Haddar Ben-Shimon's List: Congo PBL Group 67

• In eastern Congo, more than 15,000 women were raped last year. Assaults included a four-day mass rape by rebel groups of more than 300 women.
• To understand the scope and brutality of the sexual violence, consider this: Over a period of four days in August, a coalition of rebel groups systematically raped more than 300 hundred women in the remote area of Walikale—an incident that probably constitutes the largest mass rape in recent Congolese history.
• Over the past years, the Congolese conflict, which for many years eluded much international attention due to its complexity and remoteness, has increasingly hit the headlines for its extreme viciousness, especially when it comes to  sexual violence.
• it’s important to avoid reducing the conflict to the spectacle of savage rebels and innocent victims. The violence is far from wanton and senseless but has taken place against the backdrop of a brutal civil war in the eastern Kivus region. In this context, civilians are seen as legitimate military targets.
• This bloody conflict is fueled by a bitter competition between local and national elites over power and resources. A weak state and an abundance of mineral wealth compound the problem. Together, these factors have allowed over 20 different rebels groups to set up bases.
• Last year, after over a decade of violent antagonism, the Rwandan and Congolese governments decided to patch up their differences and launch joint military operations against the FDLR. While they managed to demobilize or kill around half of the rebels, it came at the cost of displacing a million people and killing thousands.

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• msf.ca
• What our teams notice in the villages is that people often go to traditional healers when they are sick, for example if a child has malaria, one of the most common illnesses. But traditional medicine can sometimes lead to serious complications and with patients at risk of dying especially if they cannot get to a hospital in time. So we explain to the community and to traditional healers to recognize when it is necessary to seek help and send their patients to a health centre. We also try to convince pregnant women to go to the rural health centre or a hospital to give birth because those places have a skilled birth attendant, equipment and drugs.
• Rapes often happen when people walk from their village to the market, or when they are on their way back. Armed men stop the villagers and separate them into groups – men, women, young girls. They steal their belongings and divide the women and girls between them “I like this one, you can have that one,” they often say.  Even the men and boys sometimes get raped.
• Husbands in the Congo often leave their wives when they hear that they have been raped.

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• In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the incidence of rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence is the highest in the world.
• The United Nations estimates that since armed conflict began in 1996, there have been more than 500,000 cases of rape and sexual violence

• The details of the attacks are often gruesome: women being brutally raped, beaten and sometimes killed in front of their own children.
• The civilians are copying the militias who are raping.
• Because there is impunity. They are not punished.
• Where there is the mines, there are communities which live there. But it’s not easy for them to exploit it with the presence of the communities. That’s why they use their weapons and sexual violences to intimidate the population to move from places where there are mines. Because they know that the woman is the heart of the community, so they fight on her body, by using rape.
• There is another woman who were kidnapped with her five children. She was brought in the forest, and every day, she was raped in front of her children. And when she was hungry, they killed her child, and they forced her to eat the flesh of her child. Every day, which practices they killed one of her children. And she was forced to eat the flesh of her children. She was asking to be killed, but they refused. They say we can’t give you such a good death.

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• • These every day facts are very important

• Rape has become a weapon of war in the Congolese conflict. The United Nations has named the Democratic Republic of Congo the "rape capital of the world," with 15,000 women raped in eastern Congo last year.

• Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.
• “They are done to destroy women.”
• 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country.
• According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way.
• United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance cruelty.
• Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said.
• She is also pregnant.
• 75, his youngest 3.
• attackers left behind a note in broken Swahili telling the villagers that the violence would go on as long as government troops were in the area.

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• Armed groups earn hundreds of millions of dollars per year by trading four main minerals: the ores that produce tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold. This money enables the militias to purchase large numbers of weapons and continue their campaign of brutal violence against civilians, with some of the worst abuses occurring in mining areas

• During Congo's two wars (1996-2002), independent armed groups took control of eastern Congo and continue to hold power in the area today.
• The FDLR was formed by the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide and is on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations. While the original soldiers were Rwandan exiles, most of the current FDLR soldiers have been recruited from refugee camps in eastern Congo (source). Between 6,000 and 8,000 FDLR fighters are currently estimated to operate in eastern Congo. The FDLR receives assistance and guidance from Rwandans in Europe, Africa, and the United States. Until recently, the FDLR reportedly received assistance from some Congolese government forces and coordinated military operations with the Congolese army (FARDC). Over the past year, the FDLR has reportedly intensified its recruitment campaigns and continues to terrorize civilians in eastern Congo.

• What are Armed Groups?

   

  Armed groups have the potential to employ arms in the use of force to achieve political, ideological or economic objectives. They are not within the formal military structures of States, State-alliances or intergovernmental organizations. Armed groups are not under the control of the State(s) in which they operate and can include: rebel movements, ethnic militias, and economic and military entrepreneurs.

• Solutions

   

  The U.S. can engage with local and international actors such as the U.N. and Congolese government to deal with the problems created by armed groups in eastern Congo.

   
   
  •   Expand training of combat units to protect the most vulnerable and enhance MONUSCO’s Joint Protection Teams.
   
  •   Work with the Congolese government and other regional partners to design a new counter insurgency strategy that is more focused, and a smaller force made up of elite units targeted at FDLR leadership.
   
  •   Create incentives—through the U.N.-backed “DDR” initiatives—for the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of rank-and-file combatants.
   
  •   Design a specialized demobilization and economic reintegration program for mid-level FDLR commanders. The FDLR is made up of a number of different elements, and the U.S., Rwanda, and other key actors should do much more to exploit their differences.
   
  •   Pressure the Congolese government to prosecute the worst offenders.

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• What Are Conflict Minerals?

   

  Gold, tin, tantalum, tungsten (the "3 T's"), are mined in eastern Congo and are in all consumer electronics products.
• Minerals are smuggled out of Congo through neighboring countries, then shipped to smelters around the world for refinement. Once minerals are processed in this way, it’s difficult to trace their origin. Conflict minerals easily make their way to the U.S. and all over the world in consumer products.

• Solutions

   

  Certification

   

  Just like buying organic produce, Fair Trade coffee, or not buying blood diamonds, consumers should be able to shop for conflict free electronics (read our Company Rankings). We at the Enough Project believe the Congo needs a system of certification, in addition to the Dodd-Frank legislation’s tracing and auditing provision, to ensure that electronics products are not financing atrocities in eastern Congo.

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• The conflict between rebel and government forces has resulted in the torture, mass rape, and forced displacement of civilians, and about 5.4 million civilian deaths since 1996, making the conflict in the DRC the deadliest since World War II. The rebel forces (Forces Democratique de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR)), the Congolese Army (FARDC), and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) are all threats to civilians in the DRC, as atrocities are committed by each group. According to STAND, a Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, although the violence in the DRC has not been labeled “genocide,” “it is characterized by intentional targeting of non-combatant civilians on an almost unparalleled scale.” The presence of UN peacekeepers in the region has not brought an end to the devastation.