But I would urge you not to blanket ban all journalists. Some really can do a good job. And there are ways you can vet us (I'd be happy to give you some tips via email; let me know). Sad to say, press coverage can be useful in situations like you describe, to garner awareness of -- and, the point, funding for -- underresourced but worthwhile projects. That seems to be a lesson of the strange situation Mike described, in which there is a lot of funding for victims of sexual violence in the Kivus, but almost nothing for women elsewhere in Congo, despite there being a significant problem in other parts of the country. Journalists -- the right ones -- can be allies. They don't always have to be enemies.

I and many others do reguarly refuse journalists and researchers from accessing the safe house and all survivors, no matter their age. However many journalists and researchers have managed to get in by 'giving something small' or by promising the staff that the story / research will bring a greater focus to their needs so will bring in more donors. And as i am not at the safe house 24 hours a day i am unable to stop this from happening occasionally, despite my best efforts to convince local staff not to let anyone in.

I am sure you have to agree that despite you having an ethical approach there are MANY that do not - and this of course applies to all professions, not just journalists. And because of this i and many others in the same line of work will continue to refuse journalists and researchers access to survivors, no matter the approach or promises made.

Thanks for joining in the conversation. It's great to have your perspective.

Two things, though: I don't think journalists pretend to be counselors. I can't speak for Kristof because I wasn't at the safe house he visited in Liberia (or with him on any other of his reporting trips), but reporters I worked with are always careful to be clear about their role. They explain what they can do and what they can't. The reporters I like working with best, and work with more than once, are also careful to explain to sources and to intermediaries what they can do to minimize harm to the victim. When I worked in Liberia with photographer Glenna Gordon on a story about rape prosecutions and rape survivors, we promised not to use names or faces unless the people we talked to were 18 or over and wanted us to. And even then, we decided not to use names or faces, out of concern that it might impact possibly pending legal action. (In the end, in fact, we decided it was better to tell a story from a case already closed; see below.)

But we didn't pretend to be counselors, and I don't think responsible journalists do. The best of us do our best to be careful in these situations, and we're helped by resources like the Dart Center on Journalism and Trauma, which offers guidance on how to interview survivors. Because you're right, it's a different kind of interview that requires a nuanced set of skills.

The second thing: Agencies like yours can keep journalists like me out. And it sounds from your post like your agency needed to do a better job of preparing staff like you for a journalist's visit (or at least alerting you to it), so that you can then answer those girls' questions. But that's not the journalist's fault.

I hate to be saying this, but you/your organization do(es)n't have to give us access. If you truly believe that it's going to be difficult to explain to the girls in your safe house that I am there to write a story and/or take a picture for genuine journalism, and not for any number of insidious reasons, then don't let me in.

Granted, if you said no, I would try to negotiate with you, if I thought the story was important. And the only reason I would be talking to you in the first place is that we share a set of values -- that the women and girls you help need and deserve that help. We would also most likely share an assumption -- that my writing a story about your organization can help them get that help. I can't imagine you (or your org's leaders) would waste valuable time on me if you (or they) didn't think that.

So if you said no, I would explain all that. If I were negotiating with you, I would explain my philosophy, show you my previous work, and if I were a photographer, show you how I can take pictures that protect identity -- right there, on the spot (and my collaborator Glenna Gordon did just this when we worked together, one of the many reasons I respect her so much.) And if you still didn't think it was a good idea, I would do a different story.

And that, in fact, is precisely what happened to me when I tried to do a story about a safe house in Liberia. They had been burned by some journalists in the past, and even with when I explained my victim-centered approach to my work, they didn't want to risk it. I respect that. And I did a different story.

The story I did, about a young girl who'd been raped and her experience testifying in Court E, I did the same way. We asked the court for help identifying a willing source, so the first point of contact between the victim and us was the advocate, a person the family trusted. Then Glenna and I explained our approach and philosophy to the girl, to her mother and to her court advocate (who was present for the interview); we set ground rules (including not naming her or saying where she lives); and we stuck to them. The result is a story that respects the victim and the legal process but gets an important story out there. (And when it finally airs, I'll add the link.)

My point in that last paragraph is to say that there ARE ways to be a responsible journalist AND to help the populations that you, Anna, serve. I agree with you that journalists need to be careful. And I agree with you that some journalists do their job poorly (or sometimes, more than poorly). But I don't think that means that careful, sensitive journalists can't -- or shouldn't -- do these stories, or talk to survivors. Some of whom, as I learned in Liberia, really want to tell their stories to people like me.

Recently whilst chatting with several young girls during a regular counselling session, we were talking about concerns they have regarding where they are living at the moment (a secret safe house). Two girls mentioned that they were confused about why people had come in the previous week and taken their photos. i don;t know who these people were, nor do i know who gave them permission to come to the safe house let alone to take photos without even seeking permission, or explaining to the girls what and why they were doing what they were doing.

It does not matter if your story will lose impact because you do not have a photo. It does not matter if your story seems less appealing if you have to change names etc. What matters is the impact that this has on the survivors.

We spend months working with survivors convincing them that we will not share their stories. That no one in their family or community needs to know what they tell us. We spend months building their courage so that they can testify in court.

What do i do when a girl refuses to go to court because she is worried some one will take her picture? What do i tell a girl who because her photo was taken she wants to leave the safe house? How do i convince a survivor of sexual assault that the person that took her photo was not paid by the perpetrators family to come in and take her photo so as to shame her in the community? These are all problems that i and other counsellors have to deal with after 'well meaning' journalists come to get their story.

I wrote a letter to Kristoff after his Liberian visit, where he went to a safe house and interviewed a young survivor of sexual assault. What skills does he have to be doing this? To be asking a young girl why she is in the safe house? How she is feeling?

I did not receive a reply.

I don't pretend to be a journalist. So journalists should stop pretending to be counsellors.

This is fascinating, in part because of something I heard from a Congolese journalist about a year ago. She covers rape and the aftermath and health-related things, which we talked about, in South Kivu. She told me that rape is a problem from outside; that Congolese men would never rape. I think she was quietly pinning the blame on the Rwandans (FDLR).

My own bias as a dutiful universalist is that there's probably not one culture more or less prone to rape than another...

This is really fascinating information, Mike. Thanks.

Regarding the rape crisis as being nationwide, it is true and one of the misconceptions is that it is primarily a war-linked problem; certainly the war is part of it, but rape in the DRC (as well as anywhere) is also a breakdown-of-law-and-order problem and an attitude-toward-women-and-sex problem. Certainly the number of incidents in North and South Kivu are higher than elsewhere due to the war, but they are not astronomically so, and the key thing is that funding is not proportional.

It is hard to have statistics nationwide, because most monitoring activities are concentrated in the Kivus and Kinshasa -- in large parts of the DRC we just don't know what is going on. Where there are more activities against rape, more cases also get registered. For example in Katanga, which you cite, health zone coverage is 35%; in North Kivu it is 70%, in South Kivu it is 61% (Kinshasa itself is only 40%). So, in Katanga fewer health facilities are available to treat rape victims (or any other kind of patient), and thus they aren't available to record the frequency; because they go unrecorded, they get less support, and the cycle continues.

BUT there are some things we do know - no one can know all of the DRC, so I'll take this from the UN's 2010 humanitarian action plan in the DRC rather than anecdotes:

1) Humanitarians in just about every province reported that rape and sexual violence is a problem, and increasing in their area.

2) In one single health zone in Bandundu (Kasongo Lunda), they claim 180 rape cases a month over the first six months of 2009 (primarily due to the expulsions from Angola). As a point of reference, the headlines say that there are 160 cases a week for all of North and South Kivu. (Note the month/week difference in reporting -- but still given the difference in sizes between one health zone and two whole provinces, the rate is astronomically high)

3) In Kasai Occidentale over the first six months of 2010, the humanitarians wrote that they had identified more than 1,000 victims, NONE of whom received any care or treatment. Kinshasa had nearly 500. Both provinces had health zone coverage less than 50%, and comparatively few humanitarian actors, so it is reasonable to assume the actual rates are much, much higher. By comparison, North Kivu had registered 2,200 in that period, but had treatment.

4) Tembo territory in Bandundu reports more than 300 cases a quarter, higher than all but one territory in N Kivu, and comparable to the worst in S Kivu. But the budgets aren't even comparable -- to take the HAP budget's Health and Protection sections (the two sectors concerned with sexual violence), Bandundu's budget is 7.8 million, while North Kivu's is 33 million. This is worse when we consider government donor efforts -- both recent announcements by USAID of new multi-million dollar funding to help rape victims were limited to the Kivu provinces, or the East. Bandundu is a larger province, with lower health coverage rates, and with some areas that have higher rates of sexual violence (and many areas where we have no idea). But less media awareness.

5) Radio Okapi the UN radio reported that in the month of January five localities (villages) received more than 4,000 expulsees from Angola, including 800 women. Of those 800 women, 220 were raped.

6) There are lots of very sound reasons why focus and funding goes to the Kivus. These areas have been more consistent in recording appallingly high rates -- I am not saying that there should be less funding in the Kivus, or even that a disproportionate amount shouldn't be directed there. But the impression in the media that it is only a problem in the Kivus is just not true, and unfortunately the rate of funding corresponds to media coverage and not prevalence rates.

Most of the other places where high rates of rape were reported were places linked to the Angola expulsions. Rape is systematic in the expulsions -- thousands of rapes, tens of thousands of people dumped in the jungle, and for all of the 'awareness' being raised on Congo, I have never heard of a single US journalist apart from a wire service, let alone columnist or activist group mention it once. This is why I am frankly pretty skeptical about Kristof and others who come to the country to cover the most-covered story here. It is a big country, with big problems, and the Kivus are just one part of it.

What Nick Kristof has that most journalists I know do not is a huge platform. He probably can look at the number/nature of comments on his blog about his last column, the number of emails he gets, and probably a host of slightly more personal indicators and see changes, which he might use to gauge impact. (I don't know; I didn't ask him for his data.) It's possible he's gotten emails that say, "This helped changed X policy." Certainly fan mail is some kind of indicator; how important...I don't know. These are dilemmas journalists and advocates share -- what good does awareness really do?

Quick question though, Mike: The Congo rape crisis is "nationwide"? I only know the Kivus, and then not too well, but I'm surprised by that. And I would certainly guess that if there is a lot of rape across Congo, the nature of rape in South Kivu is different than, say, in Katanga. But you probably know better than me, so please tell me more.

Joanna, that's a good point, about the lack of a statement or something from whomever facilitated the trip. I also appreciate your explanation of the situation of NGOs who call in the media... It's true the NGOs and the journalists each have their own agenda -- but I think both often equally guilty of hiding it from the other. No communications person I've ever sat down with has said straight, "So here's what we're pushing and what we want you to write about: Blah blah blah..." It's much more subtle. And because the comm people manage my access to a place -- for whichever of the dozens of story-related reasons I may need to be there -- there's an amount of that I have to listen to, just to get in. And often, even if I'm clear about what I need there...

So to me the question is, how does a journalist know that they have impact in a piece like this one - and confidently say that there is a difference in 'impact' whether eyes are covered with grey fuzzies or not? How do you know if writing a tear-jerker on a rape victim in Bukavu is more useful than writing about a starving street kid in Kinshasa?

It isn't clear to me what the causal link is between any particular article and changing the lives of real people - is it changing policy, encouraging westerners to give money, encouraging readers to feel bad for the specific people in the article? And how can you say you had an impact? Fan mail?

To me it isn't clear that attention helps in and of itself -- 'awareness' of sexual violence in the parts of the DRC journalists most commonly visit has yielded lots of funds that are earmarked to the provinces, people and places mentioned in articles, which is good, but the rape crisis is nationwide so the money doesn't necessarily go where it will do the most good; it seems pretty clear to me that awareness of the problem only in specific parts of the DRC distorts the aid flows -- though the flip side is who knows how much assistance would be any if there was less coverage. I have read some people who speculate that coverage of darfur caused donors to over-emphasize peacekeepers rather than WatSan and other stuff (but then who knows how many resources would have been there at all had it not been for the coverage).

There are obviously shades of grey, but my biggest question is -- what exactly is a columnist (not a reporter) trying to change in the lives of Congolese, by visiting eastern DRC and writing about people? What 'impact' and how do you know?

I'm no expert, but I'm going to provide a perspective from the INGO side, which tends to defend the "victim" and the vulnerable because that's what humanitarian workers do. At the end of the day, neither a journalist nor an NGO is able to stick around and ensure there are no repercussions meted out against a 9-year old girl; personal and professional capacity doesn't allow for it. However, in terms of getting a message across, showcasing our work and urging donors to pump more money into programming, heart-breaking imagery and testimonies are a part of the storytelling. Aside from the political and economic under-the-table maneuvering that goes on in national parliaments, the EC, UN and other round-tables that determine where and how development money is spent, prioritizing the countries that money goes to and the programmes it is spent on also comes down to informal networks/relationships between organizations and governments, and how well an INGO/NGO/CSO can illustrate how much their expertise is needed on the ground, and how well they can work while staying out of the government's hair.

This is where the media comes in. A role that is often unclear, usually messy and sometimes downright wicked. For the most part, fieldtrips and interviews for journalists are organized by humanitarian actors with the intent of highlighting best case practices and showing how donor money can make a positive impact. Some organizations are running their own brand of guerrilla warfare and just want exposure: good/bad...it doesn't matter. Sometimes facilitating interviews is done to call the international community's attention to how rotten elements of a country/government/region still are in order to boost operations and involvement. In certain cases it is done when an organization has strict rules and regulations about breaking any vow of 'habitual neutrality,' therefore members of the press are brought in to do the dirty work. Yet, what unfortunately happens a lot of the time is that an organization facilitates interviews with the hope of getting a strong message out to educate and enlighten those outside their sphere of influence, but a journalist may have their own agenda that was not shared in advance with the NGO, and in the end information is misused, manipulated or watered down for sensationalist purposes. I'm not implying that this is what happened in this particular case, but when it does occur, there's not a bloody thing we can do about it.

But, and I stress the but, I think the telling factor of what underlying idea the NGO might have had can be seen in the media response. Not bothering to issue a sort of response or follow-up statement when there is a fall-out or backlash implies a degree of tacit compliance.

At the end of the day the story was about a minor, and an impoverished one at that, which makes the whole "act of naming" sketchy. Based on this I'm inclined to agree with the camp of people who criticize Kristof's choice. Once someone hits the age of 18, the gloves are off and when consent is given a journalist is empowered to broadcast the information as they see fit. However, there will always be ramifications for those who agree to bear witness (be they minors or adults) and it's a matter of whether those retributions come in the distant or not-so-distant future. The responsibility ultimately lies with the journalist to weigh all potential consequences seriously, as well as his/her Editor to take stock of what they are about to run; but, it also lies with those who take the steps to bridge the divide. I'd be interested to know what kind of psycho-social programming endorses the positive impacts brought about by encouraging a 9 year old girl to publicly share her rape experience.

Mike, my first reaction was the same -- there are a lot of ways to obscure someone's identity that doesn't seem to me to lose impact (see Glenna Gordon's photos, for example). What I thought was compelling about his second email is that he's done that, and he says there's a difference. He would know better than I would -- I don't have those numbers -- so that interests me. Doesn't mean it's the right choice, of course.

Your point about an NGO facilitating this is interesting...would love to hear from others in the NGO world on that. One question, though, Mike: When you say 'measuring humanitarian impact is complicated,' how would you suggest doing it? Or how have you seen others do it? I'm really curious about the process of this.

Henri, you're probably right that the point about tensions between journalists and aid workers would seem purer in a different context. But it's still a worthwhile point, I think, whether it's intentionally distracting or not. On the other hand, I think you're right on about this: "A journalist who believes they are taking the wrong stance should contribute to the debate and document the negative consequences. But illustrating this by putting on the web the name & face of, let's say, a 13-year old girl..."