With the support of Oxfam America and in collaboration with medical staff at Panzi Hospital, researchers from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) performed a retrospective cohort study of sexual violence survivors presenting to Panzi Hospital with a specific aim of answering the following outstanding questions:
The survey of 569 civilians living in 20 conflict-ridden communities across North and South Kivu shows that the Congolese government's military operations against the rebel Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR) are resulting in escalating insecurity for civilians, who are being attacked by all sides. Many in the Congolese army are committing abuses, with the FDLR increasing its retaliation against civilians for the offensive, the agency said.
Some 800,000 people have been displaced in North and South Kivu since the offensive was launched at the beginning of the year, according to the UN.
"The war is far from over for ordinary civilians. Over 80 percent of the people we interviewed said that security is worse now compared to a year ago," said Marcel Stoessel, head of Oxfam in the Democratic Republic of Congo. "The offensive against the FDLR was supposed to bring peace to eastern Congo, but our survey shows people are living in constant fear of violent attack. This suffering is not inevitable. It is happening because world leaders have decided that collateral damage is an acceptable price to pay for removing the FDLR. But as the people we met can testify, that price is far too high."
Half the communities surveyed said sexual violence had increased dramatically since the offensive began in January, and it was found to be widespread in all communities. Women were at most risk of sexual violence, but cases of children, some as young as four, being brutally raped were reported in more than half of the communities. Three of the 20 communities reported rape against men, including eight recent cases of male rape in one community in South Kivu.
A quarter of the communities spoke of torture. People were reportedly being buried up to their necks in holes in the ground by the FDLR until they agreed to pay a 'fine' in exchange for their release, with a few communities speaking of underground rooms where people are beaten and plunged in barrels of salt water. In addition, other militias were reportedly carrying out torture, as well as looting and child recruitment.
Abuses by large sections of the Congolese army were reported in every community. Half of communities spoke of forced labor, with mostly men and adolescent boys made to carry goods for the army. Communities in North Kivu reported particular aggression by newly integrated units made up of ex-rebel soldiers from the disbanded Mai Mai and the National Congress for People's Defense (CNDP), who have not yet been paid and justify extortion as "contributions" to their up-keep. In North Kivu, the Congolese army was identified as the main perpetrator of sexual violence.
All communities with an FDLR presence reported an upsurge in attacks on civilians by the militia in response to the recent government military operations, with one group describing the operations as "like waking a sleeping devil." In Mwenga region, South Kivu, communities taking part in an earlier survey in March 2009 had reported that violence by the FDLR had diminished, but just two months later they were reporting high levels of death threats, sexual violence and violent looting. People had reportedly been killed for saying the rebel group should return to Rwanda. Many of these villages have now been abandoned.
All communities feared reprisal attacks, and looting and extortion were widespread. Both the FDLR and large parts of the Congolese army were reported to force civilians to hand-over money and possessions. When opposing forces arrived, the civilians were then branded as collaborators for this and subjected to attack.
All communities surveyed asked to be protected better by the Congolese army and peacekeepers. More foot patrols by MONUC peacekeepers were requested, especially in the fields and small roads where violence was a great threat. The majority of those surveyed supported dialogue and peaceful repatriation of foreign armed groups, and in four communities, respondents went so far as to call for the military action against the FDLR to be abandoned. Only two communities supported forced disarmament.
"The results of this survey should be a wake-up call to those in the UN Security Council supporting the current military offensive, said Stoessel. "In only five communities, people said the Congolese army was keeping them safe. Many interviewees said they feared the army and the FDLR equally. The Congolese people need an army that protects on them, not preys on them. Oxfam welcomes the Congolese government's recent announcement that there will be zero tolerance of abuses in the army, and urges them to keep to this bold commitment. The peacekeeping force should withhold support from the operation if abuses continue or go unpunished, and must insist that known human rights abusers are removed from participating in the operations."
]]>According to Oxfam, while a solution is needed to halt appalling levels of human rights abuses committed by armed rebels, the answer cannot be action that knowingly increases levels of human suffering.
Marcel Stoessel, head of Oxfam in DRC, said:
"Four months ago an offensive against the FDLR set in train a spiral of violence against civilians which has forced 250,000 to flee their homes and caused untold death and suffering that continues to this day. By any yardstick it has been a humanitarian disaster, and one the world has ignored. The UN force's top priority in Congo must be to protect the lives of innocent civilians. The UN needs to be aware of the full implications of continuing to support military action in the present circumstances."
Oxfam said any military action should ensure that risks to civilians are kept to an absolute minimum and, in accordance with international humanitarian law. The agency also called for appropriate sanctions for any violations of international humanitarian law noting that for too long human rights abuses, including by government soldiers, have gone largely unpunished.
The aid agency urged the UN to set out and stand by clear preconditions, based on rigorous observance of international humanitarian law, for MONUC support to any military action by the FARDC. It also called for greater emphasis on non-military efforts to disarm rebel groups, which present less risk to civilians but so far have not been given sufficient priority.
The previous joint offensive against the FDLR in North Kivu, launched in January 2009, has already created immense suffering for thousands of civilians. An estimated 250,000 people are still unable to return to their homes. Villagers have reported that thousands of homes have been burned to the ground in reprisal attacks mainly by the FDLR. Rape and looting by all sides, including government forces, has also been reported. According to recent reports, 100,000 people have already fled their homes in South Kivu, even before the new offensive has started. Aid agencies are planning for the possible displacement of a further 400,000 people in South Kivu.
Oxfam had to expand its programs in North Kivu after the first offensive, bringing life-saving assistance to at least a further 85,000 people, in addition to those that it was helping already. Oxfam has also opened a new rapid response office in Bukavu, South Kivu, to be prepared for possible humanitarian fallout there. The international agency urged all major donor countries to give sufficient attention to the humanitarian crisis, which has been raging since January.
Oxfam is helping to support more than 500,000 people affected by the conflict.
]]>According to UN figures, some 250,000 people in the provinces of North and South Kivu have been displaced since mid-January following a military operation targeting the FDLR rebel group. This is the equivalent to the numbers displaced last autumn when intense fighting broke out, with the newly displaced hidden in far and remote areas, the international aid agency said.
Marcel Stoessel, Head of Oxfam in the Democratic Republic of Congo said:
"The war is far from over for ordinary Congolese. These terrible human tragedies are happening in remote areas far away from television cameras, but this does not make the suffering less real for those concerned.
"Homes and shops are being looted and ransacked, women and girls are being raped, and civilians are being forced to flee, many for the third or fourth time. We are helping them pick up the pieces by increasing our emergency work. It is tragic to see Congo's civilians caught up in this awful violence yet again."
There also have been reports of armed men committing reprisal killings of civilians, blocking off roadways, in some cases burning down houses and chasing people away. In parts of Lubero, where most people are subsistence farmers, civilians can barely access their fields to harvest due to widespread insecurity and looting.
With the operations against the FDLR set to expand to South Kivu, there are mounting concerns for civilians there, several tens of thousands of whom have already been forced from their homes. Although, according to the UN, some 300,000 other people have returned to their homes in parts of the North Kivu, the calm in some areas, such as Rutshuru, has been accompanied by renewed insecurity in others, such as Lubero and Walikale.
Oxfam is developing a flexible response to the new crisis that can provide water, sanitation and life-saving hygiene promotion to dispersed groups of people on the move, as well as larger groups of people sheltering in specific areas. Fighting and insecurity has hampered humanitarian access this year, and a quicker and lighter response is required to reach people during windows of opportunity. Throughout eastern DRC, Oxfam is already assisting half a million people, and as a result of the scale up the agency will reach 650,000 people, despite ongoing security challenges. Teams have been sent to Lubero in North Kivu and Bukavu in South Kivu to plan the scale-up. In Lubero, Oxfam is already providing clean water and basic sanitation to 40,000 people newly displaced by the fresh fighting, especially to combat epidemics.
Stoessel continued:
"All parties to the conflict—including the government armed forces as well as militia groups—have to live up to their responsibility under international humanitarian law to protect civilians and to provide humanitarian agencies safe access to the civilians in need."
Oxfam said a lack of peacekeeping resources on the ground was also hampering efforts to protect civilians.
The Head of Oxfam International's New York office, Nicole Widdersheim, said, "More than four months after the UN Security Council approved 3,000 additional peacekeepers, not one extra soldier has arrived. Until the reinforcements come, MONUC needs to ensure that the troops on the ground are doing all in their power to protect people. Civilians need more foot patrols in towns and along the main roads in order to be kept as safe as possible."
With the UN Security Council set to discuss the MONUC peacekeeping force on Thursday this week, Oxfam is urging world leaders to mark the occasion by rapidly providing the extra troops needed. It also called on them to ensure that existing resources are deployed to the most insecure locations, so as to more effectively protect civilians.
]]>My neighborhood was one of the worst affected by the fighting, which went on all last night. About two kilometers from my house, the gunmen went into a compound and killed seven innocent civilians. Our neighbors were attacked by gunmen who came into their compound and robbed them, taking mobile phones and money. We were okay, but I found some bullets in my compound.
I was in the Oxfam office when the panic started yesterday. People saw the national army troops leaving Goma with their tanks and vehicles, and at the same time they saw the UN troops shifting civilians to a safer compound. No one informed the population about what was happening, and they thought the rebels were going to take control of Goma. People panicked.
Many people took advantage of the panic yesterday to make trouble. They looted shops and robbed families. It was a mixture of people fighting, criminals, and undisciplined soldiers, using small arms like AK-47s. But in other areas there was a deployment of national army units who were disciplined and protected the people. I haven't seen UN soldiers anywhere myself.
Today, it's calm and very quiet. Usually the traffic here starts at six in the morning, but I looked out at 10AM and all I saw was one motorbike. The shops are all shut. Life hasn't started up yet.
A lot of people are displaced and are living in the suburbs of Goma in very harsh conditions, and the fighting is making those conditions even worse because there's no access for humanitarian workers.
In particular, one group of displaced people has now been forced to move for the third time in a couple of months. They are living in schools and hospitals, or with host families in and around Goma. They desperately need water, food, and shelter. There's no health care or medicines. People are living in the open air, and if they do get a little food it's not enough to feed the whole family.
This current crisis has made it harder for Oxfam to respond. We are watching the situation and I'm going out this afternoon to check out our work in the camps.
]]>"I'm not famous," said the slogan on his T-shirt.
And that's probably why you haven't heard very much about Milongo's problem'or the problem of countless Congolese women caught in a war that has used their bodies as a battlefield. Rape has ruined their lives. And now, it's creeping into their villages, too, corroding what's left of community life after so many years of conflict.
But since it's happening in a place that's far away, in villages whose names we can hardly pronounce, we don't pay attention. We should—because it's a horror that stalks us, too. About 132,000 women a year in the United States report they are victims of rape, or attempted rape, says the National Organization for Women. That's one of the reasons Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994—to combat sexual assault.
Now, there's a new protection bill set for debate in Washington. This one would take the first steps toward guarding the safety of women everywhere—even in countries where governments are not up to the task. Proposed by US Senators Joseph R. Biden and Richard Lugar, the International Violence Against Women Act would require the development of a five-year strategy—supported by a $175 million annual investment—to support programs targeting violence against women. Among them would be public awareness campaigns and a strengthening of criminal and civil justice systems.
Additionally, through increased training for aid workers and expanded reporting requirements, the bill would tackle the violence women and girls suffer during humanitarian crises and conflict—times when women are particularly vulnerable. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Democratic Republic of Congo. John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary for humanitarian affairs, told a reporter last October that the sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world.
But what makes these attacks even more insidious is the consequence of speaking out about them: There is danger in challenging Congo's culture of impunity. Justine Masika lives with it daily—behind the barbed wire wall erected around her house to keep her safe. She is the head of a Goma-based group that has helped more than 7,000 women who have suffered from sexual violence. Last year, soldiers punished her for her truth-telling and advocacy. They invaded her house and attacked her daughters.
But Masika is not alone. Others, like Lamia Milongo, are fighting back, too. When the soldier abducted his 12-year-old daughter to claim her as his "wife," Milongo put his own safety aside and went in pursuit. He rescued her and returned her home unharmed. But the daughter of his neighbor was not so lucky. Her rescue came too late. Now, at 15, she is pregnant, shamed, and facing a life of hardship and poverty since in Congolese culture women who have been raped are often cast off by their communities.
Sexual violence is a plague the world should be rid of. Mothers like Masika need our help. So do fathers like Milongo. We took an important step here in the US in 1994. Now it's time to take the next one—into our global community—with passage of the International Violence Against Women Act.
]]>But it wasn't until an 80-year-old woman from Walikale in North Kivu was brought to Masika that the full weight of what was happening became clear, galvanizing her resolve. In the war that was sweeping the region, rape was being used as a weapon not only to degrade women, but to humiliate their husbands and whole communities, too. Masika realized the women and girls of eastern Congo needed organized, pro-active help—and Synergie des femmes pour les Victimes de Violences Sexuelles was born.
Its mission, says Masika, its director, is threefold: to raise awareness about sexual violence toward women, to take care of those who have been sexually abused, and to push for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. Since 2003, the organization, an Oxfam partner, has worked with 7,018 women—women like the one from Walikale, who so desperately needed help and for whom there was none available. Raped and left dumped in a field, she was rescued by a hunter and eventually brought to Goma, the capital of North Kivu. But she was penniless, and despite her serious injuries, the hospital would not treat her. And there she died.
Hers is just one of too many stories of sexual abuse and abandonment—of violence that is still rippling through the remote hills of the eastern provinces, that continues to torture its victims with shame, and that now, in a newer twist, has begun to corrode the core of traditional communities, too.
In a small mudbrick building propped on the edge of a dirt road in Kilungutwe, a crowd of villagers has gathered. It's dark and sweltering inside, but every inch of every bench is taken, and more people crowd at the door and window. They have come to discuss the troubles in their village—the extortion they face at the hands of soldiers, the difficulty they have in getting enough to eat—and now the talk has turned to sexual violence.
With anger still in his voice, Elisha Ezigobe, one of the local chiefs, describes the abduction of his 12-year-old daughter. A soldier took her for his wife—without Ezigobe's consent. As soon as he learned what had happened, he headed for the soldier's camp, dismissing any concern about the repercussions he might face in confronting armed men. He was determined to rescue his daughter.
"I took my girl and left," Ezigobe said through an interpreter. "I had my machete. I was going to fight back." His outrage scared the soldier off, and Ezigobe returned his daughter—unharmed—to their home.
But the man sitting next to Ezigobe was not so lucky. His daughter, too, was taken by a soldier. A night passed before he was able to find her and bring her home. Now, at 15, she is pregnant.
There are many stories like this, says Ezigobe, and some fathers are afraid to stand up to the soldiers.
But it's not just military men who are the perpetrators, say others in the roadside hut. Community members have turned into culprits, too—with few serious consequences for their crimes. If the abused girl is 17 or 18, the solution is often to have her marry the rapist. If she's younger, the local chief could order the man to make some kind of reparation—such as a goat—to the girl and her family.
Why is all of this happening now?
"They're asking themselves that question," says Jacqueline Tshilemba, a community educator for APIDE, one of Oxfam's local partners that is working with the people of Kilungutwe. "What they can see is this culture has happened since the war. It happens all over the place and no one gets punished."
At the root of the problem, says Josee Lotsove, is a society that views women as inferior. Lotsove is the coordinator for a local women-based organization called Association des Mamans Anti-Bwaki, or AMAB, an Oxfam partner headquartered in Bunia. Along with those traditional attitudes about women, she says, is the Congo's weak judicial system, which often fails to hold offenders accountable.
When perpetrators are arrested, adds Marie Kanyobayo, it's possible for them to pay a little money to the authorities and buy their freedom. Kanyobayo is the head of another women-based organization called Union des Femmes pour le Developpement, also an Oxfam partner.
It's at this foundation of impunity that Masika, the head of Synergie, is chipping away. Part of Synergie's work involves educating village chiefs and other local opinion leaders—teachers, pastors—about the nature of what has been happening to women, about the catastrophe that it has become, and about the importance of villagers accepting survivors back into the community fold.
But the work comes with great risk.
For speaking out about a problem that has devastated the lives of so many women, Masika and her family have themselves become targets. Last September, six military men came to her house in the early evening and tortured her two daughters, 22 and 20. Masika has since sent them to live in Nairobi, and an aid organization has paid to surround her house with barbed wire to protect her.
Masika admits that sometimes the challenges are so daunting that she's not sure she can continue with her advocacy. But she knows that her voice—and the voices of all the volunteers who work for Synergie—are essential in helping to protect the rights of women who cannot, or dare not, speak out for themselves.
In the Congo, the consequences of rape are far-reaching and affect whole families. Rape heaps shame upon its victims. Women often find themselves cast off by their husbands, and forced into complete self-dependence. Young girls who have been raped lose their chance for marriage and for having a family of their own—and the position of honor that being a mother brings.
At a medical center in Goma where Synergie carries out some of its work, women who are recovering from sexual abuse confront its ugly legacy: possible HIV infection and lives of hardship, including the need to find ways to support themselves. Here, they are learning to weave baskets from long strips of plastic, a skill that will help them earn a living when they are well enough to return to their villages.
But for some, the psychological wounds are so deep they don't want to leave the security and support in which Synergie has wrapped them. For others, the road home is crowded with obstacles that may prove insurmountable. One 36-year-old woman tells of in-laws who are trying to turn her children against her, accusing her of being promiscuous after she was abducted and held as a sex slave and later, in a second round of horror, raped and left pregnant by a government soldier.
For Amina, a volunteer who has been working with Synergie since its founding, the stories she hears from women and girls who have been abused weigh heavily on her. Many of them have become her friends, and she knows that Congolese culture will dictate the future they face—likely one of great difficulty.
Given how sweeping the problem of rape and sexual violence now is, might that culture become more understanding, and even forgiving?
Amina sits quietly for a moment before she replies. A weariness seems to frame her answer. Women are speaking out more, she says. In the past, they kept silent. But as for real change, she can't say when that will come.
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