UN admits to failures over Congo rapes

A United Nations official told the Security Council on Tuesday that U.N. peacekeepers charged with protecting civilians failed to prevent armed rebels from raping 242 victims in several eastern Congo villages five weeks ago.
"While the primary responsibility for protection of civilians lies with the state, its national army and police force, clearly we have also failed," said Atul Khare, deputy head of United Nations peacekeeping operations. "Our actions were not adequate, resulting in unacceptable brutalization of the population of the villages in the area."
Mr. Khare briefed the council in a public session after a recent fact-finding mission to the region.
Mr. Khare said when he was in Congo investigating the 242 rapes, he came across evidence of 267 additional sexual attacks in villages in North and South Kivu provinces. Ten were committed by Congolese army soldiers and the rest by rebels, he said.
The U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo, known by its acronym Monusco, has drawn criticism from human-rights groups and some governments for its failure to respond sooner to the rapes, which were carried out from July 30 to Aug. 2 by two rebel groups in the villages in mineral-rich North Kivu province.
The 242 victims were primarily women, but included a handful of men and children, Mr. Khare said.
"I feel personally guilty for the people who have suffered and I trust that all of us can do better next time," he said.
To deter more attacks, Mr. Khare called for targeted sanctions against rebel leaders. Mr. Khare also said the terrain made travel and mobile communications difficult but recommended that the U.N. increase financing to build up a cellphone network so that peacekeepers can be warned early by locals of impending attacks. He said Monusco would begin conducting evening and night patrols.
Over the past decade, more than five million people have been killed and more than 200,000 women raped, during the war between rebel groups and the government in eastern Congo, according to the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based group. The rebels are largely financed by illegal mining and use rape to intimidate local populations, the U.N. says.
To protect civilians, the U.N. has deployed the largest peacekeeping force in its history to Congo. The force, which costs more than $1 billion a year,, comprisesing nearly 20,000 troops.
Eighty peacekeepers were deployed in a base about 20 miles from the scene of the rapes, patrolling an area of about 115 square miles. Mr. Khare said U.N. humanitarian officials in the area received unconfirmed reports of a rebel attack, including a rape, in the villages on July 30.
A Monusco patrol didn't enter one of the villages until three days later, when mass rapes were under way. The troops spoke to the locals through an interpreter but departed after they saw no evidence of attacks and weren't told of anything amiss, Mr. Khare said. Three days after the sexual attacks ended the peacekeepers received reports that 15 rape victims had sought medical attention.
Roger Meece, an American diplomat who heads the U.N. mission in Congo, told reporters two weeks ago he was unaware of the rapes until Aug. 12, a full week after peacekeepers learned of them.
Margot Wallstrm, the special U.N. representative on ending conflict-zone sexual violence, said she knew nothing about the attacks until reading about them in media reports on Aug. 21.
On Tuesday Ms. Wallstrm told the Security Council that women in the villages described being hunted down by half-a-dozen rebels and gang-raped in their homes. She said rebels searched for gold in the women's genitals.
"The women of Congo are tired of wondering when their time will come to be robbed, tortured and raped," Ms. Wallstrm said. Many had concluded that being gang-raped was "normal for a woman," she said.(WSJ)