Back in the Netherlands, I've just missed my Congolese friend and colleague Chouchou Namegabe. As a representative of over fifty human rights organisations in Eastern Congo, she addressed the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. She criticized the indictment against militia leader Thomas Lubanga, first prisoner of the ICC, calling it much too limited: 'Why does the ICC judge Thomas Lubanga for enrolment of child soldiers, but not for committing sexual crimes? This comes as a real shock for Congolese women.' In a petition Eastern-Congolese ngo's urge the Court to invest more in the investigation and prosecution of sexual crimes, commited on a large scale by every party in the conflict in Eastern Congo. Up till now the ICC has failed to take the systematic sexual violence committed against women seriously, criticize Chouchou and her Eastern-Congolese partners. Seventy percent of the victims of the violende in the Congo is female, French research recently showed.
