UN Admits Failure to Prevent Mass Rapes

Filed under: News, Politics, Race and Civil Rights

The sad admission from the United Nations on Tuesday that rape is being used widely as a weapon of war in Congo spotlights the worst kept secret in the world of peacekeeping.

U.N. forces there are outgunned, out manned and out of solutions to help civilians there.

The latest U.N. report on the Congo said that more than 500 systematic rapes were committed by armed fighters in eastern Congo since late July, which is twice the number previously reported.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the U.N. has accepted partial blame for not protecting citizens.

Some international observers have begun to question the usefulness of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, which cost more than $1 billion a year to operate but has provided little peace or security for the people.

For now, though, it appears the U.N. is going to dig in and try to turn around its performance there.

U.N. Assistant Secretary for Peacekeeping Atul Khare said peacekeepers will undertake more dangerous night patrols, conduct random weapons checks on communities and provide better communications equipment for U.N. personnel.

The U.N. should be applauded for keeping up the good fight, but one has to wonder if the effort in Congo can be successful.

It's bad enough that mineral wealth in the region is fueling the protracted battle between the government and rebel fighters, but both sides have abandoned customary rules of fighting and have taken to the most barbaric forms of warfare - including the rape of women, children and men in the civilian populations.

Khare was traveling in the Congo when a new batch of previously unreported rapes in the Uvira region came to light. There, 74 cases of sexual violence (with 21 against girls between the ages of 7 and 15) and six rapes against men took place.

Margot Wallstrom, another U.N. official, said that rapes in the Congo are so common "they do not trigger our most urgent interventions."

There it is: the U.N. admitted that systematic rape of civilians barely register shock or an urgent response.

How sad.

If the U.N. has come to the noble conclusion to stay in the Congo, now is the time for the words to end and the serious peacekeeping work to begin.

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