DRC: Kinshasa under United Nations criticism

By on September 20, 2010
The Security Council has openly blamed the government of the DRC and demanded that all the persons guilty of rape, in the provinces of North and South Kivu, must be arrested without delay and be prosecuted for violations of human rights. The UN said that more than 500 women and children were raped in the east during the summer. The UN has blamed all these sex crimes being committed by the Mai-Mai militia and the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR). On September 7, a senior UN official had acknowledged that the presence of peacekeepers in the country had been unable to stop the systematic rape. The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been torn by a conflict between rebel groups competing for mineral resources of the region and terrorising the population. The armed groups use rape as a weapon of war. According to the UN, 15 000 sexual assaults were committed in the DRC in 2008 and 2009. In reaction, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has denounced critics of the Security Council about the mass rape committed in the Eastern country, stating that Kinshasa did wait for the United Nations critics to respond to the violations and exercise its responsibilities. The Congolese military units have been deployed in Kivu to hunt down Rwandan Hutu FDLR rebels and Congolese Mai Mai Cheka militia, responsible of a mass rape in the town of Luvungi.

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