DRC: Sexual abuse a ‘cancer’, says Egeland
NEW YORK, 17 September 2006 (IRIN) - Widespread rape and a culture of impunity in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are undermining the country’s progress, Jan Egeland, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, has told the UN Security Council.
“Sexual abuse has become a cancer in Congolese society that seems to be out of control,” Egeland said as he recounted his recent trip to the DRC, where, he said, nearly all women he spoke to had been raped.
“There is not one example, but thousands of examples,” said Egeland later, telling reporters how some women had been paralysed in the arms after weeks of being tied to beds and repeatedly raped by Congolese government soldiers or militia groups.
Four million people - the equivalent of six Rwandan genocides - have died over the past eight years from war and preventable disease, Egeland told the council. “The DRC has seen the worst haemorrhage of human life in this generation.”
Egeland said he brought up the issue of rape when he met DRC President Joseph Kabila, who said it was hard to act when there was no justice system in DRC and only a transitional government. “What I said to him is that it takes five minutes to fire a general and two minutes to fire a colonel, and it takes just minutes to fire public employees who are found red-handedly abusing civilians.”
Impunity from justice has crippled the DRC, said Egeland, as too few government officials are prosecuted for rape and other crimes. Egeland called on the Security Council and other member states “to exert more forceful pressure on the FARDC [Congolese national army] to end this pattern of abuse and violence against civilians.”
This was precisely the reason there needed to be more non-governmental organisations involved in helping people, yet a number of organisations had indicated that their funding for the DRC would be cut in 2007 as so far, general elections in the DRC had gone reasonably well. “It’s precisely the wrong signal,” said Egeland. “The conclusion of the elections is the beginning of the rebuilding process, not its end.”
Egeland said he planned to reinforce his message to Kabila. “I am writing a follow up letter in effect documenting the abuse that has happened at the hands of government forces.”
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