Congo (Kinshasa)

For the past two decades women's bodies have become the battlefield as gangs of combatants have committed atrocities in the Democrat Republic of Congo (DRC), according to Dr. Denis Mukwege Mukengere, who recently spoke at a World Bank seminar on sexual and gender-based violence in Eastern DRC.”

"Congolese officials should fulfill their obligations... towards the victims of such atrocious acts and their families to whom justice must be rendered,? the head of the UN mission in the country, MONUSCO, said in a statement.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution strengthening ways to fight the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

U.N. agencies estimate more than 40,000 women were raped during Liberia's civil war from 1989-2003, as many as 60,000 in the former Yugoslavia during the early 1990s, and at least 200,000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1998.

The new UN special envoy for Africa's Great Lakes region, former Irish president Mary Robinson, expressed her "shock" Tuesday over human rights abuses in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has promised to bring a group of suspected mass rapists to justice after the United Nations last month threatened to halt support to two Congolese army battalions, the world body said on Tuesday.

The United Nations said 126 women were raped in Minova in November after Congolese troops fled to the town as so-called M23 rebels briefly captured the nearby provincial capital of Goma.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced the appointment of former Irish president Mary Robinson as the new Special Envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Ms. Robinson, who served as president from 1990 to 1997, has more than four decades of political and diplomatic experience, including as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002.

The UN and human rights groups are warning of a rise in sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Earlier this month, a senior UN official said the organisation's peacekeeping mission in the country had threatened to stop supporting two Congolese army battalions unless soldiers accused of raping scores of women in an eastern town were prosecuted.

Violence, harassment, slander and threats, poverty, corruption – the obstacles for women taking part in the daily life and future of their societies are many in the war-torn DR Congo. And the escalation of the conflict in eastern DR Congo the last couple of months, has once again made it evident that women are especially targeted.

A group of women from North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have demanded to be involved in the on-going peace talks and negotiations in Uganda between the M23 rebels and the DRC government.

The talks are taking place under the mechanisms and guidance of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR).

For the past 10 months, a little-known conflict in a marginalized corner of northeast Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has left a trail of killing, abduction, rape and forced displacement, with few signs of an imminent resolution. The epicentre of the conflict is a vast forest reserve covering some 13,700sqkm in Orientale Province.