The InterDependent

"A dead rat is worth more than the body of a woman,” was how Margot Wallstrom, the United Nations envoy on sexual abuse, began her address to the Security Council on Oct. 14, quoting a rape victim. More than 300 women, girls and boys were assaulted over three days this summer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The shocking total estimate is 15,000 rapes in the eastern regions over the last year, Roger Meece, the head of the UN Mission in Congo (called Monusco), told the UN Security Council a day later.

Marie Frechon/UN Photo

A South African member of the UN's peacekeeping mission in Congo, working in North Kivu province.

Meece said that peacekeepers would increase their presence in the east but they could not protect everyone without more troops as well as more resources to help equip and train the Congolese army. Ironically, the number of UN troops in Congo is being reduced by 1,000 to 17,000 at the request of the government in Kinshasa, a move one UN official called insane.

At least 303 civilians, including 235 women, 13 men, 52 girls and 3 boys, were gang-raped and tortured in 13 villages in the Walikale area in North Kivu, an eastern province, from July 30 to Aug. 3. The rapes have been blamed on Rwandan Hutu rebels from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, and factions of the Mai Mai clan. The two militia were presumably punishing villagers for cooperating with the Congolese security forces, UN officials said.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Congo knew that the FDLR and the Mai Mai had taken over the area, but it was unaware of the scale of the rapes until after the perpetrators left. There is also no cellphone coverage in the area, so the mission is trying to set up ham radios instead. It has also established more bases for 700 soldiers in the Walikale region and carrying out night patrols.

Why was this not done sooner? And do UN officers have proper guidance on how to handle these situations?

For one, Meece, a retired American diplomat, said that armed groups are often intermixed with the civilian population in an area larger than Afghanistan and that it was “not possible for Monusco to ensure full protection for all civilians.”

The primary responsibility, he said, rested with the Congolese security forces, which in theory are a partner of the UN operation. But the Congolese Army often takes unilateral action and considers Monusco “an obstacle to be avoided,” Meece said.

Many of the government troops are former members of the rebel group National Defense of the People, which had been led by Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Meece said that the UN operation had “no contact or dealings with him.”

Devra Berkowitz/UN Photo

Roger Meece, the head of the UN mission in Congo, speaking at the Security Council on Oct. 15.

But according to Human Rights Watch, Bosco remains in the army as a general, along with others suspected of war crimes.
Wallstrom told the Security Council that government troops recently were reported to be raping and pillaging in the same Walikale region where the previous atrocities occurred. Meece said he had no details on the allegations, but that the abuses may have occurred during “unilateral” operations by the army, which, along with rebel groups, has been accused of plundering minerals, one root of the conflict.

Wallstrom insisted to the council that it impose sanctions on suspects and look into an international system to trace blood minerals, but so far, action has been limited. She said the arrests of two rebel commanders by UN peacekeepers and in France gave victims “a glimmer of hope.”

“The possibility that the same communities that were brutalized in July and August … are now also suffering at the hands of the FARDC troops [Congolese army] is unimaginable and unacceptable,” she said.

The UN force has always been deemed too small for the former Belgian colony of 905,567 square miles, slightly greater than the combined areas of Spain, France, Germany, Sweden and Norway, with absurdly drawn borders. Even if the force were functioning at its best, it can’t replace a viable government, which is situated in the far west of Congo and is still fragile seven years after the 1998-2003 war, which killed more than five million people.