Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa (OSISA)

The torrid air in the makeshift courtroom was heavy with heat and hate as, one by one, the rape survivors confronted their attackers and relived their New Year’s Day horrors before a panel of judges. The anger and fear from both sides of the room was palpable – with only a few metres separating the rapists from their victims as they testified. One young woman, a newly married bride, threw her bloodied and torn clothing onto the floor as evidence of her ordeal. A 29-year-old mother of five said she was trying to flee into the forest when four soldiers caught up with her.

(Read the full article here or download it below) - By Judge Mary McGowan Davis, former acting Justice of New York Supreme Court - It is April, 2011 and the humidity is intense in Kamituga. I have been sitting for hours in a white plastic garden chair under a large tent pitched on a bluff in this remote hilltop town in South Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Mercifully, the tent is fully open on three sides, so what little air is moving on this sultry afternoon wafts in to relieve my torpor.