North Kivu

See also information included under section 8. Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV).

8.1.1. Armed forces

Covering the period 17 March 2020 to 16 June 2020 the UN Secretary General reported that

“sexual violence perpetrated by FARDC also continued to be documented in North Kivu, particularly in the context of military operations against ADF in the Beni and Butembo areas”.⁴⁰²

399 UN Secretary-General, Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 18 March 2021, para. 56

400 UN Joint Human Rights Office in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (UJHRO), Analysis of the human rights situation in 2020, 31 May 2021, para. 39

401 UN Security Council, United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Report of the Secretary-General, 21 June 2021, paras. 63 and 66

402 UN Secretary General, Report of the Secretary General on the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo , 18 June 2020, para.57

The U.S. Department of State’s 2020 annual human rights report included information from MONUSCO which reported that “on May 2 [2020], in North Kivu’s Nyiragongo territory, FDLR combatants raped two women, killing one of them”.⁴⁰³

Covering the period January to December 2020, the UN report noted that “sexual violence continued during military operations against armed groups, including in North Kivu”.⁴⁰⁴ The UN report covering the period 2 December 2020 to 18 March 2021 documented that

“from 1 November 2020 to 28 February 2021, six allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse, all involving military contingent members, were recorded and have been referred to the troop-contributing countries concerned for investigation”.⁴⁰⁵

8.1.2. Non-state armed groups

While reporting on the issue of conflict related sexual violence in the UN report covering the period 29 June to 25 September 2019 it was noted that “among armed groups, members of FDLR and NDC-R were the main perpetrators in North Kivu”.⁴⁰⁶

The Group of Experts on the DRC reported in its report covering November 2019 to 25 April 2020:

Combatants from NDC-R, led by sanctioned individual Guidon Shimiray Mwissa (CDi.033), and from CMC/FDP, led by Ndaruhutse Kamanzi Dominique, also known as Domi, committed widespread conflict-related sexual violence amidst recurrent combat operations in Masisi and Rutshuru territories from January 2019 to February 2020. However, the commanders of both armed groups, who had effective control, failed to take necessary measures to punish subordinates responsible for those acts, despite awareness thereof.⁴⁰⁷

The Group of Experts on the DRC reported in its subsequent report covering November 2019 to 25 April 2020:

The Group found that armed combatants, especially those from NDC-R, led by sanctioned individual Guidon (CDi.033), and CMC/FDP, led by Domi, committed widespread conflict-related sexual violence amidst recurrent fighting in Masisi and Rutshuru territories from January 2019 to February 2020 […]

Those acts included rape, gang rape, some instances of sexual slavery and forced marriage.

Such acts may amount to torture, may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, and are sanctionable under paragraph 7 (e) of Security Council resolution 2293 (2016), as renewed by the Council in paragraph 2 of its resolution 2478 (2019).

Some NDC-R and CMC/FDP commanders committed those acts, and commanders of both armed groups, who had effective control, failed to take the necessary measures to punish

403 U.S. Department of State, 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Democratic Republic of the Congo, 30 March 2021, Section 1. G, Abuses in internal conflict

404 UN Secretary General, Conflict-related sexual violence, Report of the Secretary-General, 30 March 2021, para. 28

405 UN Secretary-General, Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 18 March 2021, para. 73

406 UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary General United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 27 September 2019, para. 60

407 UN Security Council, Final report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2 June 2020, Summary

subordinates responsible for those acts, despite awareness thereof or owing to wilful ignorance.⁴⁰⁸

The same report noted with regards to the impact of the rape:

According to one source, rape was so widespread that it was considered a “normal”

occurrence. […]

The impacts of rape were devastating for the victims, their children and the very social fabric of the society. Several victims were badly wounded while resisting rape. Rape exacerbated vulnerability when victims were already displaced or had to leave their village because of the rape. Several were left with the impossible choice of returning to the scene of the rape and risking being raped again or losing their means of subsistence. Many were rejected by their husbands and/or family, and/or were stigmatized by their community.⁴⁰⁹

Similarly, Médecins Sans Frontieres reported that “The shame and fear of being stigmatised experienced by girls who have been sexually abused can sometimes affect the whole family.

In some areas, such as Walikale (North-Kivu), MSF teams have observed that ‘amicable’

solutions, such as forced marriages, are employed by some families in order to preserve honour and guarantee a place in society for young survivors.”.⁴¹⁰

In the report covering the period 17 March 2020 to 16 June 2020, the UN Secretary General noted that “among the armed groups active in the area (North Kivu), NDC-R fighters committed the greatest number of human rights violations, including conflict related sexual violence”.⁴¹¹

In the report covering the period 19 September to 1 December 2020 the UN Secretary General noted that “overall, armed groups were responsible for 55 per cent of conflict-related sexual violence-related incidents, with North Kivu representing the most-affected province”.⁴¹² The UN report covering the period 1 January to 31 December 2020 noted that:

Armed groups continued to use sexual violence as a tactic to assert control over natural resources in North Kivu. [...] The perpetration of sexual violence by Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda was widespread, reflecting persistent patterns of attacks against women and girls collecting firewood in Virunga National Park. In the mining areas of North Kivu, Mai-Mai forces patriotiques populaires-armée du peuple, which were formerly part of Mai-Mai-Mai-Mai Mazembe, were implicated in patterns of sexual slavery.⁴¹³

Specifically reporting on the Katsiru area of North Kivu, Human Rights Watch stated:

[…] Sexual Violence in Masisi and Rutshuru

408 UN Security Council, Final report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2 June 2020, para. 114

409 UN Security Council, Final report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2 June 2020, paras. 135 and 136

410 Medecins Sans Frontieres, Sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, The critical need for a comprehensive response to address the eneds of survivors, July 2021, p. 12

411 UN Secretary General, Report of the Secretary General on the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo , 18 June 2020, para. 12

412 UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary General on the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 30 November 2020, para. 53

413 UN Secretary General, Conflict-related sexual violence, Report of the Secretary-General, 30 March 2021, para. 29

Human Rights Watch interviewed rape survivors and heard credible reports of dozens of other cases of sexual violence in the Katsiru area. In January 2020, NDC-R fighters captured four women peeling bananas in a plantation and raped them. One woman who was seriously injured died on her way to Mweso hospital, near Katsiru, said one survivor. In February [2020], another rape survivor said: “Not one day goes by without a woman who has been raped going to the health center.... [The NDC-R fighters] tell us that the Nyatura [another armed group] are our children. ‘We must rape you,’ they say.” Human Rights Watch also interviewed seven women and three girls from Masisi raped by NDC-R fighters. An 18-year-old woman said that Guidon’s troops stopped her on her way to Bibwe market in September 2019, accusing her of not paying the monthly tax. They stole her money and beat her severely. She said they put her in a small house where a fighter raped her at least twice. She was released after her mother gave them a goat. In January 2020, a 14-year-old girl, displaced to Mpati, was walking on the road with two girlfriends when three NDC-R fighters stopped and raped them in the nearby bush. “When we resisted, they told us, ‘We’re going to kill you,’ so we couldn’t do anything,”

she said. The three girls were taken to an NDC-R position but managed to escape overnight during an attack from the Nyatura. Human Rights Watch also heard credible reports of girls being held as sex slaves for several days or weeks in the NDC-R camps. An activist described this situation in Katsiru in February: When [NDC-R fighters] meet pretty underage girls, they forcibly take them to their camps.… They use them as wives for a while, then chase them away.

They have to go home. It’s like taking turns; they take other pretty girls afterwards. That’s what happens. They are kept for several days before being chased away. The families of these girls don’t know how to protest – if they did, they could be killed. A 45-year-old woman said NDC-R fighters abducted her 14-year-old daughter along with four other girls in March 2019.

They were in a camp in Mpati where they had been displaced. She said the fighters took them to their position and several men repeatedly raped them. Her daughter was only able to escape two months later. The woman said that in July 2019, four NDC-R fighters came to their house and forced her to lead them to her daughter, who had gone into hiding. They took them to their position, where they beat them and detained them in an underground pit – common in NDC-R positions – with their hands and feet tied. NDC-R fighters repeatedly raped both of them. The mother was released nine days later, and the daughter was freed eventually, following ransom payments. Fearing further retaliation, the daughter fled Mpati. In June, the UN Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo found that armed combatants, especially those from NDC-R and the Collectif des mouvements pour le changement/Forces de défense du people (CMC/FDP), a coalition of Nyatura militias, had “committed widespread conflict-related sexual violence amidst recurrent fighting in Masisi and Rutshuru territories from January 2019 to February 2020.... Those acts included rape, gang rape, some instances of sexual slavery and forced marriage” that “may amount to torture, may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.” The Group of Experts further noted that, “Some NDC-R and CMC/FDP commanders committed those acts, and commanders of both armed groups, who had effective control, failed to take the necessary measures to punish subordinates responsible for those acts, despite awareness thereof or owing to willful ignorance”.⁴¹⁴

8.1.3. Non-state individuals

Human Rights Watch reported on kidnapping, torture, rape and murder of civilians near the Virunga National Park in North Kivu, where also a number of hostages were taken by gangs to extort money from families:

Criminal gangs have kidnapped for ransom at least 170 people near the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo between April 2017 and March 2020. Small groups armed with guns and machetes have beaten, tortured, and murdered hostages, raping women and

414 Human Rights Watch, DR Congo: Wanted Warlord Preys on Civilians, 20 October 2020

girls, who make up more than half of them, while using threats to extort money from their families. […]

The Kivu Security Tracker, a joint project of Human Rights Watch and the Congo Research Group, reported that armed assailants kidnapped at least 775 people since 2017 in Rutshuru territory alone, and 1,190 throughout North Kivu province. Thus far in 2020, the Kivu Security Tracker reported that at least 200 people have been abducted for ransom in the province. In most reported cases, gangs of three to five men armed with guns and machetes abducted people in their fields or on the road. The kidnappers often initially pretended to be harmless, claiming to be soldiers or approaching their victims to ask for water. The kidnappers would release some people, such as young children and older people, who were given the kidnappers’ phone numbers, so that their families could contact and negotiate ransoms for those being held. The gangs have detained hostages in Virunga National Park […]

Women and girls said the captors methodically raped the female hostages, except prepubescent girls and older women. Many were also badly beaten. “The kidnappers told us that no woman would come out of there untouched,” said a 28-year-old survivor […]

Sexual Violence In most of the cases reported to Human Rights Watch, the women and girls kidnapped were routinely and repeatedly raped, several times a day, and sometimes by several men. Their abductors often raped them next to male hostages, who remained bound.⁴¹⁵

Between December 2019 through June 2020, Human Rights Watch documented and interviewed “28 female survivors of sexual violence, 5 of whom were children at the time of the abuse” who stated that “they were abducted [by gangs], sometimes with their infants, while working in the fields or on the way home, near the town of Kiwanja. Their abductors would force them to walk, hands tied, for several hours into nearby Virunga National Park”

where “women and girls were often raped multiple times a day and sometimes by multiple men”.⁴¹⁶

The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada conducting research on domestic and sexual violence in the DRC between 2019 and March 2021 reported that:

UN Women reports that during the COVID-19 pandemic, violence increased by 99 percent in North Kivu province (UN 1 Sept. 2020). A December 2020 report by UNICEF's Social Sciences Analytics Cell (CASS) on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and girls in the DRC notes that there has been an increase in the incidence of SGBV in the country and that it has been "particularly severe" in North Kivu and its capital, Goma (UN Dec. 2020). The same source reports that there has been an increase in the number of SGBV cases being seen at health care centres (UN Dec. 2020). The CASS report notes that the NGO Médicins du monde "reported double the number of cases of SGBV received in its health centres in Kinshasa between April and June" (UN Dec. 2020). A June 2020 Reuters article reports that the volume of calls to the [Kinshasa-based (UN Dec. 2020)] Forum of Women Citizens and Activists for Governance, Democracy and Development (Forum des femmes citoyennes et engagées pour la gouvernance, la démocratie et le développement), which runs "Congo's first domestic abuse hotline," "has increased tenfold in recent months" (Reuters 2 June 2020). The CASS report notes that the same hotline "recorded 20 times more calls from women than men" during the national state of emergency from April to July and that 78 percent of the calls received during this time concerned physical and sexual violence against children under the age of 14 (UN Dec.

2020). […]⁴¹⁷

415 Human Rights Watch, DR Congo: Gangs Kidnap, Rape in National Park, 30 July 2020

416 Human Rights Watch, DR Congo: Gangs Kidnap, Rape in National Park, 30 July 2020

417 Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Democratic Republic of the Congo: Domestic and sexual violence, including treatment of survivors; legislation; state protection and support services (2019–

March 2021), 19 March 2021

In September 2020 The Guardian reported that more than 50 women said they were exploited by men who said they were international workers in the DRC:

More than 50 women have accused aid workers from the World Health Organization and leading NGOs of sexual exploitation and abuse during efforts to fight Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In interviews, 51 women – many of whose accounts were backed up by aid agency drivers and local NGO workers – recounted multiple incidents of abuse, mainly by men who said they were international workers, during the 2018 to 2020 Ebola crisis, according to an investigation by the New Humanitarian and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The majority of the women said numerous men had either propositioned them, forced them to have sex in exchange for a job or terminated contracts when they refused. The number and similarity of many of the accounts from women in the eastern city of Beni suggests the practice was widespread, with three organisations vowing to investigate the accusations uncovered. […]

Some women said they were plied with drinks, others said they were ambushed in offices and hospitals, and some said they were locked in rooms by men who promised jobs or threatened to fire them if they did not comply. […]

Some women were cooks, cleaners and community outreach workers hired on short-term contracts, earning $50 to $100 (£40 to £80) a month – more than twice the normal wage. One woman was an Ebola survivor seeking psychological help. At least two women said they became pregnant. Many women said they had not until now reported the incidents for fear of reprisals or losing their jobs. Most also said they were ashamed. Some women said abuse occurred as recently as March [2020].⁴¹⁸

8.1.4. State protection availability

In a report covering the period 29 June to 25 September 2019 the UN Secretary General noted that “The reporting period also saw the investigation and prosecution of emblematic cases of crimes against humanity, including conflict-related sexual violence. […] The Sheka trial in North Kivu and the preparation of the Kokodikoko hearings in South Kivu involved approximately 175 victims of conflictrelated sexual violence, as well as other human rights violations perpetrated in Mwenga and Shabunda territories”.⁴¹⁹

In its letter dated June 2020, the UN Group of Experts on the DRC highlighted that:

The threatening and violent behaviour of NDC-R commanders and combatants deterred people from reporting rape, even had a sanctions system existed. Victims, civil society representatives and MONUSCO sources unanimously mentioned serious risks of retaliation associated with reporting rape committed by NDC-R combatants (see annex 67). Rapists threatened three victims with death if they reported them, and some rapists threatened the same if victims sought medical treatment, according to one civil society source. NDC-R combatants destroyed post-rape medical consultation forms and pages mentioning rape from registers in health centres in Bashali and Bwito chefferies, according to two civil society sources. Eight victims and two civil society sources confirmed that carrying such consultation forms exposed individuals to a high risk if checked at NDC-R checkpoints. Two civil society sources highlighted that NDC-R commanders’ awareness of the legal implications of rape led to denial.⁴²⁰

418 The Guardian, More than 50 women in DRC allege abuse by Ebola aid workers, 29 September 2020

419 UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary General United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 27 September 2019, para. 62

420 UN Security Council, Letter dated 2 June 2020 from the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo addressed to the President of the Security Council, 2 June 2020, para. 126

According to Amnesty International’s human rights report covering the period 2020, “on 23 November [2020], the North-Kivu operational military court sentenced warlord Ntabo Ntaberi alias Sheka, leader of the Nduma Defense of Congo, to life imprisonment for serious crimes committed against civilians in North Kivu between 2007 and 2017. Charges included the rape of some 400 women, men and children in 2010”.⁴²¹