ATROCITIES AGAINST WOMEN
WIDESPREAD IN CONGO WAR
INTERNATIONAL
By Barbara
Crossette - WEnews correspondent
(WOMENSENEWS)
--It has been Africa's widest
war, with half a dozen national
armies and several rebel groups
fighting over the wealth of
the Democratic Republic of
the Congo. All of them have
been violating the rights
and the bodies of women, say
two Congolese human rights
researchers in the first comprehensive
report on this issue to emerge
from the scene.
If recent steps
toward ending the war have
produced some optimism internationally,
there is no cause for joy
in this report. Its findings
show that the abuse of women,
sharpened by more than four
years of war, is so endemic
in society that peace may
bring even more suffering
to those who have been raped,
enslaved or forced into prostitution.
Many others were tortured,
massacred or died of hunger
and disease.
The report,
"Women's Rights Violations
During the Conflict in the
Democratic Republic of the
Congo," was written by
Lisette Banza Mbombo and Christian
Hemedi Bayolo of the Association
for the Rebirth of Human Rights
in Congo, based in Kinshasa,
the capital. It might have
gone unnoticed outside the
country had it not come to
the attention of the International
Centre for Human Rights and
Democratic Development in
Montreal, an independent body
created by the Canadian Parliament.
"For us,
it was very important to get
this information out,"
said Isabelle Helal, the assistant
coordinator for the women's
rights program at the center,
which translated the report
from French and posted it
on the center's Web site.
The study covers
the period from August 1998
until Sept. 30, 2001, and
draws on reports from local
and international organizations
working across the mostly
inaccessible country. The
Democratic Republic of the
Congo, formerly Zaire, is
the size of western Europe
and home to 53 million people.
A Growing
Body of Reports on War's Impact
on Women
The Congo report
is the latest addition to
a growing body of documentation
on the pervasive targeting
of women in civil conflict
around the world. Women have
been tortured, genitally maimed,
raped and killed--at times
disemboweled to kill a fetus
along with its mother--in
the 1990s Balkans wars, during
the 1994 genocide in Rwanda
(to which the war in Congo
is directly linked) and most
recently in anti-Muslim pogroms
by militant Hindus in the
Indian state of Gujarat.
The trend has
prompted campaigns at the
United Nations and in independent
organizations around the world
demanding that the abuse of
women during war and in refugee
camps be addressed, and that
women also be given prominent
places at peace tables. At
the John F. Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard,
Swanee Hunt, a former American
ambassador, has been a leader
in this movement through her
Women Waging Peace program.
Frustration
and anger keeps rising, however.
In 2000, the United Nations
Security Council passed a
resolution requiring that
women's issues be addressed
in peacekeeping and security
operations around the world.
When the directive came up
for review this summer, Noeleen
Heyzer, the Singaporean who
is executive director of the
United Nations Development
Fund for Women, told the Council
that women were still at best
only a token presence in international
peace and security missions.
And although international
criminal tribunals have made
rape a war crime--and the
disgraceful excuse that "boys
will be boys" has been
rejected emphatically by international
organizations--those who commit
sex crimes are almost never
punished and women never win
redress, Heyzer said.
The Congo report
describes graphically the
horrific abuses of a war fought
out of sight, where the number
of international peacekeepers
is impossibly small. Mass
rapes, often to demoralize
enemies, seem to take place
everywhere, the authors found.
In the eastern region of South
Kivu, the report said, a Congolese
rebel army allied to Rwanda
had buried women alive after
ramming sticks into their
vaginas, to terrorize the
local population.
International
organizations estimate that
2 million people may have
died in the Congo war; this
report speculates that women
account for many of the victims.
Danger Doesn't
End During Peacetime
In Congo, as
in many traditional societies,
the stigma of rape, a resulting
pregnancy and the poverty
of widowhood, can be a crushing
burden. Even if peace comes,
women will continue to be
in peril, the authors conclude.
"In addition
to mental and physical injury
and the risk of pregnancy,
rape victims are particularly
vulnerable to contracting
HIV because body tissues are
more likely to be torn,"
the report says, quoting a
joint survey by Oxfam, Save
the Children and Christian
Aid. "There are six foreign
armies fighting on Congolese
soil and, on average, soldiers'
rates of infection can be
up to four times higher than
those of civilians."
Women are abused
in jails and dragooned into
sexual slavery. When they
form self-help groups they
are harassed by both government
and anti-government authorities.
Nuns have been among the victims
of intimidation.
The authors
of the report had little hope
when they concluded their
study last fall that the peace
process would go very far
in ending violence or addressing
the abuse of women. Nothing
that has happened since changes
that perception, human rights
groups say. This week Human
Rights Watch published a report
on a massacre in the eastern
city of Kisangani in May that
took the lives of many civilians.
Women, again, were sexually
abused, tortured and killed,
this time to punish men accused
of mutiny.
Barbara Crossette
is a former New York Times
correspondent in India and
the author of three books
on Asia.
For more
information:
Human Rights
Watch - War Crimes in Kisangani:
- "The Response of Rwandan-backed
Rebels to the May 2002 Mutiny":
- http://hrw.org/reports/2002/drc2/
International
Centre for Human Rights and
Democratic Development - "Women's
Rights Violations During the
Conflict - in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo":
- http://www.ichrdd.ca/english/commdoc/publications/women/congo/womenRDC-War1998-2001Eng-A.html
Also see Women's
Enews, May 27, 2002: - "Report
Says Women Targeted during
India's Violence": -
http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/921/
