Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

On Congo Rapes, UN Admits 240 Victims, Dodges Meece Inaccuracies, Wallstrom Inaction

UNITED NATIONS, September 1 -- As the UN tries to slow down or even bury the story of its inaction on the mass rapes in Eastern Congo, the questions keep on coming and the admissions, drip by drip. But belatedly updated victim numbers can't change the inaccurate statements of MONUSCO chief Roger Meece, nor the inaction of Margot Wallstrome, UN envoy on Sexual Violence and Conflict.

    On Wednesday at the UN in New York, Inner City Press asked about

Inner City Press: what the UN knew and when, saying that on 30 July in that e-mail it mentioned a rape in the village of Mpofi, and also a 10 August e-mail mentioning already 25 rapes. These dates are inconsistent, to put it mildly, with what Mr. Meece said to us from the video screen. What are the ramifications? Does the UN deny this... or are we missing something in terms of the inaccuracies?

Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq: As far as that goes, as you’re aware, when the Secretary-General learned of these mass rapes, what he did from our side was to immediately dispatch Atul Khare, the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is there right now. We just mentioned what his travels in the area are. He, among other things, was sent there specifically to look into the mass rapes that occurred in the Walikale area. He’ll also look at our response and how we responded to it. He’s there now collecting information and we will see what his evaluation is of that situation when he returns. We expect him back next week and we expect him to report back to the Secretary-General, and also, by the way, to the Security Council, although, of course, their schedule for the month is still being determined.

Inner City Press: But I remember Martin [Nesirky] saying from this podium that here at the Secretariat in New York your office was looking into this 30 July e-mail to find what it was and what it said. Now, the New York Times says a rape occurred. I’m just wondering, has your office found that e-mail? And totally outside of Mr. Khare’s time schedule, what does it mean it mean about what Mr. Meece told us?

Deputy Spokesperson: Yes, we have been looking into that. At this stage, what I would wait for is to see what information Mr. Khare, as the person who is there on the ground, because he is there, he is accumulating data and he will report back. I think we’ll leave it until then. But, yes, we’ve been looking into this and certainly we’re trying to find what the providence of this particular e-mail is.

Inner City Press: Just one more on this. The International Medical Corps now says that the number of women treated in this mass rape incident, they’ve raised their number from 192 to 242. I’m just wondering if the UN, which initially had this 154 number, do you dispute those numbers? Or is the UN just shutting down its communications until 7 September?

Deputy Spokesperson: I don’t have for you at this stage any higher number beyond what we’ve given. However, as our presence in that area grows and as there’s been more of a restoration of peace to various areas, freeing up people to feel like they can speak, we’re trying to get more information about what’s going on. So we may find out more information about other attacks. So we would update the numbers accordingly once we get that. But right now at this stage what we’re doing is we’re spreading out into various communities. We’re looking into different reports and we’ll try and see what further information we have.

[The Spokesperson added later that the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) has put the number of rape victims at higher than 240, with more cases being reported.]

In fact, after the above transcribed questions, the UN released not only an updated number of victims, but a whole press release...