Thaindian News

UNITED NATIONS (BNO NEWS) – The United Nations (UN) announced Thursday a week-long visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where both rebels and the national army have been accused of mass rape.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Margot Wallström is on her first tour since her appointment in February, making her way through the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu where more than 8,000 women were raped by warring factions in 2009, according to UN Population Fund.

Wallström mentioned that sexual violence is not exclusively an issue in Africa and even less so in Congo, as she expressed the necessity to fight sexual violence and find solutions. She also said, in a newspaper column in March, that sexual violence during conflicts was all too often downplayed and treated as part of local cultural traditions instead of being viewed as a war crime.

Although the mainly ethnic Hutu rebel militia, known as the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR) – who have been operating in the Kivus since the 1994 Rwandan genocide – are thought to be responsible for most of the rapes, members of the national army are also guilty of sexual abuse in North and South Kivu provinces, according to UN experts.