In June 2008 the United Nations officially recognised rape and sexual violence as a weapon used by armies against civilians. The Security Council voted unanimously that sexual violence was "a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in and forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group." For the women of the Congo and Bosnia the legacy of rape as a weapon of war, past and present, continues to define their lives.
In the Eastern provinces of...
more »In June 2008 the United Nations officially recognised rape and sexual violence as a weapon used by armies against civilians. The Security Council voted unanimously that sexual violence was "a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in and forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group." For the women of the Congo and Bosnia the legacy of rape as a weapon of war, past and present, continues to define their lives.
In the Eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where an estimated 250,000 women have been raped in the last decade, thousands of rapes are committed each month and it is now so commonplace it barely attracts the attention of the authorities. Sexual violence is so widespread that the medical aid charity, Medecins sans Frontieres, says that 75% of all the rape cases it deals with worldwide are in eastern Congo. Darfur is a distant second.
Fifteen years after the civil war in Bosnia ended, up to 50,000 women, raped and brutalised by soldiers during the fighting, still await justice in the courts. Many of the victims are living in the same communities as the men who attacked them. Now, as the tiny Balkan nation prepares to take back responsibility for prosecuting war crimes from an International Court in the Hague, a group of Bosnian rape victims are making a stand against their attackers, and, amidst growing frustration with the legal system, hunting the perpetrators down themselves.
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