Congo: 'Rape is a combat strategy'

“Rape is not just a by-product of the conflict in Congo; it is a combat strategy systematically used to terrorize and humiliate and it cannot be tolerated to achieve a larger military goal.”

Women and girls in eastern Congo are experiencing increasingly brutal sexual assaults and the UN peacekeeping mission, mandated to protect them, is not doing an adequate job, the IRC said in a statement released yesterday.