EN FRANÇAIS

By April Robinson
Governance Village Contributor

WATERLOO - After a while, the stories start to sound the same.

Another woman is savagely raped, another victim of a decade-long war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But it's important to listen to each individual voice, and offer humanitarian support in a way that fits with the woman's culture, experts said at the Centre for International Governance Innovation during a panel discussion on March 11.

"We have to let individuals explain things in their own terms," said Andrea Brown, a political science professor from Wilfrid Laurier University who researches African politics.

Sometimes that means listening to stories that don't fit with Western ideals, Brown said. For some women, the husband is "absolutely the boss."

The scale of sexual violence in DR Congo is staggering. Hundreds of thousands of women have been raped during military operations, the UN estimates.

"Rape as a weapon of war is increasing in the DRC in epidemic proportions that I don't think many of us could imagine," said Leslye Rost van Tonningen, senior emergencies program manager for CARE Canada.  

About 16 per cent of women in DR Congo say they were raped, she said. It's likely only a fraction of the real statistic because raped women are stigmatized in their communities.

"Rape in itself, it completely paralyzes and creates a victim of shame," said Alyson Rowe of War Child Canada after the panel discussion. "She is demobilized in her own person because she has no where to go to express that. To name even the physical act and the experience is using language, and words, and actions that are completely socially taboo."

Rape is the most common weapon of war in DR Congo today, Rowe says.

In the world's deadliest conflict since the Second World War, more than five million people have died, and millions more have been displaced.

It's like imagining the entire population of Ottawa leaving with only what they could carry, Rost van Tonningen said.

"But it was not all on mass," she said. "It was a million people moving through bush, back roads and staying with neighbours. And it's hard to take pictures of that."

Which could partly explain the lack of media attention, Brown said.

"It's immensely complicated," she said of the war, making it difficult for media organizations to explain in a few short paragraphs or a sound bite. "It's tragic, but it's the same story five years ago as it is this year.... This is not news."

The images of the 1994 Rwandan genocide were horrific, but they could be captured in a snapshot. In DR Congo, it's difficult to understand who the "bad guys" are, Brown said. People are massacred by the Tutsis, militia groups and rebels, while in Rwanda it was an obvious clash between the Hutu and the Tutsi ethnic groups.

And so, the war ravages on, with little notice from average North Americans.

Rebels storm villages, raping women and taking girls as sex slaves or wives. Some kidnap boys as child soldiers.

There seems to be more violence - including rape - in the remote areas where workers mine DR Congo's rich resources, including coltan, or columbite-tantalite, a highly sought-after ore used in cell phones and computer chips, Brown said.

Most of the ore is mined illegally and smuggled over the country's eastern borders by militias from neighbouring Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, the UN says. The mining activity fuels the war and violence.

And as the women continue to be brutalized, the panelists said, it seems increasingly difficult, or even impossible, to rehabilitate them.

Part of the answer is listening to personal narratives, Brown said.

And it means accepting alternative views of what it means to be a woman in DR Congo, Rowe said after the panel discussion.

"The social stigma of being female and what that means from a womanhood perspective and sexuality is so different from our Western idea."

For some women, the rape doesn't have to define them - they don't allow it to, Rost van Tonningen said. And it's important to provide help in a way that doesn't revictimize the woman. If an organization opens up a centre for rape victims, and if a woman is seen going there, she could be shunned.

It also means understanding the soldiers taking part in the rapes are often victims, too.

"This is not a situation where a man was motivated to go into soldiering out of hate," Brown said. Many see the army as a gateway to education and a desk job. Many others, including children, are conscripted and forced to commit atrocious acts.

Organizations such as CARE recognize that women experience war as a stripping of resources, Rost van Tonningen said. So a big part of helping is getting women the resources they need.

That could mean something as simple as sanitary napkins, family planning support, or providing clean materials for childbirth.

For WarChild Canada, it's about finding hope in the country's future leaders.

"We see children as the peacemakers of tomorrow," Rowe said.

WarChild has rebuilt 20 schools that were reduced to "absolute rubble." The group helps provide education but also a space for the children - who have witnessed or been victims of unthinkable atrocities - to "renew and discuss," Rowe said.

"They're active participants in their own future."

And though women continue to be exploited as objects of war - as violence in Eastern DR Congo gets worse, not better - they have an amazing sense of strength, Rost van Tonningen said.

"They can't curl up in a little ball - they have to continue. They have to continue to survive, and ensure their families will survive."

Governance Village, Academic Council on the United Nations System and the Centre for International Governance Innovation,  hosted the panel discussion: "Women and Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo" on March 11. It commemorated International Women's Week and marked the opening of a photo exhibit: "Delivering Hope" with photos by Eddie Gerald on assignment for the UN World Food Programme.