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In what a senior UN official has called “the rape capital of the world,” UN peacekeepers failed to protect 242 women and children from being raped between July 30 and August 3 in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. MONUSCO, the UN-led mission in the DRC and the world’s largest peacekeeping mission, did not report the rapes until 10 days later. Yesterday, DRC Justice Minister Luzolo Bambi Lessa pledged to investigate 151 sexual assault and rape cases through a military tribunal. The war in the Congo ended 5 years ago, but Hutu and Tutsi rebels from neighboring Rwanda, and the Mai-Mai militia continue to use rape as a weapon to terrorize communities. While most of the rapes are attributed to the rebels, the UN’s 17,000 peace keepers have also come under criticism for failing to prevent the rapes. A 2010 Oxfam study found that social stigma caused more than half of women who were raped to wait over a year to report the assaults. After visiting the Congo twice and meeting rape survivors, acclaimed playwright Lynn Nottage wrote her Pulitzer prize-winning play, Ruined, which explores the experiences of Congolese women who have survived sexual assault in the context of this prolonged and violent conflict. The play is being performed at the Geffen Theater here in LA and one of my guests, Leontine Lanza, a refugee, and a survivor of rape and torture in the Congo, attended last weekend’s performance.

GUESTS: Leontine Lanza, refugee and rape/torture survivor from the Congo, Julie Gutman, Executive Director of the Program for Torture Victims

Find out about the Program for Torture Victims online at www.ptvla.org.

Ruined: for information and tickets please visit www.geffenplayhouse.com. The Geffen Theater is located at 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village in West Los Angeles, next to UCLA.