gender violence in conflict

In December 2013, the Avon Global Center hosted its annual conference in New York, NY on "State Responsibility to End Violence Against Women: The Due Diligence Principle and the Role of Judges."

The armed forces of Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda engaged in systematic violence against the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (the DRC). As part of that violence, approximately 2,000 HIV-positive Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers raped Congolese women and young girls in order to spread AIDS to the Congolese population. The DRC brought the complaint asserting, among other things, that the mass rape and deliberate infection of women and girls with HIV constituted a violation of human rights under the African Charter.