DRC: Nearly 200 Women and Children Raped in Systematic Attack in Eastern DRC

As reports of nearly 200 women raped in a systematic attack emerge from Kivu Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Medical Foundation reflects on the use of rape as a weapon of war.

The UN and humanitarian groups operating in Eastern Congo have received reports that up to 200 women and children were raped when hundreds of rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and Mai-Mai, a Congolese group, raided villages in North Kivu between July 30 and August 3.

It has been well-documented that rape has been endemic in the conflict in DRC. Despite the brokering of a peace deal in 2003, attacks on civilians in the east of the country by rebel groups remain rife. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a UN agency coordinating work on sexual violence in DRC, estimates that 200,000 women and girls have been the victims of sexual violence since 1998. In 2008 alone, it recorded nearly 16,000 cases of which 65% were children, mostly adolescent girls. Attacks are conducted with impunity, with perpetrators fearing little risk of prosecution.

Last year, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1888 mandating peacekeeping missions to protect women and girls from sexual violence in armed conflict around the world. This follows the universal adoption of Resolution 1325 in 2000 – requiring parties in a conflict to respect women's rights and to support their participation in peace negotiations and in post-conflict reconstruction. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, pointed to the recent attacks in North Kivu as "an example of how sexual violence undermines efforts to achieve and maintain stability in areas torn by conflict, but striving for peace," and pledged US support in bringing the perpetrators to justice.

The Medical Foundation has treated hundreds of torture survivors who have fled to the UK from DRC in recent years. In 2009, the MF received 112 referrals – 56% of the survivors we treated had been raped.

The MF welcomes the deployment of the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, Atul Khare, to the DRC to investigate the incidence of mass rape, and calls on UN member states to take further action to protect civilians from sexual violence and prosecute those responsible. If the survivors of these attacks are to achieve access to justice, they must be given the opportunity to speak out about what they have experienced, and their safety assured throughout this process. [See Justice Denied report for the MF's detailed recommendations on making the right to reparation and rehabilitation real for women torture survivors]

Impact of rape on women torture survivors
“W” is a torture survivor who has received treatment from the Medical Foundation after she experienced repeated rape while in detention in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

She is unable to remember a significant proportion of her time in detention – but she can recall the face of one of the guards, and the “rape cell” where she was taken at night, alongside other women. She remembers the smell of the cell and feel of cold concrete on her back.

She began seeing an MF counsellor in the UK following an incident in the city she lived in: she walked past a butcher's shop and the sight and smell of blood made her collapse in the street. She felt a profound sense of terror and was violently sick. She was often overwhelmed by strong physical responses to triggers in the environment, which she was unable to connect to her history of sexual violence.

Read more about the experience of women torture survivors seeking justice and rehabilitation in the MF's report Justice Denied
Many of the women torture survivors referred to the Medical Foundation for treatment who have experienced rape present severe mental health problems as well, often, as physical injuries. Family therapists Jocelyn Avigad and Zohreh Rahimi who contributed to the MF report Rape as a Method of Torture said, "many [survivors] have wished that they had been killed instead, but that is precisely the aim of the torturer...to render the victim fragmented, traumatised and in this way ‘invaded by the enemy' to the very core of his or her being."

Dr Abigail Seltzer, consultant psychiatrist at the Medical Foundation, says that "knowing she has little or no chance of redress adds to the sense of hopelessness, powerless and despair experienced by a victim of persecutory rape" and she adds that "this is the wider aim of perpetuating subjugation of a targeted population."

‘Normalisation of rape' worrying trend in DRC
Reported rapes in DRC have doubled over the past year according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), despite the Congolese government adopting a strategy to combat sexual violence against women. However there are reports which attribute much of the sexual violence against women to the Congolese army itself. HRW say thousands have been raped by government soldiers as well as rebel forces as both sides continue to use rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war.

An alarming trend to emerge from a decade of sexual violence against women is that of the rise in rape perpetrated by civilians. Earlier this year the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) in conjunction with Oxfam released a study which showed a 17 fold increase in the number of civilian rapes, implying a normalisation of rape among the civilian population. In 2004, 15% of sexual assaults were attributed to the civilian population, in 2008 this number had increased to 38%. The report noted that in focus groups, Congolese men acknowledged that rape had become a norm for young males who had grown up during the conflict in Eastern DRC.