Rape of the Congo: Understanding sexual violence in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Meger, Sara

doi:10.1080/02589001003736728

Cited by 92 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The second argument posits that the absence of penalties and norms prohibiting CRSV on the part of the group and its leadership make opportunistic (not strategic or tactical) sexual violence 2 more likely (Wood 2006;Meger 2010). The accounts of demobilized combatants in the DRC illustrate that the absence of norms prohibiting CRSV allowed them to commit rape without fearing disciplinary consequences.…”

Section: Intragroup Norms and Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most scholars agree that the absence of the rule of law, impunity, weakened state institutions, and above all gender inequalities make sexual violence in the context of ethnic, religious, and ideological conflicts more likely (Cohen 2013b;Wood 2009;Leiby 2009;Hagen and Yohani 2010;Meger 2010;Trenholm, Olsson, and Ahlberg 2011;Elbert et al 2013;Meger 2010;Dolan 2010). This context of lawlessness may set free a desire to commit rape in some men (Butler, Gluch, and Mitchell 2007;Brownmiller 1975;Goldstein 2001).…”

Section: Contextual Conditions and Opportunity Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second aspect is the contextual conditions under which CRSV is more likely (Brownmiller 1975;Cohen 2013b;Wood 2006). The third aspect is the individual motives of fighters (Wood 2009;Gottschall 2004;Elbert et al 2013;Meger 2010), and the fourth is the group dynamics within armed groups (Leiby 2009;Elbert et al 2013;Wood 2009;Green 2004). Although this body of research shares the same goal -that is, to determine what causes members of armed groups to commit sexual violence -the epistemological premises and thus the methodological preferences differ greatly, ranging from constructivist approaches to biosocial explanations to rational-choice-related perspectives.…”

Section: Causes Of Crsvmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the perpetratorʹs psyche, it does not fulfill sexual functions, but is a manifestation of anger, violence and domination of a woman." This aggression often takes the form of public gang rapes intended to humiliate and demoralize victims, their families, and the community at large (Meger 2010;Trenholm, Olsson, and Ahlberg 2011). The term CRSV or wartime rape never refers to isolated instances of sexual violence by individual combatants but rather indicates the much more widespread occurrence of it.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

What Do We Know About Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts? Recent Empirical Progress and Remaining Gaps in Peace and Conflict Research

Koos

2015

SSRN Journal

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Section: Intragroup Norms and Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Contextual Conditions and Opportunity Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Causes Of Crsvmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

What Do We Know About Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts? Recent Empirical Progress and Remaining Gaps in Peace and Conflict Research

Koos

2015

SSRN Journal

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“…During the Cold War era, such narratives became superfluous to the needs of power politics in a bi-polar international system and were summarily dropped. In the post-Cold War era, from the 1990's onwards, the old discursive tropes have been revived in a wide range of political contexts because they have become useful once again (Meger, 2010). In the early 2000's, for example, the proposed invasion of Afghanistan by U.S. forces was framed as a war against people who oppress women (cf.…”

Section: Invisible Victimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Male Directed Sexual Violence in Conflict: A Challenge for Gender Studies

Ó’Móchain

2018

mcs

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In recent years, extensive empirical data has indicated that acts of severe sexual assault are being perpetrated against large numbers of men in many areas of conflict around the world. In spite of such data, recognition of this problem within gender studies remains limited. This is due to many reasons including the opposition of a variety of feminism that is reluctant to acknowledge male victimhood. This paper argues that feminist reservations about a focus on male-directed sexual violence in conflict are unfounded, especially as adherence to dichotomous gender models of “male equals perpetrator/female equals victim” ignores the comparable suffering of male survivors. A feminist analysis is enriched and complemented by a focus on male survivors and on the gendered power relations that operate among men.

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A biocultural study of the effects of maternal stress on mother and newborn health in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Rodney

Mulligan

2014

American J Phys Anthropol

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The impact of stress on human health is a topic of wide-spread relevance and one that is particularly amenable to multidisciplinary investigation. Stress impacts both our psychological and physical health and, thus, may leave evidence on our psyche, our physical body and our genome. We are interested in the effect of extreme stressors, such as war, on health from the perspective of long-term and multigenerational effects. We integrate sociocultural, biological, and epigenetic data from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Between May and August, 2010, we measured sociocultural stress exposure among 25 mother-newborn dyads and we measured health outcomes in newborns. We also collected maternal venous blood, placental tissue, and umbilical cord blood to assay for methylation changes to test for a possible epigenetic mechanism that mediates the effects of stress on health. We provide a qualitative description of the wide range of stress exposures experienced by mothers in our study. As we have shown previously, maternal war stress is strongly associated with newborn birthweight and changes in newborn methylation at the glucocorticoid receptor NR3C1. New results presented here demonstrate that maternal war stress and birthweight are also associated with genome-wide changes in maternal methylation levels. In sum, these results suggest that stress may influence gene expression across a broad spectrum in the individual who directly experiences the stress, i.e., the mother, whereas potential heritable effects in the newborn may be focused on specific genes that are uniquely sensitive to environmental cues.

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Rape of the Congo: Understanding sexual violence in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Cited by 92 publications

References 17 publications

What Do We Know About Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts? Recent Empirical Progress and Remaining Gaps in Peace and Conflict Research

What Do We Know About Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts? Recent Empirical Progress and Remaining Gaps in Peace and Conflict Research

Male Directed Sexual Violence in Conflict: A Challenge for Gender Studies

A biocultural study of the effects of maternal stress on mother and newborn health in the Democratic Republic of Congo

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