Radio Times

Review by:

Jane Anderson

UN Special Representative Margot Wallstrom famously named the eastern Congo region “the rape capital of the world”. Women are menaced and brutalised and subjected to the most horrific sexual crimes on a daily basis. In this harrowing two-part report, The Observer journalist Will Storr travels to the Democratic Republic of Congo to talk to women who have been subjected to this sick abuse. He explains that while some of their attackers are escaped genocidieres from Rwanda, who hide in the borderland forests, these women also fall prey to men from their own country’s army. The women’s personal testimonies are almost to painful too hear, but to bury their stories, to keep them silent, only helps sustain a global scandal: sexual violence is now a facet of all wars. It has to stop.

About this programme

Will Storr investigates the impact using sexual abuse as a weapon of war has on its survivors in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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