“Attacks on civilians are all too frequent, and in particular, the problem of sexual violence which is arguably the worst in the world by some way, that is, the kidnapping of women as sex slaves, multiple rapes, mutilation – absolutely brutal sexual practices,” John Holmes told the BBC.

He says it seems to be a “sort of culture which has grown up of impunity, and a feeling you can get away with anything – and of course, the reality is that at the moment, you can get away with anything, and that’s one of the fundamental problems that’s got to be tackled.”

This piece from the BBC has a more in depth explanation for why this may be happening than many run-of-the-mill Congo articles. Here’s an excerpt:

Gashinge Devote, a Tutsi businesswoman living in Goma points to the absence of Congolese Tutsis in the lower house of parliament, and the few Tutsi civil servants employed in the local administration – even though as a population the Tutsis make up about 300,000 of the four million inhabitants of N Kivu.

…

Rwanda is playing a double game, engaging in diplomacy with Kinshasa while stirring things up on DR Congo’s eastern border.

Only recently Rwanda‘s President Paul Kagame defended General Nkunda’s rebellion by saying his fellow ethnic Tutsi has “legitimate political grievances”.

Even if that were true, in pursuit of his aims General Nkunda stands accused of crimes against humanity, including sexual violence and the recruitment of child soldiers – that’s why he is the subject of an international arrest warrant.

But for a better explanation, visit AfricaWorks

The problem of course is that Congo, as a political entity, is an illusion. The country is too large, diverse and riven by durable differences to be managed from a single center. It is time to explore a truly federalized Congo that might over the next 10 to 20 years peacefully “devolve” into a several nation-states. Eastern Congo would be especially well-served by “devolution,” since the region – today the least stable in the current Congo – has natural economic, social and geographic links to neighboring Uganda and Rwanda. If Scotland can engage in a process of “devolution” from Britain, why cannot eastern Congo engage in the same process? Colonial maps cannot forever burden the serious and expensive efforts to develop regional integration, whether in East Africa or the sub-Saharan generally. The double-standard – whereby European countries can split themselves apart based on democratic processes but African countries are eternally bound by the borders of their former European masters — ought to end. That European governments often quickly oppose any talk of redrawing African are examples of both hypocrisy and stupidity. European governments spend billions of dollars holding together unwieldy African countries and in the end sustain only the fiction of real sovereignty. The Congo is perhaps the best example of this. Congolese elections, which cost European donors a hefty sum, accomplished the little more than to highlight the folly of holding this vast territory together under a single political rubric. Maintaining the fiction of the Congo, in short, is dangerous and ultimately futile.