The Never Ending War

There is a modest rush to bring humanitarian aid to the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). After weeks of escalating conflict, during which hundreds of thousands have been displaced, hundreds more women raped, and many civilians slaughtered, there is now the possibility that three thousand additional peacekeepers will be sent to DRC. There have been high-level meetings with militia leader Nkunda and Presidents Kabila of the Congo and Kagame of neighboring Rwanda. There is a new element of care and concern.

But why does the world behave as if there is suddenly a new war in the DRC? For thousands upon thousands of women, the war that began 12 years ago has never ended. Each day, women have been threatened with rape, torture, abuse and violation. Many of us have been calling for intervention on their behalf for years, especially the last two years. We have spoken at the Security Council, we have met with European governments, we have pushed the U.S. administration, we have made countless speeches. We have launched a worldwide campaign: "Stop Raping our Greatest Resource; Power to the Women and Girls of the DRC". We have begged, cajoled and pleaded for triple the number of peacekeepers to protect the women, for an end to impunity, for shining a light on the connection between the sexual violence and the plundering of Congo's vast resources my militias and multi-national companies. We have worked with brave and resilient women and men in the DRC who are building movements from the ground up to break the silence, demanding an end to war.

It is acknowledged across the board that the sexual atrocities perpetrated on women in the DRC are without a doubt the worst atrocities in the world today. It may seem extreme to call what is happening a Femicide --- the violence may not fit the exact legal definition of the Genocide Convention -- but for the women facing such systematic destruction, targeted precisely and only because they are women, Femicide is a word whose time has come. The numbers are appalling. More than a quarter of a million women have been raped in the last decade. The crimes are shocking: gang rapes; the raping of three-month-old infants and eighty-year-old women; the dispatching of militias who have AIDS and other STDs to rape entire villages; women being held as sex slaves for weeks, months and years; and women being forced to eat murdered babies.

At Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, over ten women who have been raped and tortured arrive daily. Their vaginas are ripped apart; for some that means that their reproductive organs are permanently destroyed. Many have fistula -- a hole in the wall of tissue between the vagina and the rectum or the vagina and the bladder. These wounds are most often inflicted by militias who attack using sticks, knives or guns, or through the merciless vaginal penetration of mass rape.

What makes it all so appalling is that everyone in power knows what is happening. On December 10, the founder of Panzi -- Dr. Denis Mukwege -- was awarded the United Nations Prize in the field of Human Rights, an award which Nelson Mandela and other esteemed leaders have received. There are Security Council resolutions, dramatic visits by western Foreign Ministers, increasing news coverage, coalitions of UN agencies, statements by humanitarian NGO's, 17,000 peacekeepers on the ground, and yet the sexual violence never ceases.

The missing piece of the analysis is that peace and war have always been measured in gun blasts. When men take up arms, and other men fight back, war is declared; when men agree to a ceasefire, the war is said to have stopped. Now we've come to the point when the world has recognized that in conflict after conflict, a gruesome, sadistic dimension has been added to modern-day-war, a widespread strategy employed by men to achieve their military and political ends: the rape of civilian women and girls.

All the parties to the war in the DRC may agree in theory that rape is being used as a 'weapon of war', but when they sit around the negotiating table and work out the terms that will end the fighting, they consistently forget to include for discussion just one weapon in the arsenal: rape. And so sexual violence has continued unabated, never letting up during the periods of so-called 'peace'.

And it will continue, because although we claim that rape is a weapon, committing a rape has never constituted a breach of any peace accord.

Enough of the lip service. If rape is a weapon of the Congo's war -- and we know that the threat of rape is a terrorist tactic, causing communities to flee their homes and farms, causing millions of deaths by starvation, making rape the single most deadly of all the militias' weapons --- then treat it with the gravity afforded every other weapon. Insist that the militias lay down their weapons AND stop their raping. Until the sexual violence ends, the world has no right to speak of peace.

Eve Ensler is a writer and activist, and the founder of V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls.

Stephen Lewis is the Co-Founder of AIDS-Free World and the former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Comments

[UberReaganite]

Its not that I'm not sympathetic to rape victims but rape is not the problem in the Congo. The actual problem in the Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and now South Africa again is that you have entire nations led by whatever group of lawless thugs that happens to have the majority of machetes and AK-47s at any time.

Rape is a SYMPTOM of that problem not the root cause. Treating rape without treating the governments that foster rape is like giving someone with pnemonia a nasal decongestant. Its like treating aids without treating unsafe sex. Its a reactive and ridiculous approach that will solve nothing.

Why am I the only person on these forums willing to place the balme squarely on the organization that deserves the blame. THE UNITED NATIONS. The primary reason this organization exists is to prevent or remedy lawless governments that are a threat to their own citizens and/or a threat to their regions of the world. BILLIONS of dollars are provided to this worthless organization and what does the world get for it? Nothing but worthless, impotent reactive measures that are always late and always lacking.

Until you people are smart enough and willing enough to treat the real problems you really have no business whining about the symptoms.

[research]

As these rapes are not party of village assaults,

Self defense training and possibly arming of the women is the best defense:
http://www.danecountyrcc.org/chimera/index.php?category_id=3920

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=yyI&q=teaching+women+to+resist+rape+assault+congo&btnG=Search

"Her organization has responded by training 36,000 children to resist rapes and teaching parents never to let their daughters go anywhere alone or be alone with a man, even a teacher. "

Get a volunteer group of Females soldiers from around the world to come and train the women.

Of course the world could do a lot with economic and political pressure.

[JRichardson]

In reading some of the comments, it was noted that there wasnt much we can do about this problem. In defense of Ms. Ensler and Mr. Lewis, they are speaking out. This is the first critical step in stoping both the mass rapes and the underlying conflict. While this is an ethnic conflict, it is also an economic one. As a U.N. Security Council report issued last week indicated, neighboring countries (Rwanda, et al) are supporting various factions in the war. But just as important is the underlying economic conflict. Natural resources - coltan, diamonds - both finance the conflict and provide economic incentives for all of the waring factions.

Read The Coltan Wars Pt. 1 and The Coltan Wars Pt. 2 for more details.

http://globalinvestmentwatch.com/2008/12/08/the-coltan-wars-pt-1/
http://globalinvestmentwatch.com/2008/12/15/the-coltan-wars-pt-2-the-business-of-war/

[MomfromTexas]

Thanks for those great links. Not only was the information interesting and spot on to this discussion, but I now have another good online resource to check in on and read. Much thanks!

[markhug]

Rape is a terrible crime, but there seems to be an overemphasis on it. I have read several of these stores and they tend to go something like; My village was attacked by rebels, my husband was kill trying to defend it, then the rebels kill my children in fount of me, and then they raped me, if that women could prevent one of those three things from happening which would she chose? I don't know any mother, given a chose between having there child killed in front of them or being raped would pick the death of there child.
This article doesn't mention the husbands and only briefly mentions the death of the children, we should try and focus on the root causes of these attacks of innocent villages instead of just one of the horrible things that happens during them.

[DKLabRat]

An overemphasis? When you've been raped, you can hold an opinion. Why should the woman in your question have to choose at all? What a sick, twisted, ignorant excuse for a human being you are.

[markhug]

One of the example I took about a common story was from this very web site

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/georgianne-nienaber/witness-to-rape-in-congo_b_116555.html

In the "God's" Testimony section of the article called Witness To Rape In Congo it tells the horrific story of rape of Mya, in it gives a single brief sentences about the killing of her two brothers and the rape of her mother, then continues for the rest of the section about effects of her rape. Reading this article I tried to imagine the absolute horror being that family’s mother during the attack. Then reading this it struck me how angry I would be at a reporter who said how horrible it was that I was raped that day, but who seemed not to be concerned that I just watching my sons killed and my daughter raped in front of me.
The observation I trying to make was that the killing of a child seem to be at lest a bad a raping of one, why doesn’t the article give equal focus on the deaths?

[JumperPilot]

I rarely comment on message boards but after reading your post I felt compelled to say something because I sincerely hope this is not how the majority of people out there are responding to this article. It has got to be the most callous, heartless thing I've seen on this website, belittling what these poor women have been made to endure. Your flippant retelling of their ordeal is terribly insensitive and makes it sound like they're whining about it! You are right to say the root causes of this violence must be addressed, but the whole point of the article is that nothing is being done about the rape, even during ceasefire between factions. How do you even come up with the notion that the women have a choice in the matter? You say you've read a few stories. I say you go read a few more until you have engaged emotionally and somewhat more intellectually with the topic at hand.

[Riani]

You have clearly not read a lot of these stories. Often these women are set upon on their way to fetch water, and raped. They are caught in the fields, working, and are raped. They are abducted, and raped, again, and again, and again. Young girls are abducted by soldiers, rebel and government issue, and kept as sex slaves. The rapes are not only part of village attacks, and this is why people are raising it as a seperate crime. If it only happened during village attacks, it would stop during periods of seize fire, but it doesn't. Even when the killing stops, the rape never does. It even follows the women into refugee camps.
Many times the rapists are the very people who are supposed to protect the women - soldiers, peace keepers, the police! Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow being an example of this, You can read about her on my blog, in a post called The Best of Times, The Worst of Times, or just google her name.
http://musehunt.wordpress.com

[LillianB]

The weapon to kill some of those babies is rape, too. Three month old babies are raped by HIV-positives, like their mothers. Unlike their mothers, some of these babies die straight away, from the impact of the rape itself, whereas their mothers survive rape after rape after rape after rape, until the virus finally kills them too. Your opinion seems to be a "sure, why bother?". Reading your post is like listening to someone defending holocaust by saying "hey, millions of jews were killed, why care about the homosexuals who were the same? There weren't as many of them, so it wasn't as serious...­". IT DOESN'T MAKE IT RIGHT!!!!!!

Both the raping and the killing in the Congo are crimes against humanity. They are both crimes intending to destroy the dignity of their victims, in an attempt to create fear and terror and suppression. This is terrorism, of a kind of which women are the prime victims. And it should be forced to an end.

[LillianB]

And, by the way, let's use the same twisted logic as you do use yourself, if you could imagine a "choice" between being killed by a bullet or being killed by HIV forced on you by rape and untreated due to poverty and lack of health services, which would you choose? (And, if the answer is the one I suspect it is, does that mean there's an "overemphasis" on bullet deaths?)

Crimes against humanity should be stopped, not rated in a what's-worse-list.

[NorthernCross]

What's going on in the DRC is terrible. Ain't much we can do about it, though.

[LillianB]

War in Bosnia was stopped.

[MomfromTexas]

But there's some grumbling that it's about to start back up.

[RetireGreen]

Until we stop torture, the practice of sexually assaulting prisoners, we have no right to lecture or feel superior to anyone.

[research]

It's Terrible.

I wasn't joking when I suggested Arm and Train the women.

Send female soldiers from around the world, under the UN, could go in make any rapist think twice.

[Saifi]

What's happening in Congo is gruesome and barbaric; but what strikes me is the torping reaction on the part of the international community. Human rights are being usurped constantly in that country and other african ones and everybody here seems to stand cross-armed.

However, I think what should be done is to find a global solution to this crisis through a concerted effort among the United States and the European Union to impose sanctions and warn the political power there. It is, in my sense, the carelessness of the West, broadly speaking, that gave a leeway to those criminals in Congo to perpetrate such exactions. So, Barack Obama and his counterparts in Europe should swiftly urge officials in Congo to put an end to these human rights violations.

[orangepetal]

A hospital in hell is hardly seems to be the only way to really help these people. A prize from the UN is I'm sure the last thing Dr. Denis Mukwege cares about or wants. Leaders around the world need to step up early and speak out loudly against these attrocities. All the countries leaders should be offering some aid and inncentives that they can afford to the people, so that within the communities the people may have an inncentive to capture the rogues and end the violence. Maybe a real solution is to give the women guns and teach them to use them, not really, but action is needed, because formalities, delays and passive action just means more victims and suffering.

Could these kinds of problems just be the result of earth or a countries inability to provide sustenance to their populations and therefore more of what we just need to be prepared to expect as we go into the future? If so, can we prepare and find solutions that work. Or could it be that the best people can really do is kind people opening hospitals in hell, nations presenting awards and decisions on who will, or wheather to, send in peacekeepers is okayed by inefficient or uncaring leaders.

[luziannagirl]

"research" asked if a solution would be to arm and train the women.

I think the short answer (vs "the answer") would be "yes".

Firearms have been called the great equalizers. If you can shoot straight and you have plenty of ammunition, doesn't matter how many muscles or how much testosterone you have. These men and boys are being armed by someone. Why not the women?

In attacking and violating women and girls, these men and boys are indulging in a form of self-hate. They know they are destroying their own communities, their own people, their own country, their own future. I suspect they feel they have no future anyhow.

Also, in all human cultures, female chastity and reproductive health has been a prized commodity. A form of intrinsic wealth; a currency, typically traded only by men to men. To these Congolese, seemingly indiscriminate raping and brutalization of females is probably the equivalent of burning the towns and houses so the enemy has no quarter, no resources, with which to regroup and fight again another day.

I think the most expedient and immediate, albeit very sad answer is to arm and train the women and girls in the most basic and simple methods of self-protection. It's really not that hard, and I suspect, much less expensive than sending enough UN troops to guard every remote settlement and refugee camp.

[militantlibrarian]

If hordes of men completely overpower a woman when she leaves her home to get water, how do you suggest she will have time to stop, aim, and shoot them all? The gang of men would just take the gun and use it on her. The women need protection, not firepower!

[luziannagirl]

Good point, militantl, but these women live in a culture where a despoiled female is often viewed as a walking dead person, if she lives through the unspeakable, unfathomable brutality and lifetime-maiming injuries inflicted upon her. There is no real life for many of these women after such an attack, and that's one of the reasons for the attacks.

If females move in pairs or tight groups, least one woman can wield the weapon while the others tend to business. No, every attacker will not be killed or stopped, and at first, many women willdie fighting, but if most women were able to kill or inflict severe defensive wounds on at least a few men in these ravaging groups, the word would soon spread that targetting women and children in this manner is too costly.

And there's no need to aim a shotgun, militant. It sends out a spray of pellets. A sawed-off shotgun (illegal in US) sends out an even wider spray. Very effective weapons.

[ColoradoCool]

Never mind rape and torture abroad. What about the red hot Senate Report published last week on torture that was authorized at the highest level right here in the United States!!!!!!!!!! Although Rachel Maddow reported on this report on Friday night, can find no articles about it posted on Huff or on MSNBC. Is this lack of information on the Bush administration's continuing infamy another cover up???????????

[LillianB]

One crime doesn't make another crime right. Both crimes need to be stopped. The torture authorized by US government may be the easiest to stop - punish it. Remove the authorization. But that doesn't change the need to stop the systematic violence of Congo - even though that's a task that will be more difficult.

[sophiej]

Lysistrata was right, but she didn't go far enough. of course her creator was a man, Aristophanes, who thought he was being funny.
plot http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-lysistrata/sum.htmlsum.html.

Women close to powerful men could do a lot to help other women. Powerful women on their own -- and we're all powerful -- can refuse to play the male dominance games.

Let's revive the Lysistrata Project.
http://www.lysistrataproject.org/aboutus.htm.

Put me in the Chorus of Old Women:-)

[MomfromTexas]

Again, "How do we stop it?" is the question. Do we need to protest at the U.N., insisting that rape be considered a break in peace accords? Do we need to insist that measures to prevent and stop rape are written and taken into account, when writing peace accords and arranging cease fires? Does rape need to be written into the definition of genocide at the U.N.? The definition already includes acts that prevent a group of people from procreating, but the authors state that rape "may not fit the exact legal definition of the Genocide Convention­." If women are purposely being raped by men who are HIV positive or having their reproductive organs damaged beyond repair during a rape or molestation (and who can logically argue that molesting a woman with a knife had any other purpose but to damage her reproductive organs beyond repair), then why doesn't that fall under the U.N.'s definition of genocide?

[LillianB]

It isn't that we do not know, or that we didn't before we read this. We all do know. We have known for years. And in an attempt to preserve our own humanity, we pretend these atrocities do not happen. We can't know, we can't not do anything about it, and still call ourselves humans. Still, we know, and we close our eyes. We do not want to know.

We need articles like this to force our eyes open. To be reminded of what's on stake. To be reminded of the unspeakable hell these people are living through. Or being killed in. And we also need to be reminded that our own humanity, our own value as people, are tainted by the fact that we know and do nothing. This isn't about the humanity of the victims and pulprits of the Congo. This is about the humanity of us all.

Thank you for not letting us forget. Keep writing about this. And know that it has some effect. After reading this for the first time (this is my second) I informed my friends that their Christmas presents are going to the Congo this year. The money I would have spent, I give to the refugee council instead.

[LillianB]

And I am, of course, asking my friends to do the same with the money they would have spent to buy me presents.

[orangepetal]

The problem is that helping the refugeeis kind but not the real answer. Action with a focus on preventing these things is.
Who allows this to happen ? Are we too passive towards evil ? Are innefficient leaderships responsible ? Are these things the result of insufficient resources and overpopulation, and an indication of what will get even worse as we go forward ?
Blaming it on colonialism and finding the root causes that are a hundred years old and impossible to change seems like the way to focus on a red herring.

[LillianB]

Yes, you are right on that. Still, helping victims survive by donating a little bit of what one owns helps people get through the acute crisis. These are people who've gotten all they own - the little they did own - taken away from them. Some of them can't feed themselves. Lots of them are ill or unable to move because of what's been done to them. There are rape victims unable to walk. A little bit of money can go a long way for one that has nothing.

If they don't survive, they won't be there for a (hopefully) peaceful future. Donating money is what you and I can do for now. That, and continuing to listen to Eve Ensler & comany, and to comment on stories like these, directing attention to them, demanding action from the UN and the world's governments.

[Milrepa]

Plutarch saw the rape of the Sabine women as honorable, and not "rape" at all, but captivity. Historians referred to it as a resource for prevention of genetic inbreeding. Male artists from Renaissance to Piccaso enshrined the images, men can't even lie about it ( just as today's pornographic images will be judged laughably ignorant by future generations).
I have long been critical of anti war movements as being "war-selective", inferring that some wars are "bad" some are "honorable" (witness Bosnia vs. Iraq, and yes, rape occurred en masse in Bosnia). Anti war movements choose individuals as scapegoats for the "bad war's" causation and then euphemistically stone them, which is childish and insignificant.
All wars are bad.
Speaking of violence, I found the in The Vagina Monologues seeds of female violence. Plus childish and insignificant. Plus yucky. Women have to do better than that if they are to rise above human nature's baser instincts, for the purpose of saving lives and energizing the moral compass at large. A woman's spiritual nature is more inspiring and powerful than women often realize.
Perhaps UN Peacekeepers should separate out every last female (and boy under 16) and guard them, out of harm's way. In luxury, as befits a woman. Men would respond to that. But then how can we trust the Peacekeepers? They rape, too. Women in the military as Peacekeeper guards maybe?