international humanitarian law has been amplified in judicial findings from the Ad Hoc Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda and has found final robust form in the language of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which establishes rape and sexual enslavement as crimes against humanity, and, in certain situations, rape as an act of genocide. (http://untreaty.un.org/cod/icc/statute/romefra.htm) . Yet despite the progression of international norms, sexual violence in conflicts continues. In many modern conflicts, sexual violence has become ever more prevalent and destructive. Mass rape campaigns have been documented in Sierra Leone,(15-20) Rwanda,(21-25) Liberia,(26-28) the Balkans,(29-31) Uganda,(32) Sudan,(9, 33-37) and DRC(2, 38-45). One of the head nurses walking past patients at Panzi Hospital’s new wing (Justin Ide, Harvard University News Office) RAPE EPIDEMIC IN DRC The war and ongoing political instability in Eastern DRC have been marked by extreme violence including widespread rape. The true extent of sexual violence is not known. However, in 2008 the International Rescue Committee reported having assisted over 40,000 Congolese rape survivors since 2003 in the province of South Kivu alone and the UN reported 27,000 sexual assaults for the year 2006(44). Since rape is often underreported and many women do not seek medical care after sexual violence, it is likely that these numbers underestimate the true incidence of sexual assault. The extent to which Congolese men have been targeted for sexual violence remains largely unknown. Male rape has been even more difficult to investigate since men have traditionally been even more reluctant than women to report experiences of sexual violence. Several international organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Medécins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Malteser, have reported their observations from working with rape survivors in Eastern DRC (38, 39, 41, 42, 44-46). Collectively, they describe the 6