海角大神

鈥�A version of this post first appeared on the author's blog,聽A View From the Cave.聽The views expressed are the author's own.

What really happened in a village near Luvungi, Congo in August 2010?

At least 200 fighters from the聽Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and the Mai Mai Sheka militia group looted homes, committed rapes and聽abducted聽hundreds. 387 people (300 women, 23 men, 55 girls and 9 boys) were systematically raped over the course of four days by rebels,聽according聽to the International Medial Corps (IMC) and the United Nations.

But an聽article聽in Foreign Policy this week聽by Laura Heaton, a freelance reporter and consultant for the聽Enough Project, a genocide prevention NGO, says that the figures were exaggerated. She uses the attack as an example of how an extraordinary amount of attention and resources are diverted to the problem of rape in the Congo while issues like displacement garner much less attention and financial support.

She visited the area after the attacks and interviewed a few women about their experiences. In those discussions, Ms. Heaton and her colleague felt that they were being lied to by the women.

Her doubts were confirmed by a healthcare provider from the nearest hospital, one run by the state run with support from the IMC. He told her, behind closed door, that he only treated six victims between July 30 and Aug. 2, 2010. He claimed that every woman that was treated during that period was recorded as a victim of sexual violence regardless of the ailment and leveled an accusation that the patient logs were revised to increase the victim numbers.

Heaton suggests that the attention on rape in the Congo and the aid flows that go towards the problem have created a "perverse incentive structure."

Heaton鈥檚 article was met with resistance from Micah Williams and Will Cragin of the IMC, who responded in their own article for聽Foreign Policy. Mr. Cragin was in fact the coordinator for Congo's North Kivu province for the IMC at the time of the attacks in 2010. They disagree with Heaton鈥檚 claims regarding the number of rape victims, saying that all of the humanitarian organizations that investigated in the wake of the event found evidence that hundreds of rapes were committed.

Women continued to come forward weeks after the attacks, say Mr. Williams and Cragin. Further, there were no incentives to come forward in terms of money or goods. In fact, the IMC was admittedly underprepared to respond to such a case and ran short on supplies. The lessons learned from the incident point towards greater care in being prepared. They conclude by saying that their experience working in the Congo shows the need for more attention on sexual violence, not less.

The conversation continued with an interview between Heaton and researcher Jason Stearns (who has also written about eastern Congo in the past for Africa Monitor). Mr. Stearns asked Heaton about her reporting and her reaction to the IMC response聽on his blog. Heaton told Stearns:

She says she was prepared for the聽controversy聽and push-back from the article, but felt confident in her reporting because of the fact that she was afforded the ability to conduct it slowly and carefully. She admitted to Stearns the role that instinct played in the story, but that her further research confirmed those feelings.

The disagreement over the numbers goes to show that investigating events like the mass-rape in Luvungi warrant very careful attention, says analyst Kate Cronin-Furman.

鈥淭he policy prescriptions indicated by these competing interpretations of evidence are starkly different: less focus on sexual violence initiatives or more. Reason enough to be careful about what we think we know, and how we know it,鈥� she writes at the blog聽Wronging Rights.