Women in Conflict

I have come to realization lately that I am a numbers person. In many aspects of my life, I realize that it is numbers that really affect me. This might explain why I am most passionate about human rights issues as they relate to conflict situations. When you hear that 800,000 people were killed during the genocide in Rwanda or 400,000 killed and 2.5 million have been displaced due to the genocide in Darfur, it shocks my conscience.

When I read the October 7th article in the NY Times about a "rape epidemic" in Eastern Congo, again is was the sheer numbers that moved me.

According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country.

[Edit]

Malteser International, a European aid organization that runs health clinics in eastern Congo, estimates that it will treat 8,000 sexual violence cases this year, compared with 6,338 last year. The organization said that in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized.

The article goes on to describe hospitals crowded with victims of rape, of doctors performing 6 surgeries per day for victims of rape, and sending women home early because more victims show up every day.

Don't worry, I am not a robot. What affects me about the numbers is knowing that for each person represented in those numbers, there is one story of terror and unimaginable pain. The NY Times article linked to above gives some stories from the victims. The true horror is knowing that there were 27,000 such stories in South Kivu Province, and any one of those should make us rise up and do what it takes to prevent any more.

The truth though is that while these numbers are very shocking, it is not the only place this is happening. Conflict zones in Columbia and Darfur and neighboring Chad are dealing with this. And Sierra Leone, Uganda, and the former Yugoslavia were witness to it (Amnesty International has a good web page on the issue).