A tiny child with a gaping, bloody gash between her legs. A young woman whose breasts are stretched grotesquely out of shape. A woman whose lower face resembles a skull, her mouth carved away by vengeful rapists.

These are the pictures that Justine Masika Bihamba carries with her on her travels, in the hope that the world will see the plight of sexually abused women in the mineral-rich provinces of Democratic Republic of Congo.

For many Westerners, stories of the savage five-year war that crushed the country and killed some 3 million people are part of the horrific past, now that Congo is officially at peace.

But for the broken and desperate women who call on Masika in her threadbare office in Goma, the atrocities are ongoing. For them it is war without end.

"This is sexual violence that amounts to torture," says Masika, a quiet-spoken, solid woman who co-ordinates the collective Synergie des Femmes pour les Victimes de Violences Sexuelles. She was attending a women's human rights forum yesterday at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

"Eighty per cent of the violence is around the mining areas," Masika said. "Those areas are all about guns and greed. There is no government control and people take what they want." Including women.

For the gun-toting men who prey on them – many of them battle-hardened ex-fighters – toddlers, teenagers or elderly women are fair game for sadistic attacks that defy the most twisted imagination.

"Women are not just raped, but assaulted with sharp objects to mutilate them, including razor blades," says Masika.

"Some have had their uteruses torn out. One young girl had her breasts repeatedly pulled for days until they stretched nearly to her knees, and she was left in agony."

The women's suffering is augmented by Congo's turbulent relations with its neighbours, says Congolese human rights lawyer Sylvie Maunga of the Life and Peace Institute. As well as the presence of heavily armed Congolese paramilitaries, old enemies have re-entered the country five years after a truce was signed. Looking to plunder rich mining land, they easily victimize unarmed women.

Congo's slide into war began after the 1994 Rwanda genocide, when the new Rwandan leader sent troops over the border to pursue Hutu perpetrators hiding in what was then Zaire. Burundi and Uganda joined in ousting its authoritarian ruler Mobutu Sese Seko, replacing him with Laurent Kabila.

But when Rwanda and Uganda opposed Kabila, he turned to Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia for help. In the free-for-all that followed between 1997 and 2002, millions of Congolese died, many from disease and starvation. Hundreds of thousands of women were raped.

Now, after a 2002 peace deal, and an election in 2006, Kabila's son Joseph heads a fragile government that has little control over the country's territory or economy.

In the first six months of last year, the UN's peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno reported, 12,000 women had been raped in Congo. But the figure doesn't include those who died from their injuries or suffered in silence.

Although the government is too weak and under-resourced to crack down on these crimes, the Congolese women said, the international community should urge foreign mining firms – including some registered in Canada – to make sure their local partners abide by humanitarian standards. And, they added, reparations should be paid to victims of sexual violence, who are often left destitute, gravely ill from HIV/AIDS and homeless.

Canada has contributed more than $170 million in aid to Congo since 1998. But, Masika said, grassroots groups like hers see little aid, and are often staffed by volunteers who are themselves hungry.

In a report two years ago, Human Rights Watch accused armed groups fighting for control of gold mines and trade routes in northeastern Congo of "war crimes and crimes against humanity using the profits from gold to fund their activities and buy weapons."

Said Allan Rock, a former Canadian ambassador to the UN who visited the lawless eastern Congo twice: "Women were victimized brutally and systematically in ways I've never seen before. It's the most profound misogyny imaginable."

Hope that Congo's huge mineral wealth would help to improve people's lives has been dashed, he said: "Instead those resources have done just the opposite – they are a source of misery to the local population, especially women."