from JEAN KASSONGO in Kinshasa, DRC
DRC Bureau
KINSHASA, (CAJ News) – MORE victims than ever have been subjected to sexual violence in the crisis-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced that – together with the Ministry of Health – it had treated an unprecedented number of victims and survivors in 2023, and that this upward trend continued in the first months of 2024.
The medical humanitarian organisation is calling on national and international stakeholders to take urgent action to better prevent this phenomenon and improve care for survivors.
In 2023, MSF teams in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) helped treat 25 166 victims and survivors of sexual violence across the country.
This figure is reportedly by far the highest number ever recorded by MSF in DRC, based on data from 17 projects set up by MSF in support of the Ministry of Health in five Congolese provinces – North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri, Maniema and Central Kasai.
In previous years (2020, 2021, 2022), MSF reports its teams treated an average of 10 000 victims per year in the country.
This trend accelerated in the first months of 2024: in North Kivu province alone, 17 363 victims and survivors were treated with MSF assistance between January and May.
This represented 69 percent of the total number of victims treated in 2023 in the five provinces mentioned above.
“According to the testimonies of our patients, two-thirds of them were attacked at gunpoint,” said Christopher Mambula, head of MSF’s programmes in DRC.
He revealed these attacks took place on the sites themselves, but also in the surrounding area when women and girls– who accounted for 98 percent of the victims treated by MSF in the DRC in 2023– went out to collect wood or water, or to work in the fields.
Sexual violence is a major medical and humanitarian emergency in DRC.
According to the latest Gender-Based Violence Area of Responsibility (GBV AoR) DRC information1, which compiles data from various humanitarian organizations offering gender-based violence care services in 12 provinces, 55 500 survivors of sexual violence received medical care in the second quarter of 2024.
– CAJ News