No More Rape in the Congo

From the Africa-Canada Accountability Coalition:

The Africa-Canada Accountability Coalition announces the launch of a new campaign NO MORE RAPE.

The eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the worst place in the world to be a woman or a girl. Over the last decade, a complex and ongoing series of conflicts, described as the world’s “deadliest crisis since World War II,” has unleashed unprecedented violence on the bodies of women and girls in this region. The brutality is extreme: three-month-old babies to eighty-year-old women have been raped. Women and girls are raped with such frequency that the Congolese invented a new word to describe the phenomenon: révioler, to re-rape.

This campaign is an urgent call out to Canadians: ABSOLUTELY NO MORE RAPE in the Congo. It features a new report on how Canada must respond, a video call for action, and a website with all the tools you need to stop the on-going crisis. Our corporations, our government and we ourselves have a specific, long-standing and often exploitative relationship with the DRC. We can do better – it is time we started.

JOIN US at our launch at 7pm on October 14, at the multi-purpose room of the Liu Institute of Global Issues at UBC (6476 NW Marine Drive Vancouver, V6T 1Z2), to learn more about how you can get involved and to see a moving film about a Congolese rape survivor "Lumo". We will also share an initiative to pass Bill C-300, aimed at promoting socially responsible policies among Canadian mining, oil and gas companies in the DR Congo and other developing countries.

Visit our website at www.acacdrcongo.org or reach us atcontact@acacdrcongo.org.