who are a Hutu militia, were killing minority Tutsis.

The generous Congolese people allowed the Rwandan refugees to come over the border, and with them came the Interahamwe.

The Interahamwe is one of the primary militias that has been murdering and

committing these atrocities. If the U.S. government were to put pressure on Rwanda and Uganda and say, "We are not going to support you unless you get the Interahamwe out of the Congo and work with the Interahamwe to stop these atrocities," you bet it would have an influence.

Kort: Who is financing the Interahamwe?

Schuler Deschryver: We don't know who exactly is financing them. The Congo is one of the richest countries of the world — in the eastern part of Congo there is a mineral called tantalum that is used in cell phones and computers and Playstations

. So the Interahamwe are working with some people — we don't know who — to export tantalum out of the Congo in exchange for money and guns.

Kort: It sounds like some action should be taken against the corporations who use tantalum.

Ensler: Absolutely. I think it's really important, and one of the things we're trying to do in this campaign is to begin identifying the multinational corporations that are benefiting from these resources. Ultimately, these corporations are exchanging guns with the Interahamwe, who protect and provide these natural resources for them. We want to start putting pressure on the multinationals so that they stop doing business with genocidists.

Kort: It sounds like a good movement that people can focus their attentions on.

Ensler: If they stay tuned to the campaign, I know that it will be an aspect of the campaign that emerges.

Kort: Christine, how do the women in the Congo keep their spirits up with all this going on?

Schuler Deschryver: I don't know. I think most of them believe in God. So all the strength they have may come from God.

When you go to the hospital, you see all the women injured and totally destroyed, but they can still dance, they can still sing, they can still smile, even if their eyes look sad.

Their spirits have not been killed, and that gives them the strength to continue. These women are survivors, they will become leaders and they will change the Congo.

Ensler: Some of the most resilient, incredible women I have ever met in the world are Congolese women. You hear these horrible stories come out of their mouths, stories that you can't even repeat to people, and after the telling of the story, their energy is renewed.

Sometimes their resources are so slim that just receiving a bottle of soda is such a gift that they're hopeful for hours. So I think if we could get resources and support to the women of the Congo, we could definitely help begin to turn their lives around.

Kort: What's the best way for people to do that?

Ensler: Right now, it's to give to the V-Day UNICEF campaign at

vday.org/congo. The money goes to support a coalition made out of many different groups. P.O.V.'s "Lumo" focuses on a woman who was at DOCS in Goma, and DOCS is part of this coalition, so that money will get to them as well.

We're selling bags that are made by women in that particular center, as well as bags that are made by women in Bukavu and Bunia. If you donate to our campaign or buy the bags, the money will get directed towards them.

Kort: Eve, how did you get from The Vagina Monologues to all this work against violence against women? Was it a natural path?

Ensler: It was. When I toured initially with the show, so many women would line up to talk to me. At the beginning, I thought, "Well, they'll be telling me about their wonderful sex lives and their great orgasms." In fact, what women lined up to tell me was how they'd been beaten or gang-raped or raped or endured incest. I was going to stop doing the show, because I felt so immoral just listening to stories and doing nothing.

In 1998, which is almost 10 years ago, we decided we would do one performance of The Vagina Monologues to raise money for local groups in New York, and that was the first V-Day: V-Day stands for Vagina Day, Valentine's Day and Victory over Violence Day.

That performance launched this movement, which in 10 years has spread to 119 countries. We've raised $50 million by the work of grassroots women doing productions of the play in communities all over the planet.

You see how urgent it is and how fast it's spread, because one out of three women in this world will be beaten or raped in her lifetime. So The Vagina Monologues, in talking about the vagina and opening up the stories of the vagina, opened up the stories of truly great experiences and love and sexuality and pleasure, but it also opened up a box of horror.

Kort: Are there other areas of the world that we're overlooking right now that are areas of tremendous violence against women? We know about Darfur. We know now more and more about the Congo. Are there other areas that we're overlooking?

Ensler: Our primary focus right now is the Congo, which I would say needs the most attention of any place I've been in the world, including Darfur. What's going on in Darfur is atrocious, but if you look at it in terms of numbers, you can't even compare what's happening in the Congo to anywhere else in the world right now. We're talking about 4 million people who have died in the DRC in the last 10 years.

I was in Haiti this spring, and I think what's going on in terms of rape and violence in Haiti is really quite awful. I think the situation for women in Afghanistan is absolutely being turned to what it used to be; it's going back to the way it was under the Northern Alliance and the Taliban: The rapes are beginning again, women are being excluded from teaching and from jobs again, and there is the selling of women again.

We also need to look at sex trafficking, which is rising wherever there is poverty, wherever there are storms, wherever there are terrible situations. We know that women who are on the front line of disaster are the first to go.

We have to make violence against women a central issue in every aspect, in the United Nations, in foundations, in national and local governments. We have to stop seeing it as something we get to later, when it is the single most important issue anybody can be thinking about.

If you rape a woman, you rape life. You destroy her parenting ability. You destroy her

ability to work and think and love and nurture and care and provide. Yet we still keep

treating it as the thing we're going to get to later.

Kort: When I was watching "Lumo," I was struck by how beautiful the Congo looked. And it's very painful to think that here is this beautiful country, very green with mountains and rolling hills, and all this pain is hidden amongst all this beauty. Is that how you feel about it, Christine? How does the Congo of your childhood compare to the Congo of today?

Schuler Deschryver: Every time I talk about my Congo, my province, I'm thinking about hell in paradise. Ten years ago they turned the country into hell. But the Congo is one of the most beautiful places on this earth. We have everything — vegetables in your garden, the best climate all year long. The only thing we don't have is peace.

Kort: Why should that always be the thing that's so far away?

Schuler Deschryver: I don't know. That's a good question. We have become beggars of peace in the Congo. We are not asking for anything else — just peace, and the right to live for women. We hope that the Congo will become paradise again, especially for women and children.

Listen to the full audio of this program Select a format below:

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Eve Ensler is the award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues and the founder of the global movement V-Day. She has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive.

Her plays include The Good Body, Necessary Targets and Conviction. She also executived-produced the documentary film "What I Want My Words To Do To You,"

which aired on P.O.V. in 2003.

Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict In the DRC: Background Sexual Violence In the DRC: Background

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. The threat of and the use of violence are constants.

Photo by Paula Allen

View Photos by Paula Allen from Eve's Trip to DRC, where she visited Panzi Hospital, run by Dr.

Denis Mukwege.

As before the war, discrimination against women and girls underlies the violence perpetrated against them. The current climate of impunity allows the many forms of gender-based violence, including sexual violence, to flourish.

All armed groups involved in the conflict have perpetrated sexual violence. Today, several armed groups still use sexual violence as a weapon of war in the DRC.¹ Further, international actors, including UN personnel, have been implicated in perpetrating sexual violence in the DRC.² Armed actors systematically violate women and girls in the streets, fields, and homes.³ The armed actors in the DRC have perpetrated gender-based violence through various forms, including sexual slavery, kidnapping, forced recruitment, forced prostitution, and rape. The Congolese victims of sexual violence include men and boys, who have also suffered rape, sexual humiliation, and genital mutilation.⁴

Towards midnight, I heard the crackle of gunfire all around the village…As I was trying to escape with my children, seven soldiers broke down the door to my house, threw me down to the ground

and raped me. I lost consciousness till the next day...When I walk I have to hold my abdomen with my skirt, because it hurts so much. I cannot walk very far now and as the soldiers took everything, I can hardly manage to look after my children."⁵

Many survivors of sexual violence suffer from grave long-term psychological and physical health consequences, such as traumatic fistula and HIV. However, health infrastructure in the DRC is almost entirely absent. Shortage of medical services is particularly critical given the prevalence of sexually- transmitted infections and HIV among soldiers and irregular combatants. ⁶

Survivors of sexual violence face enormous barriers in securing justice through the courts or more informal, community-based mechanisms. At the community level, survivors usually suffer in silence, fearing stigma and ostracism if their ordeal is made public. Following her visit to the Great Lakes Region, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that “while victims (of sexual and gender- based violence) were stigmatized and socially ostracized, there was virtually no stigmatization of perpetrators.” Corrupt, under-capacitated justice systems hamper survivors’ attempts to bring perpetrators to justice through formal legal processes. ⁷

The extent of gender-based violence in the DRC can only be estimated, though sexual violence is understood to be widespread. In the province of South Kivu alone, local health centers report that an average of 40 women are raped daily.⁸ Sexual violence in Congo is vastly underreported due to insecurity in or inaccessibility to many areas and the physical or material inability of some victims to travel. Further, survivors may fear reprisals by perpetrators if they were to come forward. ⁹

"Sexual violence is regarded as the most widespread form of criminality in Congo...The government that is elected will be challenged to implement the principles of the constitution and address

discrimination against women, in particular sexual violence."¹⁰

Armed Conflict In the DRC: Background

In 1999, the Congolese government, two armed groups, and five neighboring countries signed the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement.¹¹ As determined in the peace agreement, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) established the UN Mission to the DRC (MONUC) to ensure the implementation of the Lusaka Accord.¹² With the support of the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) and international observers, the DRC held its first democratic elections in 2006. The representation of women elected to the government is very low: 9 of 60 Ministers, 42 of 500 members of the National Assembly, 5 of 108 Senators; and 43 of 690 Provincial Assembly members are women.¹³ Only one woman was elected Vice-Governor, out of 22 gubernatorial posts.

The 2006 elections follow four years of transitional government aimed at setting up a government of national unity, as set out in the Sun City Peace Agreement of 2002. The Inter-Congolese Dialogues that preceded the signing Sun City Agreement were meant to provide space for national dialogue on the future of the DRC. However, civil society women’s rights advocates and governmental women representatives felt that they had little voice or influence. Congolese women, supported by

international NGOs and UN entities, sought to harmonize women’s agendas for peace and security to influence the peace negotiations.¹⁴ The Nairobi Declaration, which demands for an end to violence against women and girls, is one of the results of women’s initiatives. ¹⁵

Three years after the establishment of the peacekeeping mission, the position of Senior Gender Advisor in MONUC was established and filled. Today, MONUC receives the most financial and human resources of all peacekeeping missions worldwide.¹⁶ The UN Country team, comprised of numerous UN entities and agencies, has been present in DRC since 1996. ¹⁷

Despite the achievement of a formal peace agreement, there has been little progress in establishing and advancing the rule of law, including justice, and respect for human rights. Fighting between militia groups and FARDC continues, as do human rights violations such as unlawful killings, abductions and sexual violence perpetrated by all armed groups. Most recent outbreaks of violence have been in the Eastern provinces.

---

1Human Rights Watch, The War within the War: Sexual Violence against Women and Girls in Eastern Congo, 2002, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/drc/ and Réseau des Femmes pour un Développement Associatif (RFDA), Réseau des Femmes pour la Défense des Droits et la Paix (RFDP) and

International Alert, Women's Bodies As Battleground : Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls During the War in the DRC, 2005 http://www.international-alert.org/publications/getdata.php?

doctype=Pdf&id=32 (accessed 03 July 2007).

2 Conduct Unit: Background, MONUC http://www.monuc.org/News.aspx?

newsID=855&menuOpened=About%20MONUC (accessed 11 July 2007).

3 Human Rights Watch, 2002; The Women of South Kivu, “Plaidoyer des femmes du sud-kivu à l'occasion de la journée internationale des femmes de l'an 2005” Bukavu (2005).

4 Wynne Russell, "Sexual Violence against men and boys," Forced Migration Review 27 (2007), 22-23.

5 Amnesty International, Democratic Republic of Congo: Mass rape – time for remedies. AI Index: AFR 62/018/2004, 26 October 2004. (Testimony given to Amnesty International by a 40 year old woman named Pauline, who comes from a rural area in South-Kivu)

6Human Rights Watch, 2002.

7Louise Arbor, Press conference by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 31 May 2007, United Nations News Center Department of Public Information,

http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2007/070531_Arbour.doc.htm (accessed 28 June 2007).

8Claudia Rodriguez, Sexual Violence in South Kivu, Congo, Forced Migration Review 27 (2007).

9OCHA, 2007.

10International Crisis Group, “Beyond Victimhood: Women’s Peacebuildling in Sudan, Congo and Uganda” (June 2006), http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4185 (accessed 13 July 2007).

11The signatories of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement are the following: Republic of Angola, Democratic Republlc of Congo, Republic of Namibia, Republic of Rwanda, Republic of Uganda, Republic of Zimbabwe, Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), Movement For the Liberation of the Congo (MLC).

12UNSC resolution 1258 of 06 August 1999.

13S/2007/156

14Femmes Africa Solidarité, African Women on Peace and Solidarity Mission to DRC, Kinshasa, December 2001, http://www.peacewomen.org/resources/DRC/FASCongo.html and IRIN Update for the Great Lakes, 2001,

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/AllDocsByUNID/1ca63fea14f04f4b85256ac0004d51b8 (accessed 03 July 2007)

15Nairobi Declaration, 2001, http://www.peacewomen.org/resources/DRC/NairobiDec2002en.pdf (accessed 03 July 2007)

16United Nations Organization Mission in the Congo, http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/monuc/

(accessed 28 June 2007). Current strength (31 May 2007) of MONUC includes 18,357 total uniformed personnel, including 16,593 troops, 728 military observers, 1,036 police; supported by 936

international civilian personnel, 2,028 local civilian staff and 607 United Nations Volunteers.

17Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, OHCHR in the DRC,

http://www.ohchr.org/english/countries/zr/summary.htm (accessed 29 June 2007).

18S/2007/156

Fighting Ongoing in Eastern Congo

Tuesday September 4, 2007 4:01 AM By EDDY ISANGO

Associated Press Writer

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) - Fighting reignited in eastern Congo on Monday between government forces and those of a renegade general, despite calls for peaceful resolution by both sides.

Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, a U.N. spokeswoman in the provincial capital of Goma, said former Gen.

Laurent Nkunda's forces clashed with government troops around the village of Ngungu on Monday morning, though the area appeared calm by the afternoon. Casualty figures were not immediately available.

Reached by phone, Nkunda told The Associated Press said that he had not abandoned a peace process started this year and accused the Kinshasa-based government of attacking his forces to provide a reason to end negotiations.

``Today, like all the other days, we did not attack. But we were attacked,'' Nkunda said. Army officials were not immediately available for comment.

Eastern Congo has long been wracked by fighting between local militias, renegade soldiers and the army. Nkunda quit the army and launched his own rebellion after rival rebel factions signed a peace deal that ended a 1998-2002 war. He claimed the country's transition to democracy was flawed and excluded the country's ethnic Tutsi minority.

He now collects his own taxes and commands an army believed to number in the thousands in his own fiefdom in the hills.

In 2004, he briefly captured the eastern city of Bukavu and his troops have been accused of torture and rape. Nkunda is named in an international arrest warrant for war crimes.

At least six soldiers have died in clashes in the region since Thursday, and about 35 people have been injured, the U.N. said. The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Central African country is the world's largest, with about 18,000 troops.

Nkunda's troops also seized three posts that monitor mountain gorillas in Congo's Virunga National Park, park officials said. Only about 700 mountain gorillas remain in the world, about 380 of them in the Virunga area that crosses Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, according to conservationists.

``As of today the sector is no longer under my control,'' park official Norbert Mushenzi said in a statement. The fighters looted two posts for weapons, ammunition and communication equipment, the statement said.

About 300 people who work with the gorillas have been evacuated from the area, including rangers and their families.

Nine mountain gorillas have been killed in attacks this year in eastern Congo, according to conservation group Wildlife Direct.

We are talking about one of the worst humanitarian disasters in this world after the Second World War. Two years ago, the International Rescue Committee reported that more than 4 million people have died in the DRC during the conflict.

—Christine Schuler Deschryver

“Not Women Anymore…”

The Congo’s rape survivors face pain, shame and AIDS

by Stephanie Nolen http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2005/congo.asp

It took Thérèse Mwandeko a year to save the money. She knew she could walk the first 40 kilometers of her journey, but would need to pay for a lift for the last 20.

So she traded bananas and peanuts until she’d saved $1.50 in Congolese francs, then set out for Bukavu. She walked with balled-up fabric clenched between her thighs, to soak up blood that had been oozing from her vagina for two years, since she had been gang-raped by Rwandan militia

soldiers who plundered her village in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Finally, she arrived at Panzi Hospital.

Here, Thérèse takes her place in line, along with 80 women, waiting for surgery to rebuild her vagina.

Dr. Denis Mukwege, Panzi’s sole gynecologist and one of two doctors in the eastern Congo who can perform such reconstructive surgeries, can repair only five women a week. The air is thick with flies. It reeks from women with fistula: rips in the vaginal wall where rape tore out chunks of flesh separating the bladder and rectum from the vagina. Yet Thérèse, 47, is happier than she’s been in years.

“Until I came here, I had no hope I could be helped,” she says.

Across the DRC are tens of thousands of women like this: physically ravaged, emotionally terrorized, financially impoverished. Except for Thérèse and a few fortunate others, these women have no help of any kind: Eight years of war have left the country in ruins, and Congolese women have been victims of rape on a scale never seen before.

Every one of dozens of armed groups in this war has used rape as a weapon. Amnesty International (AI) researchers believe there has been more rape here than in any other conflict, but the actual scale is still unknown.

“They rape a woman, five or six of them at a time — but that is not enough. Then they shoot a gun into her vagina,” says Dr. Mukwege. “In all my years here, I never saw anything like it. … [T]o see so many raped, that shocks me, but what shocks me more is the way they are raped.”

Each armed group has a trademark manner of violating, he explains. The Burundians rape men as well as women. The Mai Mai — local defense forces — rape with branches or bayonets, and mutilate their victims. The Rwandans, like those who attacked Thérèse, set groups of soldiers to rape one woman.

The ward where Thérèse waits for surgery is run by a social worker, Louise Nzigire. The women tell her they are “not women anymore.” They are often too physically damaged to farm, or bear children, and there is such stigma associated with rape in Congo — where female virginity is prized and the husband of a rape survivor is considered shamed — that rape survivors are routinely shunned by husbands, parents and communities.

Nzigire believes rape has been a cheap, simple weapon for all parties in the war, more easily obtainable than bullets or bombs: “This violence was

designed to exterminate the population,” she says quietly.

The Congo war has claimed more lives than any conflict since the end of World War II, yet receives almost no attention outside central Africa. An

estimated 4 million people have died here since 1996

— the vast majority not by firepower but starvation or preventable diseases, as people hid in the jungle to escape the fighting.

It began when Rwanda’s Tutsi government sent troops over the border to pursue Hutu militias responsible for the 1994 genocide, since many Hutu had escaped to the impenetrable Congolese bush.

When the then-Zairian army offered little resistance, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame formed a hasty alliance with a Congolese rebel group attempting to

overthrow dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Tutsi-run Burundi and neighboring Uganda saw a lucrative opportunity, and sent troops to help the putsch.

The rebels took Kinshasa in 1997, installing Laurent Kabila as president. But the next year, Rwandan and Ugandan troops turned on Kabila, so he called in Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe to back his army. All of Congo’s neighbors joined the war, which gave them a chance to indulge in a frenzy of looting diamonds and other minerals, in which Congo is abundant.

At Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, two rape

victims await vaginal surgery / photo by

Stephanie Nolen

After a 2002 peace deal, a fragile, transitional government holds power, in a uniquely Congolese power-sharing: President Joseph Kabila (thrust into the job at age 29 after his father’s 2001

assassination) shares power with four of the major warlords whose militias have wrought havoc for the past years. This is peace enough to placate international donors, who’ve poured money in to prop up this flimsy government and to repair roads and phone lines in the capital — and reassure international mining companies, who are reopening up shop all over the country.

But beyond Kinshasa’s city limits, there is little sign the war has ended. In the east, where the worst hostilities were fought, a half-dozen armed groups still control territory, holding civilians hostage. Here there is no rebuilding, no phone service, no electrical grid, no roads. Hospitals, when they still stand, have been looted of everything from beds to bandages. No government employee — teachers, judges, nurses — has been paid in 14 years.

There is a United Nations peacekeeping mission charged with maintaining order, but it has 12,000 soldiers for an area the size of Western Europe (the U.N. mission to tiny Kosovo, by contrast, had 40,000 troops); furthermore, the troops lack the ability to move outside town centers, while the militias move freely in the forests.

The people who live out here have been rendered feral by the war. Their homes have been burned, their possessions pillaged, men shot, women and girls raped, boys abducted to serve as soldiers. Any survivors took refuge in the forest, living naked, eating grubs and roots. This season, for the first time in six years, people in most of the eastern provinces have returned to their fields and planted crops.

Shami Alubu, 21, came out of the jungle and back to the town of Kibombo last year, although she can’t go home. In early 2002, while working in her fields, she was snatched by Mai Mai militants, who dragged her into town, then kept her there for a full day, beating and raping her with guns and sticks.

The whole time, she was within earshot of her 7-month-old son Florent, who was sobbing wildly.

When it was over, she limped back to her house — but at the sight of her, her husband ordered her away. “It was like he thought I wanted to go with the Mai Mai,” Shami says bitterly.

Shami’s town, Kibombo, changed hands a half-dozen times during the war: the Rwandan army, then the Mai Mai, then Rwandans again. Every time new troops seized Kibombo, they set out

systematically to rape. When the soldiers lost the town to a new militia, they often dragged dozens of women with them as they fled, holding them as sexual slaves and cooks in their jungle retreats until the next time they raided the town.

Today, Shami is thin and hunched; she breathes with difficulty. “Maybe I have AIDS,” she murmurs.

An estimated 30 percent of the women raped in Congo ’s war are infected with HIV; as many as 60 percent of the combatants are believed to have the virus. Shami also suffers continual pain in her shredded vagina, but has had no medical help since the rape. There is a hospital in Kibombo, with six wards: Four are empty; two each contain three iron bed frames, stripped of any mats. The director, Jean-Yves Mukamba (the only doctor for this region of 25,000 square kilometers) knows he is surrounded by women suffering raging venereal infections, HIV, prolapsed uteruses, torn vaginas.

“I think it was a large majority of the women here who were raped, almost all of them. But I can’t help them with just my bare hands,” he says. When he decided, late last year, to consult with sexual- violence victims, more than 100 women turned up the first morning.

“I had nothing, not even antibiotics, to give them.” Not that antibiotics would have helped much: “Most cases were traumatization of the genitals: These women had been raped with a tree branch or the barrel of a gun, or a bayonet. When you see a woman who was forced by 10 men — the trauma…”

The doctor holds out his thin hands, as if to push the memory away.

Nor is it just Kibombo. “The women rely on a national health system that has been totally destroyed,”

says Andrew Philip, coauthor of an AI report on the Congo : “They walk for days…then are charged for health care because none of the doctors or nurses is paid [by the state], and it’s beyond the means of

most patients.”

A typical doctor’s visit costs about 70 cents. Although the government now collects substantial revenues on exports, particularly diamonds, it insists it cannot afford to pay nurses or doctors, or abolish consultation fees. Dr. Mukamba has not received so much as a Band-Aid from Kinshasa in two years.

Legal assistance is even rarer than medical help. There have been fewer than a dozen prosecutions of sexual assault in the eastern DRC. Many rape survivors know where their assailants are; in some cases, they see them every day. But large parts of the country lack judges, lawyers, police or detectives.

Staff that are present often answer to the militias, which still control large chunks of territory. No senior officer of any military (as well as the national armies of Rwanda , Uganda and Burundi , which

committed thousands of rapes) has ever been held accountable for sexual violence committed by his staff.

There is yet another problem. “Most women won’t pursue this legally, because they are afraid it’s not over. They figure that when the militia is back in power, they will be targeted,” explains Emiliane Tuma Sibazuri, who heads a women’s group supporting rape survivors in the eastern town of Kasongo.

“They think, ‘If I give my name to try to get justice, then when they come back, I will be attacked, or my family.’ All we can do is try to help them forget.”

The grossly underfunded U.N. mission is in little position to assist. Last October, when the mission went to the Security Council to ask for additional soldiers and money, it won a laughably small increase. Then, weeks later, came the revelation that U.N. peacekeepers themselves are contributing to Congo’s frenzy of sexual assault.

The U.N. said that 150 allegations of sexual abuse were reported committed by peacekeepers (from Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, South Africa, Tunisia and Uruguay) in Congo, and that there were likely hundreds more that would never be reported; commanders were allegedly resisting measures to curb such abuses. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced there was “clear evidence that acts of gross misconduct have taken place.”

Furthermore, U.N. investigators found that peacekeepers and civilian workers were paying an average of US $2 for sex with women in populations they were assigned to protect, or bartering for sex with food, basic supplies or a fictitious promise of work in safe, well-guarded U.N. compounds.

A recent International Rescue Committee survey, conducted in all regions of the Congo , found that 31,000 people a month are still dying, almost all for preventable reasons. But as the delicate peace inches out across the country, more people emerge from the jungle, and more women like Thérèse Mwandeko are able to make their way to a hospital.

“We treat one, and send her home to the village,” says Dr. Mukwege, “and she returns with five more.”

Stephanie Nolen is the Africa correspondent for Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper. She lives in Johannesburg.

Related: Ways to Help

Anglo American, Banro and First Quantum are among approximately 20 multinational mining companies working in the DRC; they might be pressured to focus some attention on the crisis endured by Congo women.

The Panzi Hospital is run by PMU Interlife, the Swedish Pentecostal Mission, the sole funder for the hospital; they promise to channel all specified donations directly to Panzi: Box 4093

SE-141 04

Huddinge, Sweden e-mail info@spm.nu

Letters to urge more funding for the U.N. mission and to express outrage at the involvement of U.N. peacekeepers in furthering the abuse of Congo women should go to:

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan United Nations

First Ave at 46th St., New York, NY 10017

-Compiled by Stephanie Nolen