Al Jazeera, May 12, 2011

More than 1,100 women are raped every day in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), making sexual violence against women 26 times more common than previously thought, a study has concluded.

More than 400,000 women and girls between the ages of 15 to 49 were raped in the war-ravaged country in central Africa during a 12-month period in 2006 and 2007, according to the study published in the American Journal of Public Health on Wednesday. That is 26 times more than the 15,000 women that the United Nations has reported were raped there during the same 12 months.

"Our results confirm that previous estimates of rape and sexual violence are severe underestimates of the true prevalence of sexual violence occurring in the DRC," Amber Peterman, lead author of the study, said.

'Chronic underreporting'....

Also see:

How can we explain the rape epidemic in Congo?
By Elizabeth Dickinson, Passport @ Foreignpolicy.com, May 11, 2011

For the last decade and a half, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has  spawned unfathomable statistics....

But the more alarming question, perhaps, isn't why we aren't doing something about this; it's the fact that many people have tried, and failed. Despite democratic elections, a U.N. peacekeeping mission, millions of dollars of aid, and women's groups on the ground who have fought back with undaunted courage, these latest figures suggest that the epidemic of rape is getting worse, not better. Something isn't working. Why is sexual violence so persistent?....