Women sexually abused as displaced people suffer violence

Many of the women among more than 20,000 people who have returned to Brazzaville in recent weeks have been victims of violence and over 300 were reported to have been raped, sometimes repeatedly, according to a humanitarian report received by IRIN on Thursday. Relief agencies belied the real number to be significantly higher, it added. Most of the returnees - from 200,000 people who fled the capital in December - were also in "extremely precarious health" and, in response, MSF, Action Contre la Faim and Caritas have established supplementary and therapeutic feeding centres to address the 40 percent global and 20 percent severe malnutrition rates among children and, more unusually, equally malnourished adults, the report stated.

In a related development, around 13,000 refugees fleeing fighting were identified in the Gabonese border province of Nyanga by an evaluation mission to the region. A significant influx of Congolese refugees has also been reported in Haut Ogooue, Gabon, a country to which an estimated 20,000 refugees from the Republic of Congo have fled, the report added.