In this photo taken Oct. 6, 2009, a Rwandan Hutu rebel gropes a local woman as he passes her on a crowded mountain path, near the village of Kimua, eastern Congo.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP Photo
Rosine, a 15-year old girl from Malemba who was raped 3 times, shows her belly to the photographer as she poses at her attacker's home on Febuary 5, 2010 in Malembu Nkulu. Rosine, three-months pregnant, has been "given" as a bride to her 17-year-old raper. The 17 year-old boy who reportedly raped his 15 year-old friend's sister, Rosine, poses at his home.
Gwenn Dubourthoumieu, AFP / Getty Images (2)
A masked rebel soldier patrols near the front line in Kanyabayonga, Eastern Congo, after confronting army loyalists.
Radu Sigheti / Reuters
War-orphan Faustin Mugisa, 8, who has machete scars on his head and body, stands at the Kizito orphanage in Bunia, northeastern Congo, Feb. 24, 2009. Mugisa was left for dead in a pile of corpses when ethnic Lendu militiamen hacked to death his mother and seven siblings in 2003. Mugisa's father discovered him alive and took him to the bush to recover, but his father was later hacked to death by the same militia group. Ethnic violence has simmered for years in northeastern Congo, part of broader civil and regional conflict.
Finbarr O'Reilly / Reuters
The wife of a Congolese army soldier speaks while sitting on the bed assigned to her at a clinic for rape victims in Goma, Nov. 24, 2008. After her husband left home to fight, she and other women were raped while working in a field. She survived the attack, in which a child and other women died, but was barely able to continue to care for her two sons. An NGO discovered her and brought her to the center.
Roberto Schmidt, AFP / Getty Images
Lavie Balengba holds up his homemade gun as vigilantes gather in the streets of Bangadi, about 25 miles from Congo's border with Sudan, on Feb. 11, 2009. In this remote northeastern corner of Congo, the residents successfully drove off two attacks by Ugandan rebels who killed at least 900 people between December 2008 and February 2009.
T.J. Kirkpatrick / AP Photo
Two Congolese men fight each other over an argument that flared up while a NGO was distributing food aid near a camp for internally displaced people, November 2008.
Roberto Schmidt, AFP / Getty Images
Congolese burn survivor Sunday, age 4, gets dressed in the morning at the Children of Fire center in Johannesburg, South Africa, 2009. Sunday was burnt when Colgolese rebels set fire to his family's home during fighting in eastern Congo in 2008. The Children of Fire charity, the only one of its kind in Africa, has been taking in young burn survivors since 1997, and now coordinates treatments and surgeries for children from across the continent.
John Moore / Getty Images
Gold miners form a human chain while digging an open pit at the Chudja mine near the village of Kobu, 62 miles from Bunia in northeastern Congo, February 2009. Civil conflict in Congo has been driven for more than a decade by the violent struggle for control of the country's vast natural resources, including gold, diamonds and timber, most of which is exploited using hard manual labor.
Finbarr O'Reilly / Reuters
Congolese soldiers patrol the town of Rutshuru in eastern Congo. Plans to integrate Tutsi rebels into Congo's army faltered, underlining the challenges facing efforts to pacify the east despite renewed Congo-Rwanda cooperation. Separately,Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army rebels killed more than 100 people in a village in Congo in an apparent reprisal for army operations against them, the United Nations said.
Alissa Everett / Reuters
A Congolese soldier and women attending a seminar on sexual violence awareness last month. A crowd gathered at a church in Mwitobwe, a village of about 5,000 people within Katanga province, listening to a UN employee explain that rape is a crime and that the silence around the rape epidemic should be broken.
Stringer, AFP / Getty Images
A 30-year old rape victim (right) is led to the operating room by a nurse at the Heal Africa clinic in Goma on Aug. 10, 2009. The Congolese woman was brutally raped by 3 members of an armed group and has undergone 9 operations to attempt to repair the damage. Doctors at the Heal Africa Clinic in Goma treat women who have been sexually abused and in the majority of the cases, due to the violent and vicious nature of the attacks develop serious physical problems. While being treated at the clinic, the women stay at a transit home inside the clinic where they are treated physically and psychologically.
Roberto Schmidt, AFP / Getty Images
