Hillary Clinton on Wednesday called for the arrest and punishment of those responsible for the widespread sexual violence that has blighted eastern Congo for more than a decade.
The US secretary of state, who is in Goma to draw world attention to what she has described as “one of mankind’s greatest atrocities”, toured the Magunga camp.
The camp houses 18Â 000 men, women and children who have been uprooted by a conflict that has raged, on and off, for the past decade. More than five million people have died.
After meeting refugees, who told her women, girls and young boys faced the threat of rape when they went into the forest to gather wood for cooking, Clinton told a press conference: “We believe there should be no impunity for the sexual and gender-based violence committed by so many … that there must be arrests and prosecutions and punishment.”
She delivered the same message to the Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, when they met in a tent at Goma, on the shore of Lake Kivu.
After the talks, Clinton said impunity for the perpetrators of sexual violence ran “counter to peace and stability for the Congolese people”.
She insisted on visiting Goma — described as the most dangerous place on earth for women and children — despite concerns over security, becoming the first US secretary of state to tour the city.
The UN has recorded at least 200Â 000 cases of sexual violence against women and girls in the region since the conflict began in 1996.
Clinton urged university students in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, to mount a campaign against such abuses.
“The entire society needs to be speaking out against this,” she said. “It should be a mark of shame anywhere, in any country.
“I hope that that will become a real cause here in Kinshasa that will sweep across the country.”
Although fighting has eased since a peace deal was reached in 2003, the army and rebel groups are still attacking villages, killing civilians and committing atrocities as they scrap over eastern Congo’s vast mineral wealth.
Clinton has been urged by human rights groups to press the government to arrest and prosecute offenders.
Members of Kabila’s armed forces are accused of taking part in the brutality, including the gang rapes of tens of thousands of girls that have led to unwanted pregnancies and serious injuries or death.
In a report published last month, Human Rights Watch called on Kabila’s government to crack down on persistent sexual violence by its own soldiers.
It said the government should vet and remove abusive officers from the army, establish a strict chain of command, improve living conditions and salaries for soldiers and strengthen the military justice system.
Human rights groups say sexual violence in the DRC has been widespread and systematic over the last 15 years, with more than a dozen armed groups using rape to terrorise, punish, and control civilians.
Because of its sheer size and geographical spread, the Congolese army is the single largest perpetrator of sexual violence.
The problem has worsened since January, when the army began a campaign against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) — Hutu militias who escaped to the DRC after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Rape cases have doubled or tripled in the north and South Kivu provinces of eastern DRC, with the perpetrators of sexual violence including the army, the FDLR, and Congolese rebel groups. – guardian.co.uk