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Rabat – Women and girls in Africa’s “forgotten conflicts,” had little to celebrate on International Women’s Day as conflict rages on in DR Congo and Sudan. With the devastating ongoing onslaught against civilians in Gaza, the international media has had little time for the unfortunate victims of war in Sudan and DR Congo, despite the horrifying toll it has had.
In Sudan, gender-based violence is being used as a weapon of war, with the female population of entire villages subjected to rape by militias with genocidal intent.
On March 1, the UN warned off the prolific nature of rape deployed by armed forces and paramilitaries in Sudan. “Sexual violence as a weapon of war, including rape, has been a defining – and despicable – characteristic of this crisis since the beginning,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday.
The conflict between the national army and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has resulted in a chaotic orgy of violence that is playing out with little attention from the international community. “With more than eight million forced to flee within Sudan and to neighbouring countries, this crisis is upending the country and profoundly threatening peace, security and humanitarian conditions throughout the entire region,” Turk told the UN council.
Even while the conflict in Sudan has raged on with little attention from international leaders, the conflict in DR Congo is even more jarring, as it is being treated as “just another day in the Congo,” by much of the international media.
The already devastating conflict in the country’s eastern provinces has escalated further in the past month, as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned on March 6. The introduction of heavy weaponry, and its use against civilians, marks another horrific chapter in the unreported calamity unfolding in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The ICRC highlighted that “With the latest upsurge in hostilities since early February, hundreds of badly injured civilians, many of them women and children, have been streaming into healthcare facilities in North Kivu – 40 percent of them victims of shelling or other heavy weapons used in densely populated urban areas.”
The Congolese conflict with M23 Tutsi rebels has had a disproportionate effect on women and girls, who face the constant threat of sexual violence even in refugee camps. This comes after years of brutal attacks against civilians, often seeing entire villages murdered or raped.
On December 1, 2023, Amnesty International highlighted the anniversary of the 2022 attack on the village of Kishishe, where rebels killed up to 131 people according to the UN, with at least 66 women and girls becoming the victims of rape, including gang rape.
Even as the two “forgotten” conflicts in Africa rage on, the lack of urgency and attention displayed by the international community provides little hope to the unfortunate victims of conflict.
