Rape as a Weapon of War: Women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

 

The inferior status of the Women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was embedded in the indigenous social system, reinforced in the colonial era and still prospers on today.  This general lack of respect for women, has caused them to be used as objects, more specifically weapons, in one of the most deadliest wars since World War II.  Over 5 million people have died in the last decade as victims in the Congo civil war, yet it still remains one of the most under-broadcasted tragedies of today.

Role of Women

Women in the DRC today still struggle to gain positions of equality and remain hindered by laws that illustrate the subordinate position of women in the society.  Although, since the Mobutu regime, there have been steps of progress towards women gaining more legal rights, such as the right to own property, and the right to participate in the economic and political sectors of the society.  Still, there are laws that remain in existence which demand that “a married woman must have her husbands permission to open a bank account, accept a job, obtain a commercial license, or rent or sell real estate. Article 45 of the civil code specifies that the husband has rights to his wife’s goods” (CIA world Fact book) even if the wife initially claims separate ownership to her own possessions.  Laws such as these that are still in effect today, sustains the repressive roles of women and revokes the significance of their voice.

Rural Women
Traditionally, women are responsible for the domestic work, tending to the family and children and performing laborious tasks around the house such as harvesting and agricultural work.  They are often encouraged to remain in the domestic sphere and not venture out to receive an education nor attain wage paying jobs.  In effect, this causes women to be socially impaired in comparison to men, who usually have received at least some type of minimal education and have control over money dealings, ownerships and political negotiations.  The steady deterioration of the Congo’s economy has led the government to support the increase in producing more cash crops  of coffee and quinine, in an effort to increase their amount of exports.  This has led to the reduction of the amount and quality of land available for local food crop production.  This process of the government and the elite consistently expanding the boundaries of their land has  respectively decreased the amount of communal land available; replacing necessary food crops for cash crops.  This has immensely increased the rural women's burden to provide when simply trying to fulfill her duty in growing and supplying her family with food to eat.
There have been instances however in which women have protested the rising tolls and taxes that the state continues to impose on them.  Katharine Newbury studied a group of Tembo women that protested who grew cassava and peanuts west if Lac Kivu.  Although the women could not elect a woman for local council representation, they elected men who were advocates of their beliefs. The men eventually succeeded in getting the heavy taxes and tolls that they were required to pay when going to markets to be suspended.

Urban Women

By the end of the twentieth century, women who lived in the urban environments of the Congo began to make strides in attaining positions in the professional workforce.  Even though they still remain underrepresented in higher level jobs, generally earn significantly less than their male-counterparts working the same jobs women are becoming more visually apparent in the military, universities and government service jobs.  In response to mens dominant control over the workforce and laws that require women to receive the permission of men to do things such as own property, or open up a bank account many urban women have rebelled.  They will “generally conduct business without bank accounts, without accounting records and without reporting all of their commerce.”  A study showed that 28 percent of Kisangani’s large business owners not dependent on political connections were women.

Overview of the Congo Civil War and How its Affected the Women

The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the longest occurred in Modern African history involving nine African nations and affecting over 50 million Congolese lives.  The Congolese population is made up of over 200 ethnic groups, separated regionally each with their own distinct language. Eventually, this great amount of diversity would lead to the continuation of disunity and conflict within the Congo.
By the year 1996, the mass genocide transpiring in neighboring Rwanda had begun to spill over into Eastern Congo.  Militias and rebel groups used the Eastern Congo land to set up bases in order to infiltrate attacks on Rwanda.  Soon, armed Rwandan  troops entered the DRC led by Laurent-Desire Kabila in intentions of removing Mobutu Sese Seko from governmental power.  This military campaign of ousting Mobotu was supported by both Rwandan and Ugandan governments and following failed peace talks, Mobotu fled the Congo in May 1997. Kabila replaced Mobotu and declared himself president, renaming the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formally known as Zaire).  After the strong Rwandan military presence was apparent in the Congo, the Congolese Tutsis ( an ethnic group), the governments of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda expected protection from the operation of hostile rebel groups from Eastern Congo.  These groups included (As provided by Global Security.org, Congo Civil War) :

• The Interahamwe militia of ethnic Hutus, mostly from Rwanda, which fought the Tutsi-dominated Government of Rwanda;
• Hutu members of the former Rwandan Armed Forces, believed to be responsible for the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda, which also fought the Government of Rwanda;
• The Mai Mai, a loose association of traditional Congolese local defense forces, which fought the influx of Rwandan immigrants;
• The Alliance of Democratic Forces (ADF), made of up Ugandan expatriates and supported by the Government of Sudan, which fought the Government of Uganda; and
• Several groups of Hutus from Burundi fighting the Tutsi-dominated Government of Burundi.

By 1997, relations between Kabila and the neighboring governments worsened as Rwandan troops within the DRC rebelled and new ones from both Rwanda and Uganda came poring into the Congo.  On August 4, 1997 invaded Bas-Congo with the objective being to overthrow Laurent Kabila with Rwandan-backed rebel group: Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie.  This was only put to halt in intervention by Angolan, Zimbabwean and Namibian troops.   In 1998, Kabila ordered all foreign troops to remove themselves from the DRC, and in response the majority of them refused to leave. Rebel group Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RDC) retreated to Eastern Congo where they established control and continued to fight the Congolese army and its neighboring allies.  By 1999 a rebel group (Mouvement pour la Liberation du Congo) backed by Uganda gained control over the northern third of the DRC.  By this stage at the turn of the century, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was virtually controlled and divided into three different sections.
The women of the DRC have unfortunately fallen most victim to the Congo’s civil war, their status as a woman sometimes being even more dangerous than that of a soldier in the war.   Rebels and soldiers alike have resulted to using a weapon that punctures far deeper than physical wounds.  Rape is now their weapon of choice. It is used to destroy, detach, humiliate and invoke fear within its victims, families, and communities.  By instilling fear in its victims and communities, the perpetrators gain a sense power and control over the minds of the people.  So there is not only physical damage that is left to set an example, but also a lasting emotional and psychological destruction.  This is done sometimes publicly as well privately as the quickest and most effective way to terrorize an entire community with no discrimination of age nor gender.  Many of the women are blamed for what has been done to them, alienated by their families, paranoid for fears of contracting HIV and never being eligible for marriage.

Grim Statistics

• 200, 000 Women and girls have been raped in Eastern Congo since 1998
• Majority of those who are raped are adolescent girls, 12-14 years old
• In the Congo’s South Kivu province estimated 40 women are raped in the region every day
• In May the United Nations handed over the names of 5 top military officers accused of rape  
• The non-governmental organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) reported that 75% of all rape cases it dealt with worldwide were in the eastern Congo
• Census by UNICEF and related medical centres reported treatment of 18, 505 people for sexual violence in the first 10 months of 2008- 30% of whom were children
• Reported cases represent only a fraction of the total- vast number goes unreported
• Of the women who reported to hospitals after being raped, 61 percent came from camps for people displaced by violence.
• of 749 women were treated for rape at hospitals supported by Caritas Most of the women (87 percent) were raped during the day. The rest were raped at night.
• Panzi Hospital in Eastern Congo- The oldest rape victim being 75 years old and the youngest 3 years old
• Dr. Mukwege in Eastern Congo says he's doing about five surgeries a day. His patients often have had objects inserted into their vaginas, like broken bottles, bayonets. Some women have even been shot between the legs by their rapists.
• U.N. report, the number of “excess deaths” in Congo directly attributable to the Rwandan and Ugandan occupation can be estimated at between 3 million and 3.5 million. This conflict has been the deadliest since World War II.
• In some areas of Congo, investigations by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) have shown that one in four children dies before the age of 5,- these areas have the highest mortality rates in the world
• A network of eight local nongovernmental organizations, supported by the International Rescue Committee, each month takes in nearly 1,000 women, girls, and boys who have been raped in North and South Kivu
• About a fifth of the 250 beds in Panzi hospital are occupied by women who undergo as many as six operations to repair the sexual injuries to their bodies, or be treated for mutilation and other wounds.
  • In this hospital, the sexually assaulted victims are two or three times as numerous as civilians treated for gunshot wounds, and four or five times as numerous as wounded soldiers.

Current Developments

The Congolese government show little will and capability to deal with the bulk of rape cases that constantly keep presenting themselves. The true enforcement for the punishment of these rape crimes, which are also deemed as crimes against humanity would require a re organization in The Congolese justice system.  It would require “ increased civilian and military criminal penalties for sexual crimes, the strengthening of arrest, detention and prosecution capabilities, a system that the Congolese people trust staffed by competent, trained and air-minded people” (Grignon).  This however, is an implausible request which would demand a few decades of reconstruction.  Here are some of the steps towards progress that have been attempted:

• In 2006 Congo’s parliament passed a law criminalizing rape, with penalties ranging from 5-20 years. Penalties are doubled under different circumstances such as gang rape and if the rapist is a public official
• The army has started a zero tolerance campaign in which commanders have emphasized to troops that they must respect human rights and protect civilians from harm
• The United Nations maintains in Congo its largest peacekeeping force anywhere in the world
• United Nations Resolution 1820 passed in 2008 demands “the immediate and complete cessation by all parties to armed conflict of all acts of sexual violence against civilians-aiming to reduce sexual violence and bringing its perpetrators to book”

Source:http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~hargr22b/classweb/worldpolitics/worldpolitics.html