U.N. Seeks Congo Rapists; Congolese Urges War's End

By Amy Lieberman

WeNews correspondent

Thursday, September 30, 2010

The U.N.'s Wallstrom is visiting the DRC two months after armed soldiers gang raped hundreds of women. While she's there, focused on identifying perpetrators, a leading women's activist from Goma is in the U.S. pressing a different strategy.

Justine Masika Bihamba (left) and Donatella Rostanga deliver a briefing at the U.N. Church Center on Sept. 28, 2010. UNITED NATIONS (WOMENSENEWS)--Margot Wallstrom, the U.N.'s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, flew to the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday for a weeklong visit to a region where women suffered mass rape attacks two months ago.

The same day, Justine Masika Bihamba, a leading Congolese anti-rape activist, toured New York and U.N. offices with a plan for preventing rapes in her war-torn country.

The two criss-crossed in more ways than who was going to and coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

On the eve of Wallstrom's visit to meet with several hundred women who were raped between the July 30 and Aug. 3 attacks, she told a press gathering "we still have a window of opportunity to apprehend perpetrators." She spoke on Monday following a U.N. Human Rights Council hearing in Geneva.

Safety activists have long said that a culture of impunity surrounds sexual violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In the hearing, Wallstrom singled out names of perpetrators from the Mai-Mai to the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda rebel groups.

"We need high-profile cases where somebody is actually caught for doing this, where somebody is punished for doing this, and that sends a strong message," Wallstrom said at the Geneva press conference following the hearing.

But Bihamba, the visiting Congolese activist, doesn't think focusing on apprehending perpetrators will go far enough to prevent the problem.

"Wallstrom seems very committed, but the problem is that she deals more with the consequences of rape than with the causes," said Bihamba, founder of the Synergy of Women for the Victims of Sexual Violence, a coalition of 34 women's organizations in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. She spoke through a French translator in an in-person New York interview.

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