Joy/Explorations, 1. Sexual Violence, Religion and Women’s Rights in a Global Perspective

In her 2014 PhD study on The Role of African Christian Churches in Dealing with Sexual Violence against Women: The Case of the DRC, Rwanda and Liberia, Elisabet le Roux (Le Roux 2014, 201–204), concludes that in these three post-conflict African states, neither governments and states, nor international security and peacekeeping bodies, nor various CSOs, including the churches, manage (or even try) to create a culture of accountability for war and post-war rape. ​ ​While I largely agree with Le Roux’s understanding, I wish in this article to extend the scope of analysis. In the first place, I would point to the racist-colonial assumptions that feed into an overly narrow and potentially spectacularizing focus on sexual violence on the African continent.​ ​ In the second section, I follow Joseph Conrad in linking the ‘heart of darkness,’ sexual violence in the DRC, with the heart of darkness of and in London, one of the centres of the European empire. I do this by claiming that sexual violence against women in the DRC, figured in western media as one of the global depths of human depravity, cannot be de-linked from western economic interests in that region.​ ​Thirdly and finally, I draw attention to the systemic failure of western secular liberalism to protect women against sexual violence. This time around, I locate another ‘heart of darkness’ in and of empire, and this time on the North American continent.