Inaction on sexual violence occurring in the Democratic Republic of Congo is astounding. Despite the announcement in June by the UN Security Council that sexual violence and mass rape is a war crime, very little has been done to curb its employment in the ongoing conflict in the DRC.

A new group called the Congo Advocacy Coalition, comprised of 64 international and local aid agencies and rights groups, has recently released a report that found more than 2,200 reported cases of rape in the Eastern Congolese province of North Kivu in June 2008. Clearly, that figure doesn’t come close to representing the total number of rapes, as research suggests only a very small percentage of rapes are reported to police (in the United States, only 16% are reported).

Even more damning is the fact that NGOs and the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women acknowledge that the worst and most prevalent offences of sexual violence are occurring in neighbouring South Kivu, though exact figures on reported rapes for the month of June in that province are not available.

And this despite the signing on January 23, 2008 of a peace deal between the major militia groups, rebels, and the democratically-elected government.

Some 150,000 people have fled violence since the agreement, adding to the one million already displaced. According to the U.N., the deal itself has been violated 200 times in 180 days.

To give you an idea of the extent of the violence, here’s just one anecdote:

After gang raping women and girls, soldiers are piercing their labia and padlocking their vaginas shut. Hot plastic as well as sticks and bayonets are being inserted into the women. Six-month-old girls have been raped to death.

Gang rapes are so severe that many women are suffering from fistula (the tearing of the vaginal wall so that the contents of the colon and urine seep in). Unable to reach medical care, some women are dying of massive infections. Even if the women do reach a doctor, fistula is very hard to repair—few practitioners can do it.

To intensify the cruelty, soldiers are even shooting women in the vagina, destroying their systems so completely that numerous operations are necessary—and even then repair may not be possible.

Unfortunately, all of this violence can be connected to your bourgeois desire to play Guitar Hero 3© on your Playstation©.