Women in Congo

As Gloria Steinem once said, "The greatest indicator of the world's stability, wealth, and safety is the status of women."

Often in the event of war, rape is a means of terrorism used against women with the ultimate goal of traumatizing them and shattering their communities. Victims are often attacked, mutilated, and then shunned - all for something they had no control over.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an estimated 48 women are raped every hour. Today in the DRC, mass rapes are not confined to war ones, but rather have become routine.

More than 20 years ago, armed Rwandan forces invaded the DRC, causing a wave of conflict in the hills of central Africa. Unfortunately many of the involved groups - tribal militias, ethnic groups, guerilla units, armed forces- have used brutal rape of civilians as a fear tactic. And yet, despite the end of the war in 2003, the rapes continue. Conflict is also still high, despite the end many smaller village militia groups still fight. Outsiders come in and rape the women to instill fear.

While no one disputes that armed men engage in rape against civilian populations, the story of who is raping who turns out to be significantly more nuanced

than the popular narrative suggests. DRC. A 2010 Oxfam/Harvard Humanitarian initiative study found a huge increase in the number of civilian-perpetrated rapes between 2004 and 2008. By 2008, around 40% of rapes were committed by civilians, and many of them were perpetrated by husbands or intimate partners.

Though I do not deny that the rape rate in the DRC is indeed concerning, we also cannot it also makes it easier for policymakers to dismiss the Congolese crisis as savagery rather than as the product of a political crisis amid state failure.

It is only through adopting a more balanced understanding of the Congo's political, economic, and humanitarian challenges that we can be in a position to undertake a far more daunting, and more important, challenge than studying DRC sexual violence: doing something to stop it.