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Dem. Rep. Congo: Meeting for Rape Victims. Rape victims
who have been successfully reintegrated into their communities assemble in a
"peace hut" near Walungu, South Kivu in DRC. USAID-supported health
programs have assisted rape victims with counseling, training, employment, and
safe living environments. (Photo taken 2001 during the
visit of US Rep. Frank Wolf.)
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Posted by Kimmy Sophia Brown
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Part of our mission at the Significato Journal is to
highlight and support causes around the world that we feel are important. Rape
is an unpleasant topic but it is happening in certain parts of the world at an
alarming rate. Rape is a weapon of war and a weapon of violence. In fact, rape
is no longer a by-product of war, it is an intentional action carried out to
terrorize and demoralize the enemy. Women, children and even men in some cases,
are targets. Even if the victims receive medical and/or psychological
treatment, the likelihood that they are attacked again remains high unless the
perpetrators are stopped and brought to justice, or their mindset changes,
which is less probable. For regions to defeat this problem, tremendous
resources are needed.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and other
regions, (such as during the Bosnian war in the 1990s), women and children have
been subjected to repeated attacks. It is not only psychologically scarring but
causes horrific physical damage, spreads disease and in some cases causes
unwanted pregnancies.
Getting treatment to the victims is one serious issue,
because victims feel shame and do not want to tell anyone what happened to
them. In some cultures, an added outrage is that so-called “defiled” women, are
sometimes shunned by their husbands.
Below are several charities that are involved with raising
public awareness about rape and giving treatment to rape victims.
Unicef:
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/drcongo_43541.html
The link above is an article highlighting Unicef’s
partnership with playwright, Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues. She
launched the V-Day campaign, (V for Victory), (http://www.vday.org/home), to
raise funds (over fifty million dollars to date) for shelters, medical
treatment and public education about rape. Here’s an excerpt from the article, ‘Stop
Rape Now’ by Rachel Bonham Carter, about a Unicef 2007 panel discussion:
“What is
it about women getting raped that isn’t grabbing people’s imagination, isn’t seizing people’s conscience or
isn’t getting people to stand up?” asked writer and activist Eve
Ensler, creator of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ and V-Day, a global movement to
end violence against women and girls.
“Part of
it, I think, is that rape is so institutional at this point,” she added. “It’s
so ordinary and people just
expect it to happen.”
Ms.
Ensler read an essay she had written in 1994 in response to news of the
atrocities committed at ‘sex camps’ in
Yugoslavia during the Bosnian war. She appealed to “the powers that be” to
move away from bureaucratic terms and focus on the individual stories of the victims.
Here are other resources to find out more about how you
can help:
‘Stop Rape Now’: UN agencies against sexual violence as a
tactic of war:
http://www.stoprapenow.org/
World Health Organization, Sexual Violence Research
Initiative:
http://www.svri.org/
Doctors Without Borders:
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=1836
The link above is an article about what they are doing to help rape victims in
the Congo.
Image(s) from Wikimedia Commons
