Ambassador Faida Mitifu and Dr. Denis Mukwege
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC
(Photo: Alex Engwete)
In the afternoon of Thursday, June 30 (Congo’s Independence Day, coincidentally), I attended, at the Woodrow Wilson Center in DC, an event billed as “Sexual Violence and the Political and Security Implications inthe Congo” (many thanks to Dr. Lorraine Thompson for the heads-up).
The lineup of panelists was impressive: Maria Otero, Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs; Dr. Denis Mukwege aka The Angel of Bukavu, Director of the Panzi Hospital, who literally stitches the torn bodies of Congolese women victims of “gender-based violence” or “sexual violence” (I personally don’t like these official euphemisms, preferring the stronger term of “sexual terrorism”); and Mark L. Schneider, Senior Vice President of the International Crisis Group, the organization that cosponsored the event. Steve McDonald, Woodrow Wilson Center Director of the Africa Program and Project on Leadership and Building State Capacity, served as the moderator. The presence of Dr. Faida Mitifu, the irremovable Kinshasa Ambassador to Washington, was noted and saluted by the moderator, who also gave her the final word in the Q-and-Answer segment of the event.
Sexual terrorism in the Congo is a scourge with no apparent end in sight. In point of fact, the Woodrow Wilson Center took place upon the heels of yet another incident of mass rape that took place in the night of June 11 to June 12, at Nakiele, in Fizi territory, South Kivu Province. Incidentally, this is a repeat mass rape in that area, another mass rape having taken place seven months ago this year. In other words: Congolese women are sitting ducks waiting to be raped again and again.
The root cause of these mass rapes has been often rehashed over the last seven years since the official end of the war and was also noted by the panelists: “the fragility of the integration and regimentation exercise” (Jason Stearns) of former rebel groups within the Congolese armed forces (FARDC), whereby these groups retain their chain of command, the territory previously controlled by them, and continue, as argued Dr. Mukwege, to implement their carefully planned strategy of sexual terrorism as a weapon of war: creating a “space” for themselves so as to extract mineral and resources (a lebensraum, so to speak), impacting demography in the area (again, a sophisticated form of ethnic cleansing), the destruction of the social fabric (broad daylight mass collective rapes in front of victims’ relatives, etc.), weakening of the political and economic strengths of local communities.
The panelists pointed to the impressive corpus of UN Security Council resolutions providing international legal provisions for women participation in peace processes and for their protection: S/R/1325 resolution on women and peace and security (2000); as well as S/R/ 1820, a follow-up on UNSC 1325 that specifically focuses on “sexual violence” and rehearses about a half-dozen other resolutions (2008).
These resolutions often stress “the need for civilian and military leaders, consistent with the principle of command responsibility, to demonstrate commitment and political will to prevent sexual violence and to combat impunity and enforce accountability, and that inaction can send a message that the incidence of sexual violence in conflicts is tolerated” (Resolution 1960 passed in 2000).
As regards the Congolese authorities, Mark L. Schneider in no uncertain terms bemoaned the government’s “grotesque incapacity” to deal with and curb sexual terrorism. Schneider asserted that these repeat mass rapes underscore the urgency of the security sector reforms still to be undertaken in the Congo. He also urged competing donors in the DRC security sector reform to use their funds as leverage and to speak in one voice. He urged the US, for instance, to set up clear-cut “fundamental security plan benchmarks” that would determine the continuance or discontinuance of military assistance to the FARDC. In this regard, Schneider thinks that the EU approach to fund the upcoming elections “by tranches” conditioned by its benchmarks could serve as a model for the security sector reform. Incidentally, he voiced serious concerns over the presidential and parliamentary elections to be held in November of this year: a potential for renewed violence (rushed and disorganized scheduling, harassment of the opposition, etc.). He also sees the “internal process [of the Kimberly Process] falling apart,” an additional fuel to violence no doubt.
The Question-and-Answer segment was predictable: donor and NGO representatives bemoaned sexual violence while taking advantage of the talk to highlight their intervention. This made for lengthy interventions that couldn’t allow other participants, including myself, to pose their questions. And some Congolese, as per usual in this kind of venues, came up with bonkers suggestions that made the audience roar in laughter of disbelief. Consider the intervention of this Congolese member of the audience, who stood up with all dignity, then went on to suggest Undersecretary Maria Otero better tell Obama to redeploy to eastern Congo the 30,000 “marines” that are to be withdrawn from Afghanistan!
As I didn’t have the opportunity of asking my question, I put it to Mark Schneider at the close of the event: “Was setting up village armed self-defense groups and teaching weapons classes to peasant women ever considered as an alternative while a credible and vetted integrated army is being set up?”
I was surprised to hear Schneider say that this course of action was in fact considered and even started to be implemented in northern Orientale Province villages prone to LRA attacks. But it was soon discovered that those villages became likely targets of LRA attacks for weapons and ordnance resupply and campaigns of terror and destruction.
But is that reason enough to scrap such an empowering program, especially in view of the relentless predation of women in the Kivus? As I recall, in the villages of Orientale Province, the local armed self-defense groups weren’t not given weapons by the Congolese army. They made do what with machetes and obsolete hunting rifles. And possession of weapons by civilians is still punishable by the death penalty, though a moratorium on capital punishment is in effect in the DRC. Congolese women will continue to be victimized until such time as they’ll be fully armed to protect their bodies!
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(Check for the upcoming video archive of the event here.)
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