Margot Wallström, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, warns that hundreds of women who were raped by rebels in Walikale, DRC, earlier this year are now facing the same abuse from the country's army, according to the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO).
After visiting the DRC earlier this month, Wallström petitioned the Security Council to increase MONUSCO's funding to support the stabilizing mission in carrying out its mandate. She has also called for mass rapists to be excluded from amnesty provisions and post-conflict promotions in order to enforce more serious consequences that appropriately recognize the gravity of the offense. "In places where sexual violence has been used as a tactic of war," she stated, "the consequences will spill over into peace. Where sexual violence has been a way of war, it can destroy a way of life."
Compiled from: Victims of Mass Rebel Rape May Face Same Abuse from DR Congo Army, WUNRN, (13 October 2010)