Text and photographs by Walter Astrada

In the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, tens of thousands of women have been and continue to be raped with impunity and extreme brutality by all parties involved in the country’s armed conflict.

In most cases, several men “gang rape� a woman at the same time. Usually, women are not only raped their vaginas are also mutilated with guns and sticks. Many women are raped in front of their children, their husbands, their families, or their neighbors. This situation shows that rape is being used as a weapon of war to punish or dehumanize women, or to persecute the community to which they belong.

According to the UN, just in the province of South Kivu, the district health office recorded an average of 40 women raped every day. According to the United Nations, in these sorts of situations for every rape that is reported 10 or 20 go unreported. According to UN records, 14,200 women and girls have been raped between 2005 and 2007 in South Kivu. In North Kivu, the UN says about 350 rape cases were reported monthly during 2007.

Behind these horrifying numbers there are women who saw their dignity, autonomy, and health violated. The consequences of rape are devastating; survivors often suffer aftereffects for the remainder of their lives. Damage to their reproductive system as well as emotional and mental health problems are common. In the Congo they also have to carry the weight of the stigma attached to rape, where female virginity is highly prized and rape is considered a disgrace to the woman’s husband.

Legal assistance is sparse and inadequate and very few cases of sexual violence result in convictions and prison sentences.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 00:06 and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.