Full report - International Alert

43 • Women’s Bodies as a Battleground: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls During the War in the Democratic Republic of Congowere subjected to. This is an unbearable situation to be in, particularly since families and communitiesvery often blame the women themselves for it. The pregnancies cause arguments between couples, andvery few husbands accept children who are not theirs. One interviewee who was in this kind ofsituation declared:“… the baby himself is innocent but my husband doesn’t even want to touch him. Hehas told me to wean the baby as soon as possible and give him to my mother to lookafter, if I want to be forgiven. The presence of the child rekindles his anger and meanshis feelings cannot be healed…”Divorce among these couples is common - 36%. The women’s immediate family, their in-laws and thewhole community regard these babies conceived through rape as an affront - a bad memory left by theattackers and above all as a future threat to the community, because, they say, these children resembletheir fathers. One woman heard someone saying about her son:“… it’s a little snake in the grass, sooner or later it will bite…”One girl from Shabunda who, together with her mother, had spent two years as a sex slave in a Maï Maïcamp and had given birth to a child before being freed, said:“… when we returned, we were well received by our family, but the neighbours sneeredat us. The presence of this child in the family is not accepted. My uncles were talkingamong themselves saying that this is a Maï Maï child, unruly and brutal like its father.The child is almost naked, like the Maï Maï were at the start, when their movementwas formed.”These children are therefore subject to terrible social pressure. They are commonly referred to as “mutotowa haramu,” 57 Interahamwe or Maï Maï – depending on which group the man or men who raped theirmothers belonged to.Women who are forced to divorce after being raped have little chance of remarrying. The same goes forunmarried girls, who not only lose their fiancés, if they have one, but also subsequently have enormousdifficulty in finding another partner. Often the husbands’ families adopt a very hard attitude towards theirdaughters-in-law or sisters-in-law who have been raped, particularly in cases where the husband wasmurdered during the attack. These women are then held responsible for the loss of a member of the family.Many of the women who are raped end up losing all confidence and self-esteem. Some fall intoprostitution. Others have broken away from their community to find refuge in places where they cannotbe identified. In Bushwira and Kabare, for example, almost all the women who became pregnant as aresult of rape had left home to lose themselves in the anonymity of urban centres such as Uvira, Bukavuor Goma.Unfortunately, stigmatisation encourages a culture of silence. Women opt to conceal what has happenedto them rather than face the censure of their family and community. Among Pygmy women, who wereraped en masse around the area of the Kahuzi-Biega national park, only 36% dared to inform theirspouses; 9% told no one about what had happened to them, and the others told only a member of theirfamily: sister, mother, brother or father. Out of the husbands who were told, 47% reacted very badly,becoming suspicious of their wives and 26% showed compassion, supported their wives and shared theirsecret. At Fizi, 63% of the women interviewed had never told anybody.Sexual violence perpetrated against women has led to dysfunction within the family unit, which in somecases is no longer in a position to play the role of guardian of moral and ethical values. Children andyoung people who witnessed the rape of their mother or sister, or who were forced to commit incest have57.Bastard in Kiswahili.