A dark history of sexual terrorism has plagued the Democratic Republic of Congo. Being described as the rape capital of the world, the looming threat of sexual violence has tormented and destroyed communities in this region for decades. The issue of sexual violence has transcended the realm of private conversations, especially as the question becomes less gendered. For instance, in the North and South Kivu provinces and the Ituri district, 39.7% of women and 23.6% of men had suffered sexual violence in the past sixteen years, with 74.3% of the women and 64.5% of the men reported that it had been done by armed actors. Sexual violence suffered by men in conflicts is often labelled as ‘abuse or torture’. Because of the stigma surrounding this topic, masculine stereotypes and the underreporting of these crimes, most male victims fail to attain the help they need.
Firstly, it is undisputed that sexual violence is not an inevitable and ubiquitous by-product of conflict. According to the International Review of the Red Cross, 59% of armed groups from twenty African states were ‘not reported’ to have engaged in sexual-related violence between 2000-2009. The optimism in these statistics may be based on the underreporting of sexual violence in communities ravaged by war especially due to the stigmatisation of victims. However, the influx of rape victims in DRC is enough to stir the discussion about the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Weaponizing sexual violence in conflict
1. Power dynamics; Hegemonic masculinity
Understanding the adoption of rape as a military strategy requires us to appreciate the overly masculinised militarism of DRC armed actors. The differentiation between genders is crucial for these groups to prove and maintain male dominance. As Sivakumaran notes, one group of men raping women of another community is usually a way to communicate to the men of that community that they ‘have failed in their duty to protect their women’. With an increased number of men being subject to the same violence, it is established that such communication is even more ‘pronounced’ when the men of that ‘community’ are the victims themselves. It is important that the perpetrators re-establish a power balance by ‘reinforcing masculine impotence’ of the victimised men. As Elizabeth Jean Wood put it, the victory is expressed in ‘highly gendered terms’.
Another vital aspect of the commission of these acts is the nature of their public display. This has had a fatal impact on women in particular; 6% of raped women get rejected by their families. In recalling her troubled past the guardian, Nzigire, a 60-year-old raped victim opined “ my husband calls me the wife of a soldier, he has rejected me”.
“It is important that initiatives to rewire men’s thinking are started by men because as their views about women change, women also start to view themselves as autonomous beings in a just society”
I suppose the most elaborate aspect of sexual violence is not just masculine hegemony; it is somewhat of an established cultural norm that women are born and raised with fear. They view it as a good way to maintain their own dignity and avoid rejection. Many women would rather conceal their post-rape injuries than expose their trauma and risk being rejected by their families. In the end, hegemony is not something that is enforced on them. Rather, it is something that they have grown to embrace and view as normal. Women have stereotypes rooted in fear and low self-esteem. Very few are willing to challenge what is clearly an example of toxic male chauvinistic tendencies. Only a man who does not understand the value of his woman shall shame and reject them after being raped. In the words of the East African poet Angel Kabera in Sometime in 2012, ‘The patriarchy is perpetrated by its victims’. It is important that initiatives to rewire men’s thinking are started by men because as their views about women change, women also start to view themselves as autonomous beings in a just society.’
2. Combatant socialisation
In her book, Rape in Civil War, Dara Cohen attempts to explain the use of rape as a weapon of war by introducing the concept of ‘Combatant Socialisation’. This is the idea that ‘rape may be a result of a violent socialisation process’ meant to enhance social cohesion amongst armed actors. Cohen bases this theory on two important facts; the first being that the most prominent form of sexual violence during intrastate conflicts is gang rape. Additionally, most non-state actors in armed conflict have used forced recruitment as a means to expand and conquer more territory. In Cohen’s analysis, his focus is on Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Despite not being the largest armed group in terms of scale and capacity, the RUF carried out the largest perpetration of rape; about 85% of all victims reported having been raped by RUF soldiers between 1991-92 and 1996-98. Cohen also analyses that during this period, they lost most of their battles, an arrangement that cost them a lot of men and resources. This explains why they majorly used forced recruitment as a tool to re-establish themselves; 78% of RUF soldiers were recruited through abduction. In her findings, Cohen established that most RUF soldiers did not know each other; they were recruited from different villages with different ethnicities. As a means to unite them, gang rape was encouraged to create military cohesion in the fog of war.
The DRC can draw a thin similarity from RUF’s soldiers in terms of Cohen’s theory of combat socialisation. Firstly, there is an overwhelming increase in forced recruitment of child soldiers in Congo’s conflicts since the fall of Goma to Congo rebels, North Kivu Province’s capital in 2012. In that year, the UN reported about 1000 cases of recruitment of child soldiers. Besides being used as military shields, slaves and spies, combat child soldiers were involved in similar atrocities most notably rape and looting.
On the other hand, Congo’s history of endless sexual violence in war has few lessons to pick from Cohen’s theory of combatant socialisation. Unlike Sierra Leone, Congo’s rebels are largely divided along ethnic and in part religious lines. The Mouvement du 23 Mars, commonly known as M23 is a rebel group that earned global attention in April 2012. They comprise largely of Tutsi forces, an ethnic group spread across Rwanda and Burundi. Their grievance is that the Tutsi ethnic communities in Eastern Congo have been subjects of endless discrimination due to their Rwandan roots.
As a result of their periodic rebel activity, there is an increasing trend of attacks launched by enemy rebel groups and even civilians against Congolese Tutsis. A second group that is active in DRC is the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which is made up of former Hutu rebels that perpetrated the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. This explains why they mainly fight in North Kivu Province, an active ground for the M23. The third major group is The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), unlike other groups, the ADF has Islamic affiliations and was recognised by ISIS following a pledge of allegiance by the former’s leaders in 2019. From the structure of these groups, it is quite discernible that they have specific targets based on ethnic and religious affiliations. These factors are enough to create and sustain military cohesion and unity in deployment. This sense of brotherhood fermented by ethnic bloodlines gives room for an apparent conclusion that the choice of rape may not be forced on them as a way to draw them together.
3. Rape For Minerals
“The international community must start looking at steps we can take to try to prevent the mineral wealth from the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund the violence here.”
Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State, after visiting the DRC in 2009.
Hillary Clinton’s speech was an addition to the prevalent narrative of how the militarisation of artisanal and small-scale mining perpetuated an endless cycle of conflict in the DRC. Despite the region’s seemingly endless political turmoil, Eastern DRC continues to be a major mining centre for minerals like coltan and gold.
The ‘Rape for Minerals’ narrative asserts that armed groups use rape as a way to displace people from their villages and get uncompromised access to natural resources. This explanation was adopted by many NGOs and activists. For instance, the founder of V-Day, Eve Ensler, stated in her testimony to the US Senate Committee that “no one could rightly ignore femicide—the systematic and planned destruction and annihilation of a female population as a tactic of war to clear villages, pillage mines of their coltan, gold and tin, and wear away the fabric of Congolese society.” This has become what Ann Laudati terms ‘an economistic explanation of Congo’s enduring conflict.’ Furthermore, researchers like Shelly Whitman suggest that there is a correlation between rape and coltan mining in areas like Kabare and Shabunda in the South Kivu Province of the DRC. The wave of support that this discourse has got from the UN and utopian civil societies is unprecedented.
In Netflix’s series Black Earth Rising, there is a depiction of rich companies financing the Congo turmoil as a strategy to further their covert looting. From this, it is a clear sign that the layman’s theory of the cause of war and sexual violence is minerals. This discourse gives many actors an easy explanation to run with. But perhaps it is not as straightforward; the protracted conflicts in both Syria and Myanmar have been the prominent faces of sexual violence. It is also established that these wars are not furthered by the need to loot minerals. The similarity however with Congo is that in all three countries, there exist broken peace structures. The reason why violence of any nature persists in terms of war is that perpetrators are not accountable to anyone; they can rape with impunity. As a crime of opportunity, rape would have taken place in Congo even without the minerals. As Dara Cohen also noted, some combatants were raped simply for sexual satisfaction. This is true for Congo as well, no reason should exist for men to rape if their bodies are enough to fuel such an action.
Responding to the Crisis
Monusco: Protecting Peace or Furthering Crisis?
The end of the second Congo war prompted a discussion of ceasefire and peacekeeping in fragile Eastern Congo. The signing of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement led to the first UN peacekeeping deployment under the umbrella of the United Nations Organisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC). This was a small mission in Eastern Congo meant to monitor and ascertain the peaceful transition of the region from the turmoil of war to peaceful coexistence. The sentiment furthered by the then UN secretary Ban Ki-moon was one of ‘never again’ and this was reflected in MONUC’s passive approach in dealing with sub-conflicts that continued to choke the region.
MONUC faced challenges embedded in its poorly trained and disunited command. Most notably, their public cooperation with the Congolese army in fighting what they termed as ‘negative forces’ in the region was not an idea welcomed by the locals. This is because these same Congolese troops also committed mass atrocities against civilians, most notably rape and looting.
The endless cycle of organised attacks from regional armed groups, particularly in Goma, resulted in MONUC’s name being changed to the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). This was an arrangement meant to reflect the change in the mission’s mandate, which was elaborated under the UN Security Council Resolution 1925. MONUSCO was therefore meant to adopt a more active and robust role in fighting approximately 50 armed groups that were competing for dominance in the region of Eastern Congo. This was in contrast with the more utopian and passive nature of MONUC which did not prove effective in the war-torn region. Although MONUSCO continued to further the seminal work of MONUC, albeit with a larger scope, it also faced similar problems as its predecessor. As MONUSCO headquarters attracted many internally displaced people, they inevitably became the major targets of armed groups. The small number of peacekeepers were outnumbered and overrun by armed militias who were better acquainted with the region.
Nonetheless, the failures of MONUSCO continue to undermine the UN’s efforts to end the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa. The people of DRC have reasonable and undisputed grievances against MONUSCO. There is no statistical evidence that can back a reduction in political turmoil in Congo since the UN mission’s inception. The continuing of the war goes to the very heart of the mission as soldiers have failed in their duty to protect civilians. Following the resurgence of M23 in 2021, the head of MONUSCO expressed fears of how the rebel group was acting as a conventional army. The scattered attacks or poor organisation no longer epitomise an increasingly militarised war in Congo. With the mission being the most expensive for the UN, MONUSCO has faced anti-civilian sentiments that have undermined its humanitarian role in the Congo.
Beacons of Hope: Civil Societies and The Role of Dr. Mukwege
Despite the appalling failings of MONUSCO, some Congolese humanitarians and other international NGOs have entered the fight against sexual violence as a weapon of war. Most remarkable is the work of Dr Mukwege; a Congolese gynaecologist who received a Nobel prize for being a shining light in the fight against sexual violence as a weapon of war.
The 67-year-old has dedicated his career to treating victims of sexual violence. He has occasionally recounted how he treated women in the late 1990s and is now ‘repairing’ their daughters. In explaining the cycle of violence, the doctor stated.
In his speech at the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize awards, he recounts the night of 6 October 1996 when rebel militias attacked a hospital he was working in the region of Lemera. This prompted him to later start Panzi hospital, in a suburb of Bukavu in 1999. Living as a medic in France, Dr. Mukwege had always hoped to return to Congo and be a paediatrician. When he finally returned, his decision quickly changed when he witnessed the overwhelming number of women in his area that died from obstetric conditions arising from complicated pregnancies. Ironically his first patients were not sick as a result of inadequate prenatal care; they were victims of gang rape. In his book, The Power of Women, Dr. Mukwege explains with deep vulnerability and ease how the trauma of treating raped women and babies began to affect him. Regardless, this trauma is what inspired him to turn his sexual health clinic into a platform that also addressed the psychological, socio-economic and legal needs of the victims. In creating a safe space for women affected by post-rape trauma, Dr. Mukwege helped found the City of Joy, a home for victims and their children. When you look at Netflix’s docuseries about the City of Joy, you cannot resist the smiles of hope that these women carry. They command a certain power that brings healing and strength to everyone that hears their story.
“In most areas where conflict is prevalent, people are already struggling with insurmountable challenges: Extreme poverty, insecure food sources, and inadequate health systems. When this is coupled with the brutality of rape and the trauma that ensues from watching your mother, sister, daughter – and, yes, sometimes your father, brother or son – or other family members be sexually assaulted, it creates a cycle of shame and stigma that is difficult to break without access to compassionate, holistic care.”
In his speech at the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize awards, he recounts the night of 6 October 1996 when rebel militias attacked a hospital he was working in the region of Lemera. This prompted him to later start Panzi hospital, in a suburb of Bukavu in 1999. Living as a medic in France, Dr. Mukwege had always hoped to return to Congo and be a paediatrician. When he finally returned, his decision quickly changed when he witnessed the overwhelming number of women in his area that died from obstetric conditions arising from complicated pregnancies. Ironically his first patients were not sick as a result of inadequate prenatal care; they were victims of gang rape. In his book, The Power of Women, Dr. Mukwege explains with deep vulnerability and ease how the trauma of treating raped women and babies began to affect him. Regardless, this trauma is what inspired him to turn his sexual health clinic into a platform that also addressed the psychological, socio-economic and legal needs of the victims. In creating a safe space for women affected by post-rape trauma, Dr. Mukwege helped found the City of Joy, a home for victims and their children. When you look at Netflix’s docuseries about the City of Joy, you cannot resist the smiles of hope that these women carry. They command a certain power that brings healing and strength to everyone that hears their story.
The remarkable work of Dr. Mukwege explains why he is a threat to rebel groups. In 2012, Mukwege survived an assassination by unknown rebels that claimed his friend and employee Joseph Bizimana. As a husband and father, he immediately fled to the US. His departure left a gap in women communities who swore to sell their vegetables and till their land as a way to afford his safe return and protection in Bukavu. This prompted him to return a year later. On speaking about the courage of the women in an interview with a journalist he stated:
“Sometimes I have this question: am I afraid? And my answer is yes. I don’t want to be a hero. But I have this feeling that there are these invisible forces around me.”
Despite facing increased animosity from the rebel groups, Dr Mukwege continues to give hope to rape survivors. His foundation is assisted by other civil societies that usually employ survivors who have chosen to actively take part in the fight. One of them being Tatiana Mukanire of the Global Network of Victims and Survivors to End Wartime Sexual Violence (SEMA).
In an interview with Aljazeera, Mukanire emphasised that the war in the Congo was one against civilians. Militia groups were not against each other but rather civilians. In dispersing them through rape, they would attain the control of resources they need and even sometimes reach agreements to share them.
The history of sexual violence in the DRC goes beyond war. There are many theories and reasons to believe that the mineral-rich areas of Congo and other circumstances of war like forced recruitment have perpetrated endless episodes of sexual violence against women in the region. However, it is difficult to undermine the exigent cultural and power patterns that support the rape discourse. For men to not rape in wartime, they should learn not to rape in peacetime. The destabilising nature of war creates an opportunity for rape, but it alone is not an explanation for the incessant sexual violence against women that plagues Eastern Congo. One lesson everyone can learn from Dr. Mukwege is that misogyny lives with us and it is a theme whose echoes are dreaded by every woman, victim or sympathiser. The break in misogynistic patterns that have fuelled wartime sexual violence can go a long way in possibly eradicating the war in the heart of Africa.