Stopping Sexual Violence in the Congo

Canada can lead the international community in taking firm action to stop the mass rapes that continue unabated in the DRC.

Since 1998, rebels, Congolese soldiers, policemen, and even UN peacekeepers have committed hundreds of thousands of acts of sexual violence against women, men and children in the Congo.

The world recently learned of more than 500 previously unreported rapes in the North and South Kivu regions of the eastern Congo. The rapists know they can act with impunity – the nation’s broken and corrupt governmental institutions will not bring them to justice. On top of this, the victims rarely receive medical care for the horrible injuries and diseases – including traumatic fistulas and HIV – that they suffer from as a result of the rapes.

President Kabila’s government has turned a blind eye to these grotesque abuses, and the UN’s response has been pathetic. The international community cannot continue to ignore the agony of the people living in the eastern Congo, but must strengthen the International Criminal Court’s powers to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators of these abuses in a rapid and effective manner. The commanders of MONUC, under whose watch these human rights violations have occurred, should be fired and replaced by new leaders with the mandate and resources to stop the ongoing mass murders, torture, and rape of defenceless civilians.

More than six million people have been killed and millions more tortured and raped in the DRC. More than 1,000 people die in the country every day from entirely preventable and/or treatable causes. This is by far the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe, yet the international community does very little. This must stop.

The culture of impunity and the gross human rights abuses meted out against the civilian population of the eastern DRC must end. Canada was a leader in implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect as a standard that must direct the actions of the international community through the UN. Canada must now put these words into action to end the agony the people of the DRC continue to endure. We have a responsibility to protect, and this implies an obligation to act.