United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa)
4 December 2008
The number of cases of sexual violence recorded in the province of the Kasaï Occidental since the beginning of this year has risen by over 100% to 153 cases, according to the provincial direction of the International Catholic Office for Children (BICE).
According to the BICE in Kasaï Occidental, this increase not only explains itself by denunciations from the victims or their families but also by the sensitisation efforts led by civil society associations in the fight against this problem.
These statistics are only partial, as there is other data available from other institutions involved in the fight; in reality in Kasaï Occidental the number would be three to five times greater.
Besides these statistics, this year the majority of the victims are aged between13 to 17 years, with many becoming pregnant because of these acts. Contrary to the situation in a conflict zone, in Kasaï Occidental the authors of the rapes are civilians, and for the most part are neighbors or family members of the victims.
At the time of the International Day of Violence Against Women, which was celebrated on 2 December last, the "Congolese Observatory for the Defense of Human Rights" (OCDH) had denounced "the lightness with which the justice system deals with sexual violence cases."
The OCDH underlined the case in the locality of Luebo, west of Kananga city, where only seven such cases have been heard, out of the 27 recorded by the justice system. Many of these cases cannot be found, while in others cases the presumed authors of the crimes simply "escape."
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