AP Features, May 31st, 2007
The level of gender-based sexual violence has reached appalling levels in eastern Congo and Burundi and stronger efforts are needed to ostracize perpetrators of such crimes, the U.N. human rights chief said Thursday.
Louise Arbour, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said corrupt justice systems and national governments that take part in the corruption are to blame for high sexual violence crimes in the region.
Many women who have been victims of sexual violence told Arbour that they go back to their communities and they are teased, often by the very people who harmed them and who continue to live in the community untroubled, she said.
"I think it's important to understand that gender-based violence in that context is not just an affront to dignity or a kind of form of indecency, it is a form of torture and absolute brutal physical and mental assault on the victims," she told a U.N. press briefing following her two-week trip to the Congo, Burundi and Sudan's conflict-wracked Darfur region.
These sex crimes and the injuries they inflict are often extreme, Arbour told reporters after a closed briefing the U.N. Security Council on her trip.
A common one is fistula, a hole in the birth canal "caused by brutal forms of rape, gang rape, insertion of objects" and also when poor women have no assistance at childbirth," she said.
Women with fistula experience chronic incontinence and often give birth to a stillborn baby. Untreated, fistula can also lead to chronic medical problems, including ulcerations, kidney disease, and nerve damage in the legs.
Arbour said she met many women who have lived with this condition untreated for more than 40 years.
"Doctors are looking at very complicated fistula surgery to repair rips between bladder systems, intestinal systems and reproductive organs," Arbour said.
She also saw pregnant 12-year-olds who had been raped and had to get Caesarean sections.
In Kisangani, a town Arbour visited deep in Congo's interior, 60 percent of the sexual violence victims brought to the hospitals were between the ages of 11 and 17, she said.
The exact number of rapes in Congo is not known. Hospital officials report treating huge numbers of women who have been victims of sex crimes, particularly in eastern Congo where militia fighters and Congolese soldiers target civilians.
"The level of sexual violence and its intensity is surprising and appalling," Arbour said about the places she visited in eastern Congo and Burundi.
Despite the modest resources in the region, she said efforts to give medical aid to victims of sexual violence are excellent.
"But what is very severely lacking is the same kind of effort targeting perpetrators and ensuring that they are brought to account," she said.
Some non-governmental organizations try to lead the victims through legal processes, but they face a justice system that Arbour said "is very inadequate and in lots of cases up for sale."
"There's a lot of corruption and interfering by authorities, and this is described to me, not by the victims, but by a lot of the magistrates themselves," she said.
Most often, victims have to pay to go to court, and in many cases out-of-court settlements are made by families so that no charges are brought to the police, she said. In some settlements, the perpetrator gives the victim's family a goat.
"In Burundi, there is also a lot of deficit in the capacity or willingness of the justice system to address these issues," Arbour said.
The U.N. missions to Congo and Burundi were called but said no one was available to comment on Arbour's findings.
Arbour proposed a dual strategy to deal with sex crimes: continue helping victims while ostracizing the perpetrators.
"First, the national authorities have to speak up, and with the limited means at their disposal, they have to conduct investigations, they have to agree not to be bound by these informal reparation initiatives and still pursue perpetrators," Arbour said. After Thursday's meeting, the Security Council issued a statement urging Burundi's government to "step up its efforts to combat impunity and to promote and protect human rights, paying in this context particular attention to reducing the high level of gender-based violence and of violence against children."
