Clinton Unveils U.S. Plan to Combat Sexual Violence in Visit to Eastern Congo

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with survivors of violent sexual assault the war-ravaged eastern Congo city of Goma in the first-ever visit by a high-level American official to the area. The staggeringly high number of rapes in the DRC have doubled and in some cases tripled since the deployment of a US- and UN-backed Congolese army force in January.

The staggeringly high number of rapes in the country have doubled and in some cases tripled since the deployment of a US- and UN-backed Congolese army force in the eastern Congo this January. The United Nations estimates that at least 3,500 women and girls have been sexually brutalized this year, adding to the 200,000 cases of rape recorded in the country since 1996. In a report released Monday, a coalition of international humanitarian and human rights groups blamed the army for the recent spike in violence and warned that the UN-backed peace effort was becoming a “human tragedy.”

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South African Women Bring Rapists to Justice

When the rapist's aunt tried to settle the matter in the traditional way by offering two cows to the victim's mother, it was already too late to stop the women activists of Lusikisiki.

They had mobilized, and they were hunting for justice. They took to the streets with loudspeakers, placards and pamphlets. They went to the police station, the hospital, the courtrooms and the school.

They insisted on a police investigation, and they forced the police to bring in special rape kits to gather forensic evidence from the victim. They kept up the pressure in the courts.

It took almost two years, but the women won. On March 25, the rapist was convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison – the toughest prison sentence ever imposed for rape in this region.

South Africa's epidemic of rape, which has raged for decades with near impunity for the attackers, has finally triggered a revolt. Sexual assaults, often dismissed as a ritual of manhood, are no longer ignored so routinely. Women's groups and other activists are breaking the code of silence and insisting on police investigations and convictions.

With more than 50,000 rapes reported annually – nearly 150 every day – and many more cases that are never reported, South Africa has one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world. The incidence of rape in South Africa is the highest of any of Interpol's member states, yet only half of the rapes lead to arrests, and only 7 per cent result in convictions.

In a recent survey, 28 per cent of South African men admitted they had raped someone at least once in their lives. Almost three-quarters of them had committed their first rape before the age of 20.

Read More at the Globe and Mail

Rape a "huge problem" in Afghanistan, U.N. says

Afghan law does not protect rape victims and for too long communities have turned to traditional forms of justice which tend to criminalise victims of a profound problem, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

"This is an issue that is under-reported and to a significant extent concealed, but it is a huge problem in Afghanistan," Norah Niland, the United Nations' human rights representative in Afghanistan, told a panel of Afghan women.

A U.N. report, the full version of which is yet to be published, described rape as an everyday occurence. A summary of the report said that in northern Afghanistan, for example, more than a third of cases analysed showed rapists were directly linked to local leaders who are immune from arrest. Those likely to commit rape are close family members, men who work in prisons or orphanages and men in powerful positions either in state-run institutions or in armed groups and criminal gangs, it said.

Read More at Reuters

Quarter of men in South Africa Admit Rape, Survey Finds

One in four men in South Africa have admitted to rape and many confess to attacking more than one victim, according to a study that exposes the country's endemic culture of sexual violence.

Three out of four rapists first attacked while still in their teens, the study found. One in 20 men said they had raped a woman or girl in the last year.

South Africa is notorious for having one of the highest levels of rape in the world. Only a fraction are reported, and only a fraction of those lead to a conviction.

Of those surveyed, 28% said they had raped a woman or girl, and 3% said they had raped a man or boy. Almost half who said they had carried out a rape admitted they had done so more than once, with 73% saying they had carried out their first assault before the age of 20.

Read More At The Guardian

Tracking the War on Women in Darfur

Seated on a woven straw mat in a refugee camp in eastern Chad, Dr. Sondra Crosby of the Boston Medical Center listened with mounting distress as the women of Darfur came forward, one by one over 12 days, to tell her their stories of rape, beatings, hunger, and humiliation.

She and three other Boston-area medical specialists interviewed 88 women in November in eastern Chad. This morning they released the results in a report that offers unprecedented and disturbing details on the long-term effects of the assaults - as well as fresh evidence of the continuing violence against the women of Darfur, years after they fled the battlefield.

The 88 women interviewed reported suffering 32 rapes. Of those, 17 occurred in Darfur and 15 in Chad. Seven women reported being the victim of gang rape in Darfur, and three women reported being raped more than once. For two of them, rape in Darfur was followed by rape in Chad.

The story of one woman, in particular, transfixed Crosby, who lives in Dedham with her five adopted children and has made it her calling to investigate cases of torture and abuse.

"The woman told me . . . she was beaten on her arms so badly that she couldn't use them, and she was raped by four to six men," Crosby recalled. "She witnessed the same thing happen to others who were hiding with her. She was eight months pregnant at the time. She described giving birth to a dead baby, and how painful it was. After the rape her husband divorced her."

Read More At CommonDreams.org

Kenyan Forces Accused of Abusing Refugees