The government has expressed concerned about militia groups from the Democratic Republic of Congo who are on rampage in western Uganda.

The Minister of Disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru says the militia groups infiltrated the country as part of the refugees fleeing renewed tension in DRC.

Musa Ecweru says there are militia reported in Kisoro district roaming gang raping women, killing, looting and causing insecurity.

As we were growing up, we used to hear a story about Nigerian immigration that best illustrated corruption in Africa: it was said when travelling into Nigeria, you had to pay a bribe to the immigration officials even if all your papers were in order. If you neglected to pay the mandatory bribe, the official would return your passport to you and say a page was missing from your passport.

Imagine your village being attacked, your loved ones brutalized or even killed. Imagine being gang raped and humiliated in front of your children. Imagine having to walk for days or even weeks to get medical assistance. What would be hard for most of us to imagine is reality for many women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the war torn area of the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo armed rebels rape and pillage women on a regular basis. Since 1996 sexual violence has been used to torture and humiliate women and girls. For them rape is an everyday reality. In fact, hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped in the DRC in that time and the numbers continue to grow. In this hopeless and desperate place, one very brave woman saw hope and joy.

Late in the afternoon on November 29, former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo was removed from his prison cell in the dusty northern town of Korhogo and served with an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC). He was then put aboard a plane to The Hague, where he now faces four counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, and persecution.

“Everything changed when the soldiers arrived,” said Rosa, an Indigenous Ixil woman living in the Quiché region of Guatemala. “They burned our homes, raped the women and killed many of my friends and neighbors.”

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has been President of Liberia for a while now and is the first ever African woman to be elected President and has been credited together with other women in Liberia with ending the war in that country. Many African leaders have touted her a front of the United States of America. Deborah Solomon (DS) editor of the World Women Forum talks to her on this and other issues.

Arothi returned from the bush on Friday. She, along with her six children, had been hiding there for almost two days.

Her husband was killed by the marauding cattle-rustlers – mostly armed youths from the Lou Nuer tribe.

Arothi walked for 2 hours from the bush to Gumuruk where child rights organisation Plan International was distributing food to displaced villagers.