The Christian Science Monitor reports that, for the first time in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a senior military official, Lt. Col. Kibibi Mutware, was convicted for crimes against humanity for ordering his troops to beat and rape civilians in a village they attacked. Mutware and three of his officers received 20-year sentences. Five received less severe sentences, and one was acquitted and will be tried in juvenile court. This is a really important and unprecedented step.
By taking such steps, the DRC government is strengthening the message to perpetrators of sexual violence that no one is immune from prosecution for this horrific crime. Accountability for sexual and gender based violence is a shared priority for our governments and is an essential component to ending impunity for violent crimes and bringing peace and stability to the eastern DRC.
As David Axe wrote for the Prospect in December, the United States has been trying to help to transform its culture of rape and use of it as a tool of suppression -- and to pressure the country to do so as well. Axe said it was an important venue for testing the limits of "smart power," the Obama administration's foreign-policy style.
The administration seeks to first get the Congolese army itself to stop raping and then to have it protect civilians from groups such as the LRA. The effort is a test of the administration's ideas about smart power and its evolving philosophy of nonviolent military intervention. Reform is a long-term project, and early results can be hard to measure, but the State Department and Pentagon -- not to mention the Congolese government -- are optimistic.
Of course, it would be hard to attribute this solely to the U.S.'s intervention there. But even if continued pressure from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had nothing to do with the conviction, which would seem extreme, these reforms are critical. Uplifting women, we all know, is the least controversial and most effective way to start lifting children in poor countries out of poverty. Suppressing women with violence is a tool of the powerful worth using all our force to fight against.
