DRC: The Sexual Violence that Fuels a Twisted War

It's a funny feeling when you step off an airplane at Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's like having landed on a military base. Scores of UN aircraft line the tarmac, all part of a massive nearly 20,000-strong peacekeeping operation now known as MONSUCO. Dozens of vehicles, belonging to the over 100 aid groups based in the city, move in and out of security gates as they transport supplies and people bound for airstrips scattered across the vast, troubled countryside.

But aside from this gigantic foreign presence, the evidence of the civil war that has plagued the DRC on and off for so long is not so obvious. In fact, the greatest sign of destruction is from Mt. Nyragungu, the overshadowing volcano that bears down on the city from the north. After its last eruption in 2002, much of Goma was covered in a layer of basaltic rock that has remained ever since. Every once in a while, though, a truck drives by with the letters UNHCR painted on its side. Through the dust kicked up by its tires you can catch a glimpse of its cargo — several dozen fragile figures huddled in the back under the shadow of a tarpaulin. They are the Congo's internally displaced persons, most from the countryside and almost certainly victims of war.

The rebels come at night

It is here in the Congo's dense jungle, the second largest rainforest on the planet, where nearly 80 per cent of the DRC's population finds itself caught in the middle of an ongoing conflict between rebel groups and government forces.

Most people here are poor farmers, hoping for enough food to feed their families and maybe a little extra to sell at the market. But that already fragile existence is fraught with the uneasy feeling that at any moment their village could be the target of an attack. These attacks often happen at night. Armed men break down doors, loot, murder and rape indiscriminately. Entire villages have been robbed and sometimes burned to the ground in a show of force and intimidation. Villagers are sent scattering. The lucky ones lose only their possessions.

One woman I spoke with lived in a village near Masis, in North Kivu province, that was attacked by rebels in March. "It was around 1 a.m. when three men came into my house," she told me. "They took all my goods and beat me. Then two of the men took turns raping me. When they were finished the third one came in and asked for money. I told him I didn't have any so he beat me again."She was four months pregnant at the time. When I asked about her husband, she said he had been killed in a previous attack in December 2009. The group known as FDLR "looted our village and told him to carry their loot into the forest. They killed him along the way."

Sexual violence

Sexual violence is among the most egregious of the crimes that takes place here. Though it is usually young and middle-aged women who suffer the worst of it, girls as young as one and women over 65 have been assaulted as well. In the most vile way, these women and girls are violated, sometimes beaten, mutilated and gang raped while their families are forced to watch.Women are also especially vulnerable, because they are usually the ones who fetch the firewood and work the fields. Alone in the countryside, they fall pry to the roving militiamen who happen to stumble across them.

For years now, high-ranking UN officials have spoken out strongly against rape as a weapon of war, calling it "an epidemic" and the eastern DRC "the rape capital of the world." There were 18,000 reported sexual assaults in the DRC in 2009, down from 27,000 in 2006 when the conflict was in full bore. But that downturn is little solace to the victims.

In the Congolese culture there is a huge stigma that surrounds a raped woman and the impact of the rape lasts far beyond the act itself. The victims are exposed to a host of sexually transmitted infections, medical complications and psychological trauma, the effects of which cannot be understated. At the same time, when they need support and help the most, they can be too afraid to seek it out. A rape victim's husband and sometimes her family will often abandon her, because she is seen as being "damaged." So she often suffers alone, in virtual solitude, a shadow of the person she once was.

Heal Africa

In a new twist on this bitter conflict, there have been recent reports of male victims of sexual violence. There have also been numerous rape accusations against government troops. During my three days in Masisi, an important transfer centre in the heart of the strife-torn eastern Congo, I learned of two young men who reported having been sodomized at gunpoint by armed militiamen. The statistics on male rape are very limited, however, since men are even more reluctant than women to come forward.

For many in the region, the only option is to flee the fighting. In North Kivu province alone, over 750,000 new "internally displaces persons" were registered last year. While most take up residence with host families, tens of thousands move into one of the 45 overcrowded camps in the province where health and sanitation are serious problems. Malnutrition is rampant and disease spreads quickly. In these camps, people have little or no land to farm and that is one of their chief complaints. They are forced to live off of monthly food rations from the UN or aid groups, which they say are only enough for a week or two at best.

When I spoke with some of the elders in Mungote camp, one of the largest in the eastern DRC, their resounding desire was to return home and rebuild their lives. But until the fighting eases in their region, that simply isn't an option.

One of the most inspiring people I met in the region was Dr. Jo Lusi, a native of the DRC and the founder of HEAL Africa — the hospital Governor General Michaëlle Jean visited in April. A highly respected orthopedic surgeon, he is considered by many to be the father of women's rights in the DRC. Until fairly recently, the penalty for a man found guilty of rape was to pay one chicken. But largely because of his urging — particularly during his recent stint as a senator in the DRC's transitional government — rape is now recognized as the highest possible crime.

It is a small victory, perhaps, amidst the ugliness of a decades-long conflict. But for a people who seem determined not to be defined by the rape and murder that has plagued their countryside, it is also a glimmer of hope.