Rapists free, husbands jailed under Congo law

In this eastern province of Congo, there are rapes the government can prosecute — and many, many more it can’t.

But the “rapes” that can be prosecuted often are instances of poor grooms who have angered a young bride’s family, could not pay a dowry or have failed to cover hospital expenses for the birth of a child.

Amza Moise, 25, has served five months of a two-year prison sentence. He was convicted of rape after his 17-year-old wife had a baby and he couldn’t pay the hospital bill.

“I don’t know exactly what I am charged with,” he said inside North Kivu’s crowded central prison. “They said it was rape, but how is that possible? She was my wife. Maybe I am in jail for lack of money?”

Congolese law sets 18 as the age of consent, and judicial officials say the law is zealously enforced because the government is under international pressure to increase its rape convictions.

The result: Hundreds of impoverished youths go to prison in urban areas while thousands of violent rapists operate deep in the countryside far from the reach of the law.

“Eighty percent of the people condemned for rape married a girl under 18 years old,” said Jules Simpeze, the region’s Justice Ministry detention specialist. “Or maybe they got engaged and had a sexual relationship.

“In the central prison, out of 400 people condemned for rape, maybe 380 were arrested under such circumstances.”

Mr. Simpeze said most people in Congo — where the median age is 17.4 — do not know that 18 is the age of consent. If a man is involved with or even married to an underage girl, the authorities are obliged to prosecute him under the 2006 rape law.

 

“Most cases begin when families of girls are trying to claim dowries,” Mr. Simpeze said. “Parents originally agreed to the marriage, but when they take the [dowry] case to the police, and when authorities note that the man is living with an underage girl, it becomes another story.”

In addition, the men’s families fall deeper into poverty during their incarcerations because their wives — the so-called “victims” — depend on them for a living, Mr. Simpeze said.

About 80 percent of Congo’s 72 million people live on less than $2 a day.

Meanwhile, about 2 million girls and women have been raped in the countryside at a rate of nearly one per minute, according to a study published in the May edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

“The real perpetrators of sexual violence are not arrested,” said Mr. Simpeze. “Women get attacked when they go to the fields. If they report the rape and seek treatment and justice, then they go home. Justice cannot catch perpetrators.”

A country roughly the size of Western Europe, Congo has many areas that can be difficult to access because of thick jungles, a lack of roads and skirmishes between factions that use rape as a ruthless means to rule their regions.

Government officials say extreme poverty and the country’s weak judicial system are direct results of the wide-ranging, long-simmering conflict that has plagued this Central African nation for more than a decade.

Christian Bahati Yuma, president of the High Tribunal in the North Kivu capital of Goma, said mobile courts and education campaigns are helping local residents know and understand the law.

In Goma, the local population is largely aware of the age of consent, Mr. Yuma said.

But in a mountainous, heavily forested and lawless area, the justice system is crippled by a lack of access to battle areas. Police are undertrained and underequipped, and many victims of violent attacks deep in the countryside cannot afford to seek justice.

“In my country and all over the world, there is no justice if there is no peace,” Mr. Yuma said. “And if there is no peace, there is no durable development.”

Other officials say the law itself ignores local customs.

Francois Tuyihimbaze Rucogoza, the provincial minister of justice, said enforcement is reducing occurrences of rape in Congo by creating a deterrent, but he added that the law, as written, is flawed.

Mr. Rucogoza said officials enacted the law in reaction to inflated statistics generated by international organizations seeking to increase or maintain their funding.

Those statistics, coupled with international pressure, have left Congo with a strict law that does not always serve the people, he said. As a consequence, law officers are obliged to pack jails with poor, young husbands who didn’t know they were breaking the law.

“One of the biggest problems is the proximity of justice,” Mr. Rucogoza said. “And in many of our local cultures, sleeping with or marrying a girl under 18 is not considered a problem.”

Lawyers who defend rape suspects say some of the men they represent are guilty, but most are caught up on statutory charges or are accused of rape simply because they haven’t paid a dowry.

Lawyer Frank August Muteba-Mukute said poor families use rape accusations as an attempt to collect debts. “We have realized in recent years that some people have made rape into a business. Families accuse enemies of rape,” he said.

Men languishing in North Kivu’s central prison for rape offenses are quick to point out that the prison is operating at more than four times its capacity. Most of the men are not entirely certain why they are being punished.

Edouard Balume, 35, has served 14 months of the 15-year sentence he received after paying his wife’s family only three of the nine goats he owed for a dowry.

His wife is older than 18, but her family still accused him of rape. He said she agreed to the accusation under pressure from her brothers.

“It’s like I raped a girl because I have been living with her without paying the dowry,” he said.

-Washington Post

Millions Miss Out On Basic Education

Access to basic education in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains poor, with up to seven million children across the vast country out of school – despite a 2010 government decision to make primary education free.

DRC is still struggling to overcome the effects of wars that raged between 1996 and 2003, compounded by continuing violence in the east of the country and decades of corruption and poor governance.

The seven million figure was contained in the preliminary findings – reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – of a study conducted by the DRC government with the UK Department for International Development and the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF.

It said 25 percent of the primary school-aged children and 60 percent of adolescents were not enrolled in classes.

The free education directive is supposed to cover the whole country except the capital, Kinshasa, and the city of Lubumbashi.

“Even with the announcement of free primary education, parents, many of whom are unemployed and have little means of sustaining themselves, are bearing most of the costs involved in educating their children because of delays in releasing the funds for free education,” Ornelie Lelo, communications officer for an education NGO in the capital, SOS Kinshasa, told IRIN.

Representatives of teachers’ unions and officials of NGOs dealing with education issues told IRIN the quality of education offered in public schools stayed low because teachers were poorly paid.

“Since independence [in 1960] to date, the government has not prioritized school expansion and building of new institutions,” Lelo said. “In Kinshasa, for instance, the number of public schools is much lower than private schools: 29 percent are public while 71 percent are private.”

Government statistics for 2009-2010, drawn up with help from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and UNICEF, suggest the gap in the capital is a little narrower, at 37 versus 63 percent for primary schools and 39 versus 61 for secondary ones.

Almost 74 percent of primary teachers are qualified versus 33 percent at secondary level.

Education officials have expressed concern over the severe shortage of teachers in public schools. In primary school, the national average is one teacher for 37 pupils, according to the national statistics, but in marginalized or rural areas, there can be more than 100 pupils per class.

According to UNESCO, at least 10 percent of primary teachers are aged over 55, the official retirement age. With financial support of the Spanish development agency (AECID), UNESCO is researching teachers’ conditions so as to work with government education officials to devise plans to improve them.

Land grabs

Lelo of SOS Kinshasa said the use of school land by private developers was another problem, especially in urban areas.

“Many of the public schools in existence are in deplorable conditions; no blackboards in many of them; in some, children sit on the floor due to lack of desks, and the most worrying concern is encroachment on school land by individuals, many of whom are connected politically,” Lelo said. “One can find a pharmacy, restaurant or even bar right in the middle of a school compound – it looks like all open spaces in schools are up for grabs.

“We have written to the prosecutor-general, to the Ministry of Education and even to the Ministry of Justice over this issue but we have yet to get a response. We continue to appeal to the government to ensure the grabbed land is returned to the schools.”

Budget questions

Jacques Tshimbalanga, spokesman for a coalition of education organizations and the deputy secretary-general of the National Syndicate of Conventional Catholic Schools, told IRIN the directive on free primary education was not realistic “and has proved difficult to implement”.

Although the directive was meant to be gradual, with fees being waived up to grade four this year, Tshimbalanga said, the national budgetary allocation to education did not reflect this fact.

“In 2010, the budget for education was 7.2 percent of the total national budget; in 2011, after sustained advocacy and lobbying of parliamentarians by trade unions and NGOs, it went up to 10 percent of the total budget. Unfortunately, the disbursement of the funds is another story,” Tshimbalanga said.

“Although 7.2 percent of the budget was pledged in 2010, we discovered after investigations that not even 6 percent was actually disbursed. This year, the budget for primary education actually went down by 28 percent compared to the allocation of 2010 and this is why we are concerned about this free education decree.”

According to UNESCO’s 2011 global monitoring report on Education For All, the military budget of DRC was twice as much as the education budget.

Poor pay

Tshimbalanga said the average monthly salary for a primary school teacher was $35-40 and since the teachers’ salaries are often several months in arrears, parents were forced to chip in.

“Generally, teachers, like other Congolese workers, survive on very little, some even less than $1 a day, yet the cost of education is borne by parents, sometimes even up to 65 percent of the total cost,” Tshimbalanga said. “In rural areas, some teachers supplement their earnings by working as casual labourers on farms; those in urban areas end up begging for money from their pupils’ parents just to survive.”

To improve the quality of education, Tshimbalanga said, the government had to pay teachers properly. He said the teachers’ union entered into an agreement in 2004 with the government for teachers to be paid a minimum of $208 monthly but six years later, this has not been implemented.

“This is why since 2005, teachers go on strike every year, demanding the honouring of this agreement,” he said.

A 2007 survey by UNESCO and UNICEF suggested teachers’ conditions contributed to the poor quality of tuition and found that up to 43 percent of sixth-grade pupils lacked basic knowledge of French, mathematics and general knowledge.

Attempts to reach the DRC’s education ministry for comment were unsuccessful.

The Spine Africa Project Documentary

The first full length documentary for The Spine Africa Project can be seen here.  This documentary was filmed during Dr. Richard Kaul’s latest trip to the DRC in September 2011.  It features footage of patients that were seen and operated on, interviews with Dr. Kaul and Dr. Denis Mukwege and footage from Panzi Hospital.  Please forward this along and help us spread the word.  For more information, please visit http://www.spineafricaproject.org

How Fikru Mariam’s $37,500 Painting Saved 3 Ethiopian Children

New York (TADIAS) – A painting by the prolific Ethiopian artist Fikru G/Mariam was recently sold in the United States for $37,500 to help pay for surgical expenses of three Ethiopian children with severe spine disease. Fikru, who works from his Addis Ababa and Paris-based studios, has exhibited at prestigious European galleries and cultivated an international following.

Fikru first learned about spine disease from an American doctor named Rick Hodes, who has lived and worked in Ethiopia for over 20 years. Dr. Hodes initially arrived in Ethiopia as a relief worker during the 1984 famine and has remained there ever since. He currently serves as Medical Director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Addis Ababa. His work with severely disabled children, including those with spine diseases, is the subject of the HBO documentary Making the Crooked Straight as well as a book by journalist Marilyn Berger entitled This is a Soul.

Fikru met Dr. Hodes last year at a Thanksgiving dinner in Addis Ababa hosted by mutual friends – a couple from Orlando who are temporarily living in Ethiopia and are collectors of his paintings. “My friends Donald and Barbara Prearson first introduced Dr. Hodes and I at their home,” Fikru told Tadias Magazine. “Rick said he knew about my work from the displays in the house.” He added: “During the dinner Rick told me what he did as a Doctor in Ethiopia, and I was impressed. Dr. Hodes showed Fikru photos of his spine disease patients. “I can probably say they were the most shocking images I ever saw in my life,” Fikru said of the photographs.

“Spine disease is quite common,” Dr. Hodes said in a recent interview with Tadias. “In America, at least 3% of the population has scoliosis, which is a spinal curvature. There is no data from Ethiopia, but it is quite likely that the rate is at least the same. We also have neuromuscular disease such as cerebral palsy and old polio leading to scoliosis.” Dr. Hodes said he receives at least 200 new spine patients a year. About two-third have scoliosis, which causes an S-shaped spine, and one-third have Pott’s Disease, which is tuberculosis of the spine. Without the possibility of spine surgery, Ethiopian patients often have progressive disease which may lead to paralysis and breathing difficulties. Many of Dr. Hodes’ patients have lost well over 50% of their lung function due to the lungs being compressed by twisted spines. “I work closely with an organization called FOCOS and raise money to send my patients to them in Accra, Ghana for surgery,” Dr Hodes said. “It costs me about $18,000 per surgery.” He added: “My overall goal is to [build] a hospital in Ethiopia where this surgery can be done, and to train Ethiopians to do these operations.”

The conversation with Dr. Hodes and the photos lingered in Fikru’s head long after the dinner. “It was painful to watch and the images stuck in my mind,” Fikru said. “I felt shame that I was not doing enough to help my people who desperately need my help while foreigners are doing a great job to save Ethiopian lives.” He added: “When I left the Prearson’s home that night I told Rick I will do something to help and contribute to save the children.”

“Weeks later when Mr. Noel Cunningham of The Cunningham Foundation came to Addis from Denver, I invited him to my studio and told him my plan to donate my painting to fund the surgeries,” Fikru continued. “I had estimated it to be around $24,000 but I thought they could get a better price for it at an auction.”

“We greatly appreciate your talent and your generosity in donating this painting,” Noel Cunningham, President of the Cunningham Foundation, said in a letter to Fikru. “In fact, your painting has raised money to provide complete medical and surgical care to 3 Ethiopian youth with spine disease.”

Dr. Hodes remembers meeting Fikru at the Thanksgiving dinner. “Fikru was very taken by the strength and the difficulties of life of my spine patients.” he said. “He has since met several of them, and he had a very good idea of the great difficulties they have. He would call me at least twice a week.”

Regarding the painting, Fikru said he came up with the concept a year ago at his Addis home-studio, which he designed.

“I talked to Rick Hodes this morning and he told me that the children will go abroad for surgery on Sunday November 6,” he said. “I will go to Bole airport to see them off.”

Congo-Kinshasa: Women Candidates Needed

Badylon K. Bakiman

Women make up just 12 percent of the roughly 18,000 candidates who will stand for election to parliament in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Nov. 28 elections.

According to the Permanent Framework for Dialogue for Congolese Women, a gender equality pressure group, only 42, or 8.4 percent, of the 500 members of the current National Assembly – the lower house of parliament – are women.

And there are just five women in the 108-member Senate, representing 4.4 percent, while the provincial legislatures have a total of 43 women representatives, or 6.8 percent of a total of 632.

Leading parties ignoring parity

The Southern African Development Community’s Gender Protocol, adopted by member states including DRC in 2008, calls for 50 percent of decision-making positions to be held by women by 2015.

The Protocol commits governments to not only raise public awareness of the link between good governance and equal representation of women in decision-making, but to take legislative and other measure including affirmative action. But there are precious few signs that the leading parties are committed to meeting these goals.

In his campaign platform, announced in September in Kingakati, near Kinshasa, President Joseph Kabila – who is running for re-election on Nov. 28 – described DRC as an “emerging” nation, possessing a reserve of intelligence and know-how, and a regional power at the heart of Africa, but said nothing explicit about addressing women’s demands.

The same can be said of the programme put forward by the principal opposition leader, Etienne Tshisekedi, head of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress party, who has stressed patriotisim, national unity, development and change to improve governance of the country.

Françoise Ikwapa, from the League of Women for Development, Education and Democracy, believes that the platforms of the two leading presidential candidates guarantee nothing for gender equality and parity, even though Article 14 of the constitution requires the government to work towards this.

Women need better representation

Congolese women face major challenges, according to Jacquie Rumbu, director of the National Agency for Combating Violence Against Women and Girls, confirmed the numbers. “DRC is characterised by a feminisation of poverty and armed conflicts have aggravated existing inequalities.”

Despite the presence of the U.N.’s largest peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Congo (MONUSCO), armed groups including the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (an exiled Rwandan rebel group known by its French acronym, FDLR) and the DRC’s own armed forces, are accused of continuing to commit rape with impunity, particularly in the east of the country.

An article in the February edition of a magazine published by MONUSCO said, “Around 200,000 women were raped in DRC over the last 12 years of war.”

On other fronts, early marriage and inadequate access to healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth puts women’s lives at risk.

“In DRC, the maternal mortality rate is 549 deaths for every 100,000 live births,” says Dr Protais Musindo, Assistant Director of the National Programme on Health and Reproduction, referring to the last demographic and health survey, carried out in 2008.

Confident women stepping forward

Women candidates are increasingly finding their voice on these and other issues as various non- governmental groups have redoubled their efforts to increase the number of elected women, including setting up women’s leadership circles and an electoral clinic which supports candidates in their campaigns. Several forums were organised with this aim across the country between 2010 and 2011.

“Once elected as a member of parliament, I will try to propose laws that will enable the economic independence of women and fight against poverty,” says Georgette Biebie, a candidate in the constituency of Kikwit, in the southeast of DRC. She is a candidate for the Alliance for the Renewal of the Congo.

Interviewed by IPS in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, Biebie also promised to be an active participant in parliament in order to spur the government into action to reduce maternal mortality and more effectively apply laws that protect children, women and people with disabilities.

Biebie adds: “I’m going to try to take action in the fight against violence against women, in the struggle against climate change, and to gain access to Green Funds to encourage women to develop their agricultural output while protecting forests.”

Jeanne Lembwa Kabange, a candidate standing for election in the southeastern city of Lubumbashi for the Movement for the Integrity of the People, plans to lobby for legislation that protects women, but says women should not see men only as opponents. “Women must not neglect their male partners. Together, they will develop the country through complementary action,” she says.

Chantal Malamba, an Action for Development Party candidate in Mabimba, in the southwest, says if she is elected, she will prioritise the questions of livelihoods, security and development. “DRC faces serious problems of access to water and electricity, aside from the thorny problems of poverty and unemployment.”

Mixed response from voters

Asked what she thought of the promises made by these female candidates, Yvette Mova, a housewife in the Kinshasa district of N’djili, says women candidates’ plans of action are attractive.

“Women mustn’t go backwards, because they are just as capable of working hard as men. I will vote for one of them on Nov. 28. I would even have wanted us to have a female candidate for president of the republic to make changes in this country. But there isn’t a candidate for this post,” she tells IPS.

Solange Mukwanga, a vendor in the Liberté market in the Masina district of the capital, is less enthusiastic. “I don’t have confidence in women. They are vain and too weak despite their programmes,” she says.

For Didier Mboma, a civil society activist, women candidates stand a good chance in the elections. “They can readily win seats if other women, who make up more than 51 percent of the electorate, choose them. Some men could also vote for them if they can be won over,” he tells IPS.