The following article from a refugee magazine is notable for the fact that it can't actually prove anything. In fact it says clearly that it doesn't know the real facts but still makes strong assertions.

Please note the highlights which all deal with speculation or what 'must be true'.

This style is far too common! It seems that rape is exempt from normal rigour in proof. Yet I know the researcher who did the 2002 work and she was very very careful in what she wrote, with the result that her report was very powerful and chilling.

It reminds me of having to do an 'Orphans of AIDS project ' in Kinshasa. Even though our surveys showed that this population was NOT distinguished as a separate group by the extended families who just saw them simply as orphans, the donor insisted we had to pick out some children to fit their category. It led to quite invidious situations.

Similarly in this article we are asked to be indignant (and we would be right to be indignant) about something for the extent of which actually there is virtually no direct statistical evidence.

I know the area; I know it to be true - rape is rampant - but are we well-served by such vagueness? It would not be tolerated in any other field.

We should also naturally be suspicious of round figures like 100,000. How can anyone prove or disprove this? Out of how many women?

What does not fit very well with what I know is the unproved assertion that rape has become an weapon in ethnic war. In Ituri, they killed pregnant women and unborn babies on ethnic grounds, but did they rape also on those grounds, or just because they were armed men out of control, as in any war?

And has anyone at all done the follow up to find out if there has been an HIV epidemic? There has been enough time to do it.


"SHEER BRUTALITY

HIV may compound the suffering of women raped in the eastern DRC.

Over the past decade, fighters from many different groups have ranged up and down the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo slaughtering people, robbing and destroying property – and also raping tens of thousands of women and girls. Several experts involved with the issue in eastern DRC believe the true number of rape victims in the last ten year to be well over 100,000. Many, including Beatrice M (See previous interview) have been kept as sex slaves for weeks or months on end.

The aim – at least in part – seemed to be to use women as a means to of helping to damage or destroy the entire communities because of their ethnic, tribal or political affiliation: once again – as in Bosnia and Darfur – rape has been used consciously, and with the utmost callousness, as a weapon of war [Conclusion not justified by the evidence given]. A petrified population, deserted villages and what will most probably turn out to be a severe HIV epidemic.

“The conflict itself has made it virtually impossible to obtain reliable statistics,” said Paul De lay, Director of the UNAIDS Evaluation Division, Nevertheless, in 2002, Human Rights Watch estimated that as many as 60 per cent of the armed men roaming the countryside raping, torturing and mutilating women and girls could be HIV- positive, and noted that almost none of the women had access to services and care.

Now, however, medical workers are beginning to get to areas that have been long cut off by conflict. Their findings are chilling.

The NGO Global Rights claimed that just in the province of South Kivu, some 42,000 women were treated in health clinics for “serious sexual assaults” in 2005 alone. Doctors and Women’s groups report that the assaults are notable not only in their scale, but also for their sheer brutality.

One survivor told NGO, Human Rescue: “Sometimes the rapes are so violent that the woman dies… We can be attacked anywhere and at anytime of day or night: in the fields, at the market, on the way to collect water, in our houses… They are destroying us, body and soul.

Aware that they may never reach the majority of the victims, UNHCR and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) have nevertheless been working together since early 2006 to provide survivors with treatment and counseling, by training health-workers how to deal with rape.

Survivors are encouraged to come forward within 72 hours so they can take a post-exposure prophylaxis against HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. However, many women continue to conceal the fact that they have been raped because they fear social ostracism.

As part of a regional initiative on AIDS, alongside the governments of Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, UNHCR has also been focusing on establishing comprehensive HIV and AIDS programmes for refugees, returnees, and internally displaced people and local communities in all six countries.

And sensitization about HIV and AIDS is also an integral part of the disarmament. Demobilization and reintegration programme that began in July 2004. The challenge is not just to raise awareness about AIDS among ex-combants, but to try to persuade them to change their sexual behavior.

Participants receive information about the virus, and how it is transmitted. They learn why fighters are a high-risk group. And they are offered voluntary testing and counseling services. But few volunteer to be tested, stoking fears that large numbers of infected demobilized militia will return to their communities and boost the epidemic even further.

....

Sarah Russell
Global Coalition on Women and AIDS.