Congo's Lastest Horrors

News regarding rape in the Congo rarely lets up. This article from Salon details the new allegations of the rape and murder of Congolese women at the hands of Angolan government officials. It also gets into the failure of the integration of women into the peacekeeping process on the 10 year anniversary of the U.N. resolution that was supposed to make it so.

Margot Wallstrom and the Security Council

Margot Wallstrom, the United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict informed the United Nations Security Council this week regarding the mass rape of men, women, and children in Kampal, Democratic Republic of the Congo that occurred this summer in areas patrolled by United Nations peacekeepers. Wallstrom has spent much of the last month touring the DRC taking testimony from victims. Wallstrom and others have found fault with the lack of resources devoted to the U.N. DRC Mission and response of the peacekeepers involved in it. While it seems like, a far away problem the Congo is becoming an increasingly important supplier of rare earth minerals to the United States.

Gang Rape in the Congo

Two weeks ago it was reported that several hundred women were gang raped, sometimes in front of their families by rebel militia groups in an area patrolled by the United Nations. This came at a time when Margot Wallstrom was touring the region. It is just another sad chapter in the history of this conflict. Today the U.N. Undersecretary for Peace Keeping apologized for the incident. I have spoken about the appalling lack of resources devoted to the problem in the past and their is current little indication that the United Nations will be able to change the situation in the future.

Margot Wallstrom is putting focus on the Problem of Rape in Combat

Margot Wallstrom, U.N. Special Representative on Sexual violence in Conflict has been touring Africa this summer to uncover the level of rape occurring in five conflict zones. In a CNN article she discusses important issues such as the socialization process that child soldiers are forced to endure that makes them more easily molded into a rapist. Wallstrom has been documenting the use of rape in combat as it has been supplanting other methods of violence on the battlefield.It is incredibly important work that will pave the way towards war crimes trials and assistance for the victims of these crimes.

PTSD and Rape in the Military

New regulations were announced for diagnosing U.S. veterans with PTSD that are supposed to make it easier for veterans to receive benefits however they pose a "Catch 22" for survivors of rape and other sexual trauma as detailed here. And what if the wounds did not include rape as in this case ? New regulations need to be developed in order to put sexual trauma on equal footing with other combat injuries.

Rape and Genocide: Not Just Perpetrated by Men.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents allege that a women now residing in New Hampshire committed acts of rape and murder while living in her native Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Although these charges are highly controversial, the fact that women can be party to such acts of cruelty on the battlefield should not be surprising given that female soldiers/combatants are often socialized in the same manner as their male counter parts. Whether it is during the Balkan conflict, wars in sub-Saharan Africa, or Abu Ghraib female soldiers have utilized sexual violence. Noted psychologist Brett Kahr was not surprised by the actions committed by the men or women stationed at Abu Ghraib as in his estimation after thousands of interviews conducted regarding sexual fantasy "The crimes of Lynndie England may be regarded as concretization - an explicitization- of the very same acts the one can find as a mainstay of ordinary American and British sexual fantasy life". The war, in conjunction with reinforcement of the behavior as being normative gave them license to do that which they had only previously thought about.

Jessica Stern on her own rape.

Last week, terrorism/violence expert Jessica Stern released book regarding her own rape which she says helps explain her own interest in extreme violence. Read the article here.