PeaceWomen- Working to monitor and advocate for the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325

DRC- Launch of an Awareness Campaign Against Sexual Violence
May 5, 2008 – (MONUC) The Public Information Section/ARU, in cooperation with the Gender Office, the "Forum des Mamans d'Aru" (ARU Women's Forum) and many NGOs that deal with the sexual violence issue, launched an awareness campaign on 2 May 2008.

DRC: Tortured women struggle for justice
April 17, 2008 - (The Toronto Star) For women, the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is the heart of darkness: a territory where they are sexually attacked, mutilated and killed in ways so vicious that the United Nations calls it unprecedented.

DRC : Congo's rape and sexual violence: UN's delinquency
April 15, 2008 - (Pambazuka News) Stephen Lewis argues that the level of rape and sexual violence in the Congo is an act of criminal international misogyny, sustained by the indifference of nation states and the delinquency of the United Nations.

UNICEF teams up with V-Day campaign to stop rape in DR Congo
April 14, 2008 – (UN News) The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the global movement to end violence against women and girls known as V-Day have launched a new partnership to end rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and ensure justice for the victims of this heinous crime.

Remarks by Stephen Lewis, co-director of AIDS-Free World at the tenth annual V-Day Celebration
April 12, 2008 - Today is a day that has largely--and rightly--been given over to Dr. [Denis] Mukwege and his astonishing and heroic work in the Congo. (For those who may have missed his panel, he is, of course, the internationally famed doctor who heads the resolute and magnificent staff of the Panzi Hospital in Eastern Congo.) Driving the work is the endlessly grim and despairing litany of rape and sexual violence. All of us assembled in the Superdome, talk of V-Day and The Vagina Monologues; in the Congo there's a medical term of art called "vaginal destruction." I need not elaborate; most of you have heard Dr. Mukwege. But suffice to say that in the vast historical panorama of violence against women, there is a level of demonic dementia plumbed in the Congo that has seldom, if ever, been reached before.

DRC /US: Senate Committee Hearing on Rape as a Weapon of War
April 3, 2008 - (Feminist Daily News Wire) On Tuesday, United States Senator Dick Durbin chaired the first-ever Congressional hearing on the use of rape as a weapon of war. The Subcommittee on Human Rights and Law discussed the need to hold perpetrators accountable for sexual violence against women. The focus of the hearing was sexual violence as a weapon of war in Democratic Republic of the Congo, with testimonies from Lisa F. Jackson, Karin Wachter, Dr. Kelly Dawn Askin, and Dr. Denis Mukwege.

CAR: Struggling to undo the damage of sexual violence
April 1, 2008 - (IRIN) The Monam group of rape survivors in the northern town of Bossangoa in the Central African Republic (CAR) does what it can to keep going, but morale is low and money tight. Monam, which means "common good" in the Sango language, was set up in 2006 to bring together female survivors of sexual violence committed in 2001 and 2002 amid the mayhem leading up to the most recent of CAR's numerous coups d'etat that brought Francois Bozize to power in March 2003.

One day workshop held on the promotion of new sexual violence law in the DRC
April 1, 2008 - (MONUC) As part of the month of the woman this March, a one day workshop on the promotion of the new sexual violence law in the DRC was held on Monday 31 March 2008 in Kinshasa, under the aegis of the International NGO Network for Development (RIOD).

UN Population Fund joins in Congolese campaign against sexual violence
March 19, 2008 – (UN News) The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has joined forces with civil society groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the Government in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to launch a nationwide public awareness campaign aimed at reducing the country’s appalling levels of sexual violence.

Launch of the national campaign against sexual violence in the DRC
March 19, 2008 - (MONUC) The Ministry of Gender, Family and Child, in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and members of the “Initiative Conjointe de lutte contre les violences sexuelles” (the joint initiative to fight against sexual violence) officially launched on 18 March 2008 in Kinshasa, the national awareness campaign and plea about sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

DRC: "Majority of rapists go unpunished"
March 18, 2008 - (IRIN) Sexual violence against women is rampant in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) but the majority of perpetrators, especially in "no-law" zones, go unpunished, according to a UN independent human rights expert.

Central African Republic: Thousands Fall Victim to Sexual Violence
February 22, 2008 - (UN News Service ) Over 15 per cent of women and girls in the violence-ridden north of the Central African Republic (CAR) are victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today.

Congolese officials receive UN-backed training on sex crime investigation
February 8, 2008 – More than 40 military and justice officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have benefited from a United Nations-sponsored training workshop on investigating sex crimes, which are rampant in the vast African nation.

UN expert urges action to help women victims of violence in DR Congo
January 25, 2008 – An independent United Nations expert today called for international action to help women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who have been victimized by violence, including sexual abuse and rape, perpetrated by both militia and Government troops and fostered by a culture of impunity.

DRC: "The rapists roam the streets"
January 21, 2008 (IRIN) - Rape and other forms of sexual violence remain prevalent in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), despite the cessation of military activities and the disarmament of militias in the region, according to aid workers. Before, this was mainly attributed to men in uniform, but now civilians comprise a significant number of the perpetrators.

DRC: War Against Women
January 13, 2008 - (CBS) Right now there's a war taking place in the heart of Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and more people have died there than in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Darfur combined. It is, in fact, a war against women, and the weapon used to destroy them, their families and whole communities, is rape.

Uganda: NGO Pleads for Inclusion of Women in Juba Peace Talks
January 11, 2008 – (The Monitor) The government and the Lords Resistance Army have been asked to increase the number of women participating in the South Sudan mediated peace talks, an international NGO has appealed.