DRC: Civilians face horrific sexual violence

Humanitarian workers and UN experts say that extreme sexual violence is being used systematically as a weapon of war and terror in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as the international community sits by and watches. "I was in total shock when I went there," the UN's long-time special rapporteur on violence against women, Yakin Erturk, told IPS. "We knew what was going on in DRC, but the situation is far graver. It is a brutal situation out there. I've been told a story where a whole family was abducted, taken to the forest. Men are at gunpoint forced to rape their own daughters, or other female relatives. And if they refuse, they are killed. People are forced to eat human flesh," said Erturk. "What happens is that there are too many actors involved, too many interests involved. It is not a situation that you can refer only to the government of the Congo, there is incredible need for strong international action." Earlier this month, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and John Holmes, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, once again briefed the Security Council on the dire situation of civilians living in conflict zones, in particular the ongoing sexual violence in the DRC. "A leap of imagination is not always easy, sitting in this warm and comfortable chamber, but let us remember the essential background," Holmes began his statement. He said that rapes and sexual abuse are being committed with unprecedented cruelty, and the perpetrators have devised the most humiliating and degrading acts they can inflict on their victims. A large number of rapes occur in public places and in the presence of witnesses. Four types of rape have been identified: individual rape, gang rape, rape in which victims are forced to rape each other, and rape involving objects being inserted into the victims' genitals. In many cases, the rape victims are tortured and others are murdered. Holmes and Ban proposed the establishment of a Security Council working group on the protection of civilians that would report to and assist the Council in moving decisively towards action, including the creation of special courts to try the perpetrators of sexual violence. "Combating sexual violence, and the impunity on which it thrives, requires a rethink of how we use the tools of the international community and, in particular, the Security Council," Holmes said. "We need for instance, to look at referring situations of grave incidents of rape and other forms of sexual violence to the International Criminal Court [in The Hague]," he said. He also suggested imposing targeted sanctions against governments and non-state armed groups that flagrantly perpetrate or support such crimes. However, after eight hours of impassioned testimony and speeches, the Security Council failed to act on the proposals, instead reiterating a previous statement on "the need to end impunity for such acts as part of a comprehensive approach to seeking peace, justice, truth and national reconciliation." The DRC recently emerged from a five-year conflict between government forces and various rebel groups that has claimed an estimated three million lives. Despite a peace deal and the formation of a transitional government in 2003, the threat of civil war remains. The United Nations has 17,000 peacekeepers deployed in the DRC, but it is not enough to safeguard the populace in a country whose size is comparable to all of Western Europe. "I think that much was invested into democratic process, but that is not enough unless serious actions are taken to restore justice, because that is what missing in DRC," said Erturk. The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says it has treated 7,400 rape victims at the Bon Marché hospital in Bunia, capital of DRC's volatile Ituri district -- more than one-third admitted over the last 18 months. Most of the victims are women and girls, but 2-4 percent are men and boys. Despite an overall easing of the violence in Ituri over the last three years, MSF says that its health care workers continue to see 15 to 120 people a month who have suffered from sexual violence. "There are known criminals," Erturk said. "Unless these high-profile criminals who are implicated for rape, mass rape and other human rights violations, unless they are punished, impunity invites crime to be repeated. So that itself destabilizes society. Some of these high-profile criminals hold a command position within an army itself." At the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, a provincial capital in the eastern DRC, medical workers treat about 10 women a day, of whom a third need major surgery to repair the horrific wounds they suffered during rape. "There's also a problem of survival: some victims need to be treated for one or even more years," Christophe Illemassene, an official with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affiars in DRC, told IPS. "For example, at Panzi Hospital, some patients have been there for up to three years, having gone through several operations. The hospital provides food and clothes to these patients at no cost, but very few organizations do the same. So how can a woman who needs to be treated for a long time survive without food?" Moreover, Illemassene said that after receiving medical and psycho-social care, women must return to their villages and are often rejected and stigmatized by the communities. "Sadly, some women return to their villages to be raped again, and the vicious circle continues," said Illemassene. Erturk believes that the number of sexual victims reported by humanitarian workers is the "tip of the iceberg". "There is need for targeted intervention not only for health care, but also for support systems for these women who try desperately on their own to survive," she emphasised. Many women fail to seek help because they are afraid of the reaction within their family or community. In some villages, up to 80 percent of women have been raped, according to Erturk. And there are simply not enough doctors and hospitals to provide necessary treatment. At Panzi, six doctors are currently receiving training to increase capacity, and an additional 100-bed ward is being built. But Illemassene and Erturk stressed that the problem must addressed at its roots -- which is the widespread impunity surrounding sexual violence in the DRC. "The whole problem is very complex and difficult; it is not something that is going to be solved easily. I think we have to be realistic about that," Erturk told IPS. "We need to develop very strong international mechanisms where a strong message is given that these kinds of things are not tolerable. Wars will always happen, but I think that there are rules to the war as well -- that's what the Geneva Convention is all about," she said.