bq. A growing body of literature suggests that the prevailing journalistic and activist accounts of the nature of rape in the Congo are often incomplete, and, in many cases, simply wrong. While no one disputes that armed men engage in rape against civilian populations, the story of who is raping whom turns out to be significantly more complicated than the popular narrative suggests.
That is political scientist Laura Seay, writing at the Atlantic. This was very interesting:
bq. Rapes by non-military actors account for a large percentage of rape cases in the 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, approximately 40 percent of rapes were committed by civilians, they found. The AJPH study found that 22.5 percent of rapes in their study sample were perpetrated by husbands and other intimate partners, not by soldiers sweeping through a village.
Here is Seay’s blog, Texas in Africa.