Rape as a weapon of war: it was officially outlawed by the UN in June 2008 but it is still a daily practice in East Congo says Rwandan genocide survivor Leah Chishugi.
In the BBC discussion program Hardtalk, Leah Chishugi told horrifying stories of rape being used as a weapon of war in East Congo.
Herself a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, Leah Chishugi went to East Congo and recorded the atrocities being committed against Congolese women.
She talked to and documented many victims of rape including a 90 year-old women who could hardly walk and a three-year-old girl who had also been conceived by means of rape.
As she told The Guardian “I am not a politician but I want to let the world know what is going on. I believe that Kagame, [Joseph] Kabila [the Congolese president] and [Laurent] Nkunda [the Tutsi rebel leader] all know exactly what is going on.”
And very disturbing, too, was her conclusion that the UN was not doing anything to protect these women. In the villages and towns Leah Chishugi visited, she saw the odd UN car, but no real practical effort on the ground.
UN action
So what has the UN been doing against this violence against women?
In June 2008 the UN Security Council voted unanimously for a resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war, as the BBC reports.
Even though UN Resolution 1820 is an unprecedented step, it is hard to see how this political step translates into action on the ground.
When reportedly 70% of women in many villages in Congo have been raped, words on paper mean very little to both the victims of rape and their families and communities.
New outrage is voiced over how Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe is ruling the country amidst the severest cholera outbreak Zimbabwe has known in ten years.
According to the UN on 5 December, there have been 589 reported deaths so far and the number of supposed cases of cholera has climbed to 14,000.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown now joins ranks with Condoleezza Rice and Archbishop Tutu in calling upon the international community to act.
The BBC reports the Prime Minister stating that this is now an international crisis where there “is no state capable or willing of protecting its people”.
In the words of the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon: “The UN and its relief partners must respond quickly to address the needs of Zimbabweans and prevent the cholera epidemic from spreading.”
After Humanitarian Aid
Naturally focus is given to the immediate humanitarian crisis at hand but there is, as of yet, no consensus on further action on President Mugabe’s rule of Zimbabwe.
Reuters reports on the European Union’s intentions to impose more sanctions on the government of Zimbabwe.
But as past sanctions have done little to remedy the political and economic state of affairs in Zimbabwe, imposing new sanctions might only make the situation worse.
Perhaps it is now time to finally pull out, dust off and give some real teeth to the 2005 notion of ‘The Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P).
As it states on the R2P website: “In 2005, world leaders agreed, for the first time, that states have a primary responsibility to protect their own populations and that the international community has a responsibility to act when these governments fail to protect the most vulnerable among us.”
The international community is acting by giving much-needed humanitarian aid to the people of Zimbabwe.
But in the true spirit of the R2P statement; humanitarian aid is just not enough.
Posted by ahsvaniwaarden 
Posted by ahsvaniwaarden 