When a woman goes in search of firewood and returns empty handed, Laétitia Bukébo starts to worry.
She's worried about robbery – but also far more.
"Each time a woman returns from the forest without wood, we immediately know she's been raped," Bukébo says, speaking through an interpreter. "The men who rape her rob her, meaning that everything she has with her — even the wood she has with her — is taken. Everyone is looking at her with accusing looks, looks that judge her."
Bukébo is an 18-year-old law student in Goma, a city in the far eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Decades of war in the area have left roughly 7 million people displaced; at least 500,000 of them have gone to the outskirts of Goma, where there are many sprawling camps for internally displaced people.
These camps are barebones and often lack basics. There are latrines without doors and tents without doors that lock — all contributing to the risk of sexual assault. And there's another issue too. Many of the camps lack sufficient food.
Women residents often venture into nearby fields to grow food as best they can and into forests to forage for plants to feed their families and wood to sell or use for cooking. Danger awaits them, says Bukébo, who visits the camps and meets with women as part of UNICEF's child reporters program.
There's new evidence to back up Bukébo's grim observations.
According to a report published Tuesday by Physicians for Human Rights, there's been a "massive influx" of sexual violence in eastern DRC in recent years. When group representatives interviewed local clinicians about patients, they heard harrowing stories: Children as young as 3 years old raped; victims sometimes held days or weeks in captivity; others penetrated with sharp objects.
"The level of sexual violence is shocking. It's staggering," says Saman Zia-Zarifi, director of Physicians for Human Rights.
The report cites nearly 90,000 documented sexual assaults in 2023 in DRC, up from 40,000 in 2021. Zia-Zarifi believes this is a severe undercount.
"First, a number of survivors — especially boys — are reluctant to report," he explains. "Second, a huge number of survivors don't have access to clinicians, so we can't get that information. And third, unfortunately, a number — we don't know exactly how many — of cases of sexual violence are followed by the killing of of the victim, and so we don't have survivors who can report it."
The PHR findings were buttressed by a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) report published three weeks ago, documenting an "explosion of sexual violence." The medical charity's teams treated an "unprecedented" number of sexual assault victims in 2023, the report stated, again with Goma and its surrounding camps at the epicenter. In 2023, MSF clinicians cared for more than 25,000 sexual assault survivors compared to an average of 10,000 victims a year in recent times. Two-thirds of them said they were assaulted by armed men, often by multiple perpetrators at once. More than 8,000 of the women later realized they were pregnant and sought abortion.
UNICEF has also taken note. "'We've been seeing this skyrocketing," says Ramatou Toure, UNICEF's chief of child protection in the DRC. "When you go to the camps, almost every girl or every woman has experienced sexual violence" or knows a close family member or community member who has been a victim.
Toure says the risks are both outside the camp and inside it: "If you go to fetch water in the camp, it's a risk. If you go to the restroom, it's a risk. A lot of the daily tasks become risk calculations."
The impacts of sexual assault are "massive and catastrophic," says a doctor in the eastern DRC, who requested anonymity because he's afraid speaking will jeopardize his safety since health facilities have recently come under attack from militias. He says many patients he's treated have been not only traumatized but deeply stigmatized because of the sexual assault. "When a mother is raped, her husband will throw her out of his house," he says through an interpreter.
Triggered by a decades-long conflict
The story of surging sexual assault is inextricably linked to the armed conflict that surrounds it.
This conflict itself dates back three devastating decades. It was triggered by the Rwandan genocide, when both refugees and combatants flooded over the border into neighboring DRC. This swath of DRC has been in a state of on-again-off-again conflict ever since. Since 1996, millions of people have died as a result of the strife and the conflict is considered one of the deadliest since World War II.
Today, this stretch of eastern DRC — about the size of California — is packed with armed groups. The country's military is battling the M23, a rebel force that is widely seen as being supported by Rwanda (which denies this allegation) and reemerged in 2021 with a new ferocity. On top of that, there are "300 to 400 marauding militias," says Paul Nantulya, a research associate at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, an academic institution within the U.S. Department of Defense. Some of the militias are backed by the DRC government and others are proxies for neighboring states or supported by individuals.
"What you have is a vortex of misbehavior," he says.
And there's a prize for all the parties to the conflict: a rich underground supply of minerals like gold, copper and cobalt that are used in today's electronics. The mines have created an "industry of war," says Joshua Walker, director of programs at the Congo Research Group at New York University. Many of the players seek to control the mines and make a profit by exporting the minerals.
In all the years of fighting, sexual violence has been an issue. More than a decade ago Margot Wallström, the United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, called the DRC the "rape capital of the world" after more than 8,000 women were raped in one year. Around the same time, Hillary Clinton visited Goma and condemned sexual violence. Over the years, so did celebrities like Ben Affleck and George Clooney.
But, as the two new reports show, there's been a terrible new turn. Rapes are surging far beyond anything seen here before.
Why are rapes surging?
Experts say that an air of impunity has long pervaded the eastern DRC when it comes to sexual violence. But recent changes in the area have heightened this sense that there will be no consequences for illegal acts.
One key factor is that, in 2023, the newly elected DRC government told the U.N. to withdraw their peacekeeping forces, deeming them ineffective and unpopular. The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution to end its mission. This sequence of events came despite escalating violence. Patrick Muyaya Katembwe, the spokesperson for the DRC government, was not available for an interview with NPR.
"The surge [in sexual violence] that you've seen in this past year alone is directly attributed to the vacuum that has been created by the forced withdrawal [of the peacekeepers]," says Nantulya.
The first stage of the withdrawal — completed in June 2024 — involved handing over some U.N. mission buildings and other assets to the DRC government and its partners. The items transferred, including a new helipad, were worth over $10 million. "And they were looted, thoroughly looted, equipment destroyed," says Nantulya.
"This is not to say that the U.N. peacekeeping forces do not have problems, but nevertheless, they were providing civilian protection," he says, adding that they also helped with health and education. While the withdrawal is ongoing, there is no timetable for the next phases and some peacekeepers remain in the area. Still, Nantulya says, the damage was already done, giving perpetrators of violence a greater sense that they will not face consequences.
Another factor is that a few years ago the DRC government started supporting armed militias known as the Wazalendo in Swahili — or patriots — to fight against the M23. The government support means that "these groups are now operating with more impunity than previously," says NYU's Walker.
Is there any hope for change?
No one expects that the impunity or the sexual assaults to change quickly — especially since global attention to the DRC conflict has waned in recent years — but there are small signs of hope.
Grassroots efforts at change are underway, says UNICEF's Toure. For example, she says, women are organizing so that when they have to go to the bathroom or leave camp they do so in groups, sometimes even with a few men accompanying them.
"It has worked [to deter rapes] to some extent," she says. "And if something happens, there's always someone who can help the other. And we've seen it help with resilience. We have seen that being in that collective actually gives them strength."
Toure says there are other efforts — UNICEF is providing flashlights for night outings and designing locks for the plastic zipper doors on tents in many of the camps. She says the aid group has also been experimenting with direct cash assistance and job training, since many victims said having an income would help them avoid going to the fields or forest for food.
On a larger scale, the International Criminal Court announced this month that it is renewing its investigation into alleged war crimes in the DRC. Their previous work in the country ended due to limited resources, says Mandiaye Niang, deputy prosecutor of the ICC. He calls concerns about sexual assaults a "major priority" as the ICC resumes work in the DRC.
But some international experts say these efforts pale in comparison to what's needed.
Nantuyla would like to see an emergency response by the international community to "simply contain the physical violence." Then, he says, a new government is needed in the DRC that can get control of the area and ensure the safety of civilians as they go about their daily lives.
Joyeux Mushekuru, who runs the PHR's DRC office, agrees. "Among all the recommendations that we can make, it's peace first — for peace to return, for people to stop the conflict," he says. "If the conflict ends, a huge amount of sexual violence tied to the conflict will also be able to end."
In the meantime, there is one thing that makes Laetitia Bukébo optimistic — it's the hope she sees in the eyes of the women in the camps of a better future for themselves and their families.
"Despite the men who can come into their tents at night, despite the fact that they can be there and not know what they will eat tomorrow or tonight, they still speak with a certain assurance and hope," she says.
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