Violence against women - rape, torture, and mutilation - is all too common in the ethnic conflict raging in eastern DRC. As Hyun-Sung Khang reports, this brutal weapon of war is destroying the region's social structures as well as its ability to provide for itself.

Bukavu, June 23 - Wherever there is war, rape has always existed, but the scale and systematic nature of violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo's long-running ethnic conflict has transformed it into a weapon of war.

In the chronically unstable northeast of the country, huge numbers of women have been raped by militia seeking to establish their military authority over the region. It is used to terrorise, humiliate and punish women for their real or supposed support for opposing forces.

Women can't go into the fields to cultivate their produce because they fear being abducted and raped. This is having a huge impact on food stability
Jean-Charles Dei, WFP coordinator in eastern Congo

Twelve-year-old Kalvandu Patricia Riziki is just one of the victims.

"While running an errand for my sister last year, six soldiers came up to me and told me to follow them," she recalls.

"I was afraid and tried to run, but they caught me and dragged me with them. Then I was told to take off my clothes. I asked them, 'why?' But they did not answer. They just tore them off."

Patricia was then raped by the six men.

"Four of them wanted to kill me, but the other two took pity on me and they let me go," Patricia said.

MARKED FOR LIFE

By many accounts, Patricia was fortunate. She was spared the torture, mutilation and acts of extraordinary brutality which are often inflicted on victims following rape. Many women are held for months by their rapists and forced to provide sexual services and domestic labour.

The victims range in age from eight to eighty and the rapes are committed by all sides in the civil conflict: from the rebel forces of the DRC who are fighting the government of President Kabila to the Mai-Mai (the armed Rwandan Hutus associated with the Rwandan genocide of 1994) to the Burundian rebels of the Forces pour la Defense de la Democratie.

The exact number of victims is unknown, but preliminary investigations by the UN and non-governmental organisations suggest the figure is in the hundreds of thousands. Many women refuse to publicly acknowledge they were attacked because of the stigma associated with being a rape victim.

Some raped women have been driven away from their homes while those who are allowed to remain are often ostracised and reviled by the rest of the family.

PROSPECT FOR A NEW FUTURE

A school programme supported by WFP is hoping to change all that. Patricia continues to live with her older sister and attends the school which helps reintegrate young rape victims into society.

Her future may be assured for now, but the scale of the violence against women is casting a shadow over the long-term stability of the country.

"The sheer number of rapes and the fear this creates compounds the disruptive effects of the war," says Jean-Charles Dei, WFP coordinator in eastern Congo.

"Women can't go into the fields to cultivate their produce because they fear being abducted and raped. This is having a huge impact on food stability because women make up 80 percent of the agricultural workforce."

Rape has not only broken up families and affected food production, it is also destroying whole communities who have been attacked by militia groups. Many rape victims now have additional mouths to feed -- babies born of the violence.

Given the prevalence of HIV-AIDS among soldiers and other combatants -- estimated by one expert at 60 percent -- the effects of this new weapon of war are likely to remain with Congo for many years to come.