Women's Human Rights Report Details Systematic Rape in DRC
By Jim Fisher-Thompson

Washington -- Invaders from Rwanda and Burundi, who are exploiting the natural resources of three-fourths of the Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern territory, are also "guilty of systematic sexual violence against [its] women," says Venantie Bisima, coordinator of Reseau des Femmes pour la Defense des Droits et la Paix (RFDP), a network of women's organizations based in Bukavu, in the eastern part of the country.

As these outsiders pillage the eastern Congo's forests and minerals, they are raping and degrading its women on a scale that is tearing apart the very fabric of society in the region, Bisima told a March 12 meeting in Washington, sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson International Center's Africa Program and the human rights advocacy group Common Ground.

To support her charge, the human rights activist cited the "Report on the Causes and Consequences of Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo," which the RFDP and another DRC grassroots organization, Reseau des Femmes pour la D??veloppement Associatif (RFDA), based in Uvira, put together with the help of the London-based human rights group International Alert.

In its preliminary findings, the report notes the scale of the problem, which has also been described by its victims as "murderous madness" and highlights a disturbing trend -- the systematic use of mass rape to destabilize the very underpinnings of Congolese society.

"More than 50 percent of the victims firmly believed the DRC's neighbors were engaged in a plot to exterminate the Congolese people. Combatants therefore used women's bodies and their reproductive capabilities to spread the HIV/AIDS virus and to create non-Congolese babies," according to the study.

For the study, Bisima explained, from September 15 to December 15, 2003, researchers and investigators interviewed a total of 492 women and young girls -- between the ages of 12 and 86, representing 19 different ethnic groups -- who had been raped in and around Bukavu and Uvira.

They also spoke to 50 soldiers and two Mayi-Mayi rebel fighters and studied the files of some 2,900 rape victims collected by local NGOs.

The Rwandan Hutu militias (Interahamwe) that fled into eastern Congo after the genocide of 1994 "constitute the largest group of perpetrators" of rape in the region, the report states, followed by combatants operating from Burundi.

Most of the women interviewed said they had been assaulted by "foreigners," who aside from seeking sexual gratification frequently employed gruesome forms of torture to humiliate and degrade them, often in front of their families and neighbors.

Bisima said many of the women and girls in the study described horrific examples of rape, gang rape and forced incest that were often committed in public. "These atrocities were particularly targeted at a) women farmers, who are the main driving force behind the subsistence economy in the region and b) women of childbearing age," the report notes. The purpose, it says, was "to contribute to the erosion of the economic and social fabric of rural communities in south Kivu."

The result is that many of the rape victims and Congolese in general now believe "the sexual violence against women was a deliberate attempt to humiliate the Congolese people and to humiliate the whole country, which is coveted by its neighbors for its immense wealth," according to the study.

The report made a number of recommendations, including:

-- the United Nations, which has a peacekeeping force in eastern Congo, should oversee "the formation of a credible national army in the DRC by ensuring that fighting forces are restructured and reintegrated into the army in a rigorous and transparent way";

-- the international community should provide "long-term support to local organizations involved in monitoring and promoting women's rights in order to establish sustainable projects"; and

-- the Congolese Government should ensure "national reconstruction programs prioritize the needs of rural women, in particular those who have been most affected by acts of sexual violence committed during the war."

From: http://usinfo.state.gov/dhr/Archive/2004/Mar/16-199776.html