WUNRN
11
June 2009
Spiegel
International
Francois
Grignon
CONGO
- "RAPE AS A WEAPON OF WAR"
Panzi Hospital in
the town of Bukavu in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo specialises
in the care of rape victims. Although Panzi has 350 beds, it must send many
women home before they have fully recovered because of the never-ending stream
of new patients arriving for treatment.
Panzi is emblematic
of the catastrophic toll sexual violence has inflicted on the people of eastern
Congo over the past decade. The non-governmental organization Medecins Sans
Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) has reported that 75 percent of all the
rape cases it dealt with worldwide were in the eastern Congo. A census by UNICEF
and related medical centres reported treatment of 18,505 persons for sexual
violence in the first 10 months of 2008, 30 percent of whom were children. This
year, the situation deteriorated further still, with the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reporting a huge surge in sexual violence
and rape in eastern Congo.
Reported cases
represent only a fraction of the total -- a vast number of cases go unreported.
Women fear that they will lose all prospects for marriage or that their husbands
will abandon them if they acknowledge they have been raped. In other cases, the
threat of retribution -- coupled with the near certainty that the perpetrators
will never be held accountable -- discourages women from stepping forward.
Most of the warring
parties of the conflict in eastern Congo, including the Congolese Army, Rwandan
Hutu rebels, and Congolese Tutsi rebels, have used rape as a weapon of war.
Moreover, rape has become ingrained in Congolese civilian society and is widely
used to determine power relations. Men and teenagers rape not only women and
girls of all ages, but also other males. An estimated 90 percent of minors in
prison in eastern Congo have been convicted of rape, according to the
non-governmental North Kivu Provincial Subcommission on Sexual Violence.
A Culture of
Impunity
Sexual violence can
be as damaging as bullets. It destroys not only the bodies of the victims, but
the basic social fabric of local communities and stokes the armed conflict that
has plagued the eastern Congo. Enduring peace will require systematically
putting military and civilian rapists behind bars in order to end the culture
of impunity that promotes sexual violence.
But Congolese
military and civilian authorities show little will to prosecute sexual crimes. And
Congolese military and civilian courts lack the capacity, credibility and
political neutrality to judge such crimes effectively and fairly. To deal
successfully with the scourge of sexual violence, a consolidated approach needs
to be developed involving both international and national judicial mechanisms.
The International
Criminal Court (ICC) should immediately begin to issue arrest warrants for
senior commanders who have used sexual violence as a weapon of war, since it
can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, or even a constitutive act
with respect to genocide. The ICC cannot, however, handle the bulk of the
cases. Widespread enforcement will require a reformed Congolese justice system
that the Congolese people trust and use, staffed by competent, trained and
fair-minded people. It should also include increased civilian and military
criminal penalties for sexual crimes, the strengthening of arrest, detention
and prosecution capabilities, the stepped-up recruitment and training of female
police officers and a civilian court of appeal for victims of sexual abuse to
replace the military court that now handles such cases.
Empty Words?
The Congolese
authorities also need to take steps to prevent sexual crimes from happening
before they occur. These steps include enforcing appropriate military
disciplinary measures, upholding the principle of command responsibility,
training troops on the categorical prohibition of sexual violence against
civilians, debunking myths that fuel sexual violence, vetting armed and
security forces to take into account past actions of rape and evacuating women
and children under imminent threat of sexual violence.
The UN's launch on
April 1, 2009 of an overall strategy for combating sexual violence in the Congo
was a welcome step. But this strategy and other recommendations for justice
reform and for preventing sexual violence will be empty words in the absence of
robust engagement at all levels of the Congolese civilian and military
hierarchy.
If we wish to end the never-ending stream of women arriving at Panzi Hospital,
we cannot afford to turn our heads. Western donor countries must apply the
necessary pressure on Congolese military and civilian authorities and demand
both judicial and political accountability for the continuing violence in
eastern Congo, pushing them much harder to take the actions needed to rid the
country of the epidemic of sexual violence.
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