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Congo: War Against Women: The Use of Rape as a Weapon in Congo's Civil War

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Congo: War Against Women: The Use of Rape as a Weapon in Congo's Civil War

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Cooper and a 60 Minutes team report that the most frequent targets of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are women. The war is, in fact, a war against women, and the weapon used to destroy them, their families and whole communities, is rape.
Read more at the CBS website

News

This is an excellent print edition of a segment originally aired on 60 Minutes. The article discusses how rape is being used as a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as it has similarly been employed in several conflict situations around the world over the past ten years. Rape as a weapon of war is a human rights issue that rarely receives the media and international attention it deserves. Systematic rape is used as a method of exerting the power and authority of a group over an entire community, attacking the heart of the family by publicly humiliating and brutally violating the women. Such violent rapes can lead to shunning by the community and dangerous health effects such as fistula. I hope that this kind media attention will illustrate to the international community the necessity of ending the systematic rape of women in the DRC and in other conflict situations around the world.

Fri, 01/18/2008 - 14:32 Permalink

Cooper and a 60 Minutes team report that the most frequent targets of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are women. The war is, in fact, a war against women, and the weapon used to destroy them, their families and whole communities, is rape.
Read more at the CBS website

News

This is an excellent print edition of a segment originally aired on 60 Minutes. The article discusses how rape is being used as a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as it has similarly been employed in several conflict situations around the world over the past ten years. Rape as a weapon of war is a human rights issue that rarely receives the media and international attention it deserves. Systematic rape is used as a method of exerting the power and authority of a group over an entire community, attacking the heart of the family by publicly humiliating and brutally violating the women. Such violent rapes can lead to shunning by the community and dangerous health effects such as fistula. I hope that this kind media attention will illustrate to the international community the necessity of ending the systematic rape of women in the DRC and in other conflict situations around the world.

Fri, 01/18/2008 - 14:32 Permalink