Congo (Kinshasa)

The number of reported victims of a recent mass rape campaign by gunmen in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has risen to about 170, the UN says.

Aid workers had been investigating initial reports that about 60 women were raped near town of Fizi by ex-rebels who recently deserted the army

Troops from the same group were recently convicted of raping at least 50 women in Fizi on New Year's Day.

On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton returned from a whirlwind tour through Zambia, Ethiopia and Tanzania, on which she sat down with national leaders and spoke on the benefits of fair crossborder trade and the importance of ending relations with Moammar Khadafy's Libya.

The price of womanhood came brutally to Odette, born in a wartorn country often dubbed "the rape capital of the world".

The 18-year-old from Minova recalls the day that members of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), came to her village in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and scarred her life for ever.

An old woman had died. Before burying the her, the residents of the village of Obo — in southern Central African Republic, just north of the Congolese border — gathered around a campfire to eat, drink, cry and sing in celebration of the woman's long life. It was a night in March 2008, just another beat in the slow rhythm of existence in this farming community of 13,000 people.

Iman Obeidi became famous in March when she burst into the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli and accused Libyan forces of raping her. She was quickly taken by authorities, but eventually found her way to Qatar to seek refugee status in the West. Last week, Qatari authorities inexplicably sent her back to Libya. She has since begun the process of moving to the U.S., where she will apply for refugee status.

Two long years after charges of “sexual misconduct” were leveled against the Indian peacekeepers deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Indian Army has moved to constitute a court of inquiry to probe the allegations.

Five years after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) revised its laws against sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), these crimes continue to go unpunished because of judicial inaction and a legal culture at odds with the changes. The laws, ignored and misinterpreted, have left escalating numbers of sexual violence survivors unprotected, and perpetrators free to violate again.

Have you ever imagined what internally displaced persons go through? Imagine war breaks out and you flee but have no destination. Imagine the harsh reality of losing your child because of cholera outbreak necessitated by the inhuman conditions in which internally displaced persons live as they run away to safe-areas.

In early April, when 14-year-old Amina said her rapist had been arrested and would stand trial, the reporter interviewing her kept silent.

Congolese journalist Jack Kahorha later explained: Someone must have lied to Amina to make her feel safe. When rapists are arrested, he said, they usually get out of jail within a few days.

In Eastern Congo, rape can be an act of war or revenge, or a response to extreme poverty, ignorance and fear.