The Foreign Service Journal, April 2011

Continuous Conflict History shows that GBV be- comes more systemic during con- flict and can be used as a tool of war. Breakdown of the social norms that might have offered protection to women and girls in- creases the risk of multiple forms of abuse including sexual exploita- tion, domestic violence, rape and transactional sex. Often, even when the conflict ends, social, economic, physical and sex- ual violence continues against women in these unstable environments. In the resource-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo, warfare has raged off and on nearly continuously since June 1960, when the country gained independence from Belgium’s oppressive colonial rule. The current instability has its origins in 1994, when the trouble in Rwanda spilled into the eastern part of the DRC. In the wake of the Rwan- dan genocide, some two million Rwandans fled across the border, setting up refugee camps in the Congolese Kivu provinces. The ensuing turmoil, which continues to this day, is complex, multilayered and multidimen- sional. It involves international actors such as the U.N. peace- keeping force, major Western governments and other powers; regional actors, such as Angola, Zambia, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda; and local actors, such as the rebel groups and indigenous popula- tions. It is multidimensional because the conflicts concern natural resources and land tenure, and are overlaid with ethnic tensions and political rivalries. Corruption is widespread and affects government agen- cies and security forces at all levels. Alliances are ex- tremely fluid and broken weekly, depending on the opportunistic value of the agreement. As the financial benefits from some alliances dry up, the power struggle between armed groups reignites and the battle for control continues. Congo’s True Curse The result of this seemingly interminable war is more straightforward. The International Rescue Committee es- timates that from 1998 to 2007 alone, the war took more than 5.4 million lives, with the majority of the causalities a result of the indirect consequences of the war rather than battle itself. In 2005, as deaths and displacements soared, the U.N. described eastern Congo as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” There, compared with other regional conflicts, the use of violence against women as a tool of war has been more prevalent. Women and children, from three months to 81 years old, have become the voiceless victims as the num- ber of rape and sexual assaults continues to rise, and east- ern Congo has been named the “worst place in the world to be a woman.” Many point to natural resources — the DRC is Africa’s largest producer of tin ore and a significant source of coltan, a mineral used in electronics, and gold — as “Congo’s curse” because so much has been exploited and stolen, and the riches seem to continue to fuel the conflict. In this view, the inability of the government to provide ad- 24 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 1 1 F O C U S The current instability in the DRC has its origin in 1994, when the trouble in Rwanda spilled into the eastern part of the country.