During her official trip to Africa, Hillary Clinton had planned to impress upon her interlocutors the need to fight against corruption. The head of American diplomacy even insinuated that people take to the streets to protest against their corrupt governments.

Among the themes that the US Secretary of State had chosen for this trip is violence against women. On her way to the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), she said passionately that the atrocities suffered by the women in the region are the product of evil in its most despicable form. She had a very frank discussion with Congolese President Joseph Kabila about sexual violence.

“It is almost impossible to describe the level of suffering,” she said. Eastern Congo’s rape epidemic, she added, “is just horrific.”

In Eastern Congo, the twin phenomena of mass rape and mass vaginal mutilation are pervading. Here, violation of women and violence against women are systematically the norm. Young girls and grandmothers have experienced rape or gang rape. Their sexual organs are ‘often shot at, stabbed, speared, or ripped apart.’ Mass rape is also used as a weapon of war to subjugate ethnic populations.

The United States will devote $17 million for a project to support victims of sexual violence in Congo. The US will ‘train doctors, supply rape victims with video cameras to document violence, send American military engineers to help build facilities and train Congolese police officers, especially female police officers, to crack down on rapists.’

Mrs. Clinton is the first secretary of state to set foot in the war zone.

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Via The New York Times