On Tuesday 3 June, with just a week to go until the start of the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, the Frontline Club hosted a fully booked event on preventing and responding to sexual violence in conflict, with specialist reference to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

From left: Liz Ford, Sarah Cotton, Serge-Eric, Fiona Lloyd-Davies and Dr Juliet Cohen at the Frontline Club.

In her opening statement, Dr Juliet Cohen, head of doctors at UK-based charity Freedom from Torture, said:

“I don’t know how many of you have ever been on a demonstration, felt compelled to write to the newspapers or protest in some way publicly. I went to a demonstration last year about the legal aid authority cuts and I could go and stand on the soapbox and say my piece and be identified by my name. I could be photographed, I could stand in the crowd afterwards and when it was time to leave, I could just walk away and go home knowing that nothing would happen to me. . . . What’s so chilling is to find how dangerous it is for some people in other countries to do what seems like such a simple thing.”

Cohen added a statistic which the panel itself found astonishing:

“I don’t think it’s widely known but in this country Home Office statistics show that almost 90% of victims of rape never disclose to the police and around 38% tell no-one at the time of the crime.”

After the opening statements from the four panelists the question and answer session began. The chair of the discussion, Liz Ford, deputy editor of The Guardian’s Global Development website, asked why we need this upcoming conference on sexual violence when we have already had six UN resolutions since 2000 in some way related to the issue of sexual violence.

Fiona Lloyd-Davies, a filmmaker who has been working in DRC since 2001, answered:

“Is anything concrete going to be achieved after all this talking, after people have come all this way? Because . . . as all of us know here, whether it’s in Shabunda or Minova . . . there are women and men and children who every night are terrified that the perpetrators will come again. . . . It’s a great opportunity but something concrete has to happen. . . . Is it really possible to make concrete policy decisions about reforming the Congolese judiciary in half an hour?”

In response, Sarah Cotton, the public affairs and communications advisor for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Mission in the UK and Ireland, said:

“Firstly, there’s a lot to be said for continuing to bang the drum. . . . There has to be a degree of realism about what can be achieved but it’s being spoken about and this is going to be extremely high level. There is a lot of energy that’s gone into this conference and its an issue – and we are all here today because it’s an issue – and we’re not dealing with it well.”

For more info about the @end_svc conference next week. More info about Fiona's film #seedsofhope head to http://t.co/oO0fNbVy6C ^OSJ

— Studio 9 Films (@Studio9films) June 3, 2014

When the discussion was opened to questions from the audience, the panel were asked whether systematic rape in countries like DRC is a problem that would be better addressed by tackling the root causes of the conflict there. Serge-Eric, co-founder and member of the Survivors Speak OUT! (SSO) network, replied:

“At the SSO network that is the first thing that we spoke about when it was asked to us. . . . The first thing that the women came up with was, ‘Look, the real problem in the Congo is the conflict going on into the Eastern Congo.’ Because of that conflict going on in the Eastern Congo, we tend to think [rape] only happens in that particular area, yet you found women that live in Kinshasa that’s been the victim of rape as well. . . . By holding the government to account, . . . ending that war means we can have a better way of preventing that happening again to the girls of Congo.”

The panel were also asked about whether the perpetrators of this horrific systematic rape in the Congo were aware of the damage that these actions were inflicting. Lloyd Davis said:

“Of course they understand. Rape has been used as a weapon of war for thousands of years so, yes they do. I think sometimes its opportune. One of the very significant things about the Minova rapes was that some of them said that they were angry that they had been forced to withdraw from Goma leaving their own families vulnerable. So they were worried about the consequences of what was going to happen to their wives and children . . . yet they took their anger and frustration out on the women of Minova.”

Serge-Eric also commented saying:

“I think we already covered that a bit by saying that torture is not by mistake, rape is not by any mistake, it’s not by any coincidence. It’s a very calculated act which tends to either put terror into the person who you might be hurting or trying to silence the person. I will not be accepting that someone, because they feel angry somewhere, will go and just rape someone – it doesn’t just happen but it’s a very manipulative act.”

Cohen also added:

“The intention of the torturer is to destroy their sexuality and their future, to destroy their virginity, their ability to marry, many people believe that they won’t be able to have children after they’ve been raped. Male victims of rape are told, ‘Now I’m making you a woman, so you won’t be able to be a man anymore, now you’ll be gay.’ . . . That’s the intention of this kind of torture, it’s to destroy people’s sexuality and their future.”

Watch and listen back here:

On 10 June, world leaders and NGOs will gather in London for a global summit with the aim to create “irreversible momentum against sexual violence in conflict and practical action that impacts those on the ground”. Ahead of the summit, we will be joined by a panel of speakers who have been working towards this aim for many years. They will be discussing what needs to be done to make it a reality.

The eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been described as the “rape capital of the world”. Increased cases of sexual violence against women in DRC coincided with the emerging armed conflicts of the early 1990s. Although Congolese law criminalises many forms of sexual violence, these laws are often not enforced.

With a particular focus on the DRC our panel will be mapping out what is being done to help individuals and societies affected by sexual violence and what more needs to be done. We will be asking what measures can be put in place to help victims bring the perpetrators to justice.

Chaired by Liz Ford, deputy editor of The Guardian’s Global Development website.

The panel:

Doctor Juliet Cohen is head of doctors at UK-based charity Freedom from Torture. She specialises in the examination of victims of torture, domestic violence and trafficking and has written over 1000 forensic reports documenting the psychological and physical sequelae of torture, including rape, for use in international protection claims. In 2012 she provided an expert witness statement on late disclosure of sexual violence for the European Court of Human Rights and is a commentator to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the new International Protocol on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict.

Fiona Lloyd-Davies is an award winning filmmaker and photojournalist who has worked in areas of conflict for over 20 years. She’s been working in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2001 making films for the BBC, Al Jazeera, Channel 4 News and France24. In recent years her work has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and led to the completion of Seeds of Hope – a feature length documentary that tells the story of women survivors of sexual violence in Eastern DRC through the extraordinary life and work of multiple rape survivor, Masika Katsuva. Seeds of Hope will be shown as part of the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, details here. She has just finished a film about the Minova rape trial which will be shown on BBC Newsnight.

Serge-Eric is a co-founder and member of the Survivors Speak OUT! (SSO) network. SSO is a group of torture survivors and former clients of Freedom from Torture who draw on their lived experience of torture and seeking protection through asylum in the UK, to influence decision-makers and raise public awareness of the challenges facing survivors trying to rebuild their lives. The network has worked with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the development of a new International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict.

Sarah Cotton is the public affairs and communications advisor for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Mission in the UK and Ireland. She leads the work of the ICRC with Parliament and works in both the UK and Ireland to communicate ICRC policy, operations and concerns. She also works to develop and disseminate ICRC policy on sexual violence and violence against healthcare. In this capacity she travelled to Lebanon in April 2014 to join an assessment of sexual violence in Syria.

Photograph: Andrew McConnell, 2008. A woman who was raped by a government soldier recovers at the Heal Africa hospital in Goma. Sexual violence has become systematic in DRC with the brutality of attacks often leaving the victims with severe damage to reproductive organs, resulting in multiple fistulas and incontinence. An average of 1,100 rape cases are reported each month.