But after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, elements of those responsible fled into what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The region began to change as armed groups proliferated and competed. One of the more well-known of recent years is the Lord’s Resistance Army that originated in Uganda. Its leaders are wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Farrow said, “By 1998, there was an all-out war going on. And, as we know, it depended on who you listened to – five million is, I believe, the U.N. statistic of who’ve been killed. Others say seven million. Anyway you look at it, millions upon millions of civilians have perished since 1998.”

Rape is used frequently as a weapon of war in the eastern DRC. Farrow told the story of one woman.

“She talked of an ordinary morning. Her children were getting ready to go to school. Her husband was going out to the field. Militia entered her home, killed her husband and her children in front of her, raped her with a bayonet. Then pounded her legs to pulp and left her that way. She is now in one of the centers there where she is being helped minimally. She is in excruciating pain all the time. She can’t walk. She’s incontinent, rejected by what was left of her family,” she said.

She said that woman represents countless others.

“I visited with UNICEF a group that was on the run – displaced people – and they said every night militia came around five o’clock and raped people. And most recently, the night before, a one-month-old child had been raped. You go to one of the few health clinics that haven’t been plundered there – the fistula surgery is ongoing day and night,” she said.