Congo (Kinshasa)

Sexual and gender-based violence, or SGBV, does not just affect an individual but also has the power to permeate an entire community. Often these acts are carried out during periods of conflict or post-conflict transitions when rule of law is weak and a culture of impunity reigns.

Sexual violence is rampant in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The UN estimates that over 200,000 women and girls have been raped since 1998, but the true extent is not known. Missing from these figures are women and girls held as sex slaves or forced wives and men who are also victimized. The world has never known such extreme levels of sexual violence. Yet this crisis is largely ignored by the global community.

Women Under Siege is a fascinating new initiative of the Women's Media Center that focuses on rape and sexual violence used as tools of control in instances of war, conflict, and genocide throughout the world.

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.

"A dead rat is worth more than the body of a woman." Those were the words of one distraught young woman whom I met in Walikale in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2010.

THE BABY'S name is Alame. His mother, Fazili, lovingly enunciates the word as she gazes at him suckling at her breast. Alame, she explains, means “may he live” in their native Tembo language.

SADOKE KIKUNDA Mayele repeatedly cracks his knuckles as he sits restlessly in a small room up a dank stairway in Goma's central prison, the largest in eastern Congo. He cuts a distinctly underwhelming figure.

Working with ex-child soldiers of Charles Taylor's army, and the girls they have taken as wives, has convinced Nobel Peace laureate Leymah Gbowee that the abuse women suffer during conflict is a reflection of the interaction between men and women, boys and girls, during peace time.

Leymah Gbowee is one of three women who have been awarded jointly this year's Nobel Peace Prize. This article was first published in May 2011.

During a fairly frenetic trip to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo last week I spent a couple of hours at the Heal Africa centre in Goma, one of several institutions in the region where victims of sexual violence are treated.

The compound was crowded. There was a lot of building work going on and the existing wards looked full.