The Political Economy of Violence Against Women by Jacqui True

Author:Jacqui True
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Domestic Partner Abuse, Economic Development, Family & Relationships, Abuse, Political Science, Feminism & Feminist Theory, Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780199755912
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012-09-06T05:00:00+00:00

The Congo has been plagued by conflict for over fifteen years, involving neighboring states Rwanda and Uganda and various armed rebel groups including the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), particularly in the East and South where lucrative mineral resources such as diamonds, cooper, and zinc lie. Although government troops have been at war, the different phases of the conflict have been similarly characterized by civilian deaths, injuries, and torture. It is in this context that the mass prevalence of rape and sexual violence is seen. Yet UN officials, aid workers, scholars, and the Congolese themselves cannot explain why. The case is begging for a political economy analysis (and solution). Despite the UNSC demand for quantitative data on sexual violence in conflict, comprehensive data are extremely limited for some obvious reasons. In many conflict-affected countries there is poor government infrastructure, and populations are often isolated and inaccessible due to the conflict. Victims of violence have strong cultural disincentives to report sexual violence and little government, legal, or material support to do so. In the most recent study of the incidence of rape in the Congo based on extrapolations from a household survey done in 2007 of 3,436 Congolese women aged fifteen to forty-nine nationwide, public health researchers Amber Peterman, Tia Palermo, and Karyn Bredenkamp (2011) found that approximately 12 percent were raped at least once in their lifetime and 3 percent were raped in the one-year period before the survey. The study indicates that the problem is much bigger and more pervasive than previously thought. Women have reported alarming levels of sexual abuse in the capital and in provinces far from the Congo’s war-torn East, a sign that the problem extends beyond the nation’s primary conflict zone—to western, northern, and eastern Congo (Peterman, Palermo, and Bredenkamp 2011). At the same time, compared with women in Kinshasa, women in North Kivu, where much of the armed conflict has taken place, were significantly more likely to report all types of sexual violence. Reports of sexual violence were largely independent of individual-level background factors, suggesting a strong correlation with structural factors, including the overall economic decline in the postcolonial period and the lack of government presence.

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