Congo made headlines in May when a report produced alarming statistics: From 2006-07, rape occurred in Congo at a rate equal to 48 rapes an hour (420,000 rapes a year). Its sexual violence record earned Congo second place among the world’s most dangerous countries for women, and it registered as the most dangerous for sexual violence among the top countries, according to TrustLaw.
While the use of rape as a weapon of war in Congo receives significant attention, 22.5 percent of women there were the victims of sexual violence at the hands of their husbands or partners, according to the report – meaning that the problem will not disappear with the soldiers.
"Rape is becoming part of the culture," said Michael Van Rooyen, the director of Harvard's Humanitarian Initiative and one of the foremost experts on rape in the Congo.
That was one of my takeaways from my time there in 2009.
The desensitization to sexual violence that the war there has wrought was made all too clear when one husband told me why he kicked his wife out of the house after she had been raped: Other men would laugh at him for having a "defiled" wife.
