WUNRN
Please Read 2 Parts of This WUNRN
Release
on Congo, Representing Each
Reportage Focus.
__________________________________________________________________
UN News Centre
CONGO
- UN RELEASES MOST EXTENSIVE REPORT
TO
DATE ON WAR RAPES & MASSACRES
Many
of the attacks involved massive violence against non-combatant civilian
populations consisting primarily of women and children amid a climate of
near-total impunity, which continues today.
Link
to Full 566-Page UN Report: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/ZR/DRC_MAPPING_REPORT_FINAL_EN.pdf
1 October 2010 – The United Nations today released a new report on “indescribable” atrocities
committed in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from 1993 to
2003, when tens of thousands of people were killed, and numerous others raped
and mutilated by both armed Congolese group and foreign military forces.
“The period covered by this report is probably one of the most tragic chapters in the recent history of the DRC,” says the report, the most extensive accounting to date, issued by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
“Indeed, this decade was marked by a string of major political crises, wars and multiple ethnic and regional conflicts that brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.”
The 550-page report, listing 617 of the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law over the 10-year period by both State and non-State actors, is the product of a mapping exercise that took more than two years, including eight months on the ground in the DRC, interviewing witnesses and a wide range of sources.
Many of the attacks involved massive violence against non-combatant civilian populations consisting primarily of women and children amid a climate of near-total impunity, which continues today.........
Full Article: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36306&Cr=democratic&Cr1=congo
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CONGO - STRATEGIES TO ADDRESS
ACCOUNTABILITY FOR RAPES IN CONGO
September
30, 2010
The
U.N.'s Wallstrom is visiting the DRC two months after armed soldiers gang raped
hundreds of women. While she's there, focused on identifying perpetrators, a
leading women's activist from Goma is in the U.S. pressing a different
strategy.
UNITED
NATIONS (WOMENSENEWS)--Margot Wallstrom, the U.N.'s special representative on
sexual violence in conflict, flew to the Democratic Republic of Congo on
Tuesday for a weeklong visit to a region where women suffered mass rape attacks
two months ago.
The same
day, Justine Masika Bihamba, a leading Congolese anti-rape activist, toured New
York and U.N. offices with a plan for preventing rapes in her war-torn country.
On
the eve of Wallstrom's visit to meet with several hundred women who were raped
between the July 30 and Aug. 3 attacks, she told a press gathering "we
still have a window of opportunity to apprehend perpetrators." She spoke
on Monday following a U.N. Human Rights Council hearing in Geneva.
Safety
activists have long said that a culture of impunity surrounds sexual violence
in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In the hearing, Wallstrom singled out
names of perpetrators from the Mai-Mai to the Democratic Forces for the
Liberation of Rwanda rebel groups.
"We
need high-profile cases where somebody is actually caught for doing this, where
somebody is punished for doing this, and that sends a strong message,"
Wallstrom said at the Geneva press conference following the hearing.
But Bihamba,
the visiting Congolese activist, doesn't think focusing on apprehending
perpetrators will go far enough to prevent the problem.
"Wallstrom
seems very committed, but the problem is that she deals more with the
consequences of rape than with the causes," said Bihamba, founder of the
Synergy of Women for the Victims of Sexual Violence, a coalition of 34 women's
organizations in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. She spoke through a
French translator in an in-person New York interview.
Spotlighting
Rebel Activity
What is
needed, she said, is for Wallstrom to spotlight the rebel activity that is
causing the mass war rapes.
Bihamba
wants the United States to pressure neighboring Rwanda to find a solution to
its rebel activity in the region, which she says fuels lawlessness and
widespread violence.
The
Congolese army, known as the FARDC, has incorporated rebel leaders into its
ranks and also presents an enormous threat, Bihamba said. Government soldiers
assaulted her two daughters in 2007 and attempts to prosecute them resulted in
death threats for her and her family, she said. The international community
needs to enhance its military coordination with the FARDC, says Bihamba.
Donatella
Rostanga, a policy officer for the European Network for Central Africa, based
in Brussels, Belgium, agrees. "Nations train battalions with different
military perspectives and with no coordination," Rostanga said. "That
makes it very hard to form any kind of coherent army."
In August,
more than 500 women were gang-raped by rebel-armed soldiers in the troubled
eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the province of North
Kivu, just 20 miles from a U.N. peacekeeper base.
Wallstrom
dispatched a senior team member to the region Aug. 25, shortly after her office
learned of the attacks. But as she and other critics have said, her office was
among the last to learn of the attacks on Aug. 21.
Traveling
to Affected Region
Now, one
month later in her weeklong visit, Wallstrom will be traveling to the capital
city of Kinshasa and then to the affected region of Walikale. She will meet
with government officials, rape survivors and nongovernmental organizations.
Wallstrom
said on Monday in Geneva that it was "very problematic" that her
office heard about the attacks so late and acknowledged that "we are still
not in the loop, fully."
Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon appointed Wallstrom in April and she formally assumed office in
June. One quarter of the way through her two-year mandate, she has assembled
three members of her six-person team.
Filing the
remaining posts depends on members of the U.N. General Assembly approving its
budget at the end of this year.
When
Wallstrom arrives in New York Tuesday, she will prepare a Security Council
briefing on her trip, said Letitia Anderson, advocacy and women's rights
specialist of the U.N. Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict. Wallstrom
just moved to New York from Geneva and will start basing out of her U.N. office
after she returns from the trip.
Wallstrom
chairs the coalition that comprises the 13 U.N. entities in the Action Against
Sexual Violence in Conflict. U.N. Women is expected to serve as a member of
this coalition when it envelops UNIFEM and three other existing U.N. gender
agencies in January.