WUNRN
CONGO - RAPES DAILY IN &
AROUND GOMA DISPLACEMENT CAMPS
By Katie Nguyen - January 21, 2013
Testimony like this from a
woman uprooted by fighting in eastern
There is poor security in the Goma camps and Congolese authorities and
warring rebel groups are failing to take action to protect civilians in the
area, the medical charity said in a statement.
Much of eastern
"Violence is
omnipresent," MSF psychologist Marie Jacob said in the statement. "It
is a violence based on power, the law of the strongest, the law of the person
with a weapon."
MSF said between Dec. 3, 2012
and Jan. 5 2013, its team in Mugunga III camp, a few kilometres (miles) west of
Goma, treated 95 patients who had been subjected to sexual violence.
It also said there was an
increase in admissions for trauma related to sexual violence in late December,
which raised the average number of daily medical consultations to six.
The increased presence of
soldiers and rebel fighters near the camps has created a chronic state of
insecurity, with rape an everyday occurrence, MSF said.
The individuals responsible
act with impunity and are rarely punished. At the same time, very few victims
file charges because they are afraid of reprisals," said Thierry Goffeau,
MSF head of mission in Goma.
The camps are home to 100,000
people who fled an upsurge in fighting last November when rebels captured the strategic city of
Makeshift shelters cobbled
together with scraps of wood and plastic tarpaulin offer little protection
against perpetrators, aid workers say.
Congolese troops, aided by U.N.
peacekeepers, have been battling M23 rebels who U.N. experts and Congolese
officials say are backed by
The Tutsi-dominated M23, named
after a 2009 peace deal that saw a previous rebellion integrated into the army,
initially took up arms saying the
It later expanded its demands
and threatened to march across the vast Central African nation and topple the
government of President Joseph Kabila.
M23 leaders announced a
unilateral ceasefire on Jan. 8 ahead of a second round of peace talks with the
government in