(Buhimba, DRC) A woman raped every four minutes. It is the average to freeze blood calculated by United Nations stakeholders in February, when they tried to measure the extent of sexual violence in the east of the DRC. With the means at hand, a small team of doctors without borders (MSF) crosses this region torn apart by war to treat both the body and the soul of the victims.
The baby groans, cries, toriles in the arms of Marie* while she tells her journey, in a small consultation room of the Buhimba clinic, in North Kivu.
Driven from her house by the war, Marie lived in a displaced camp, almost two years ago, when she ventured alone in the Virunga National Park to pick up firewood. It was one of the only ways for her to win a few money, selling the wood by the road.
Armed men arose from the forest and raped her. She found herself pregnant with her daughter, now 1 year old.
After giving birth, still unable to go home, she practiced subsistence agriculture near the camp, working with the sweat of her forehead, the baby hanging behind her back with a scarf.
A few months later, Marie needed money. She returned to the National Park to collect wood. The horror scenario was repeated, like a recurring nightmare: arms in arms, sequestration, rape, and a second pregnancy. Her second baby, a boy, was born here at the Buhimba clinic three weeks ago. He awaits it outside during the consultation.
“I knew that here, we treat women victims of assaults,” she said gently.
Tens of thousands of victims
Marie has followed a follow -up as part of a program by the Organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which offers medical and psychological care to the victims of sexual violence in eastern DRC, an area torn apart by conflicts for thirty years. The speakers move to clinics of the meager Congolese health care network across the region. They offer treatments for sexually transmitted infections, emergency contraceptives, vaccines, abortion aid, if necessary. The most serious cases are redirected to hospitals.
In addition to MSF staff proper, employees of local clinics receive a bonus for their participation in the NGO program.
In 2024, while the fighting between government forces and the rebellious army of the M23 raged, MSF took care of nearly 40,000 victims in the province of North Kivu, an unprecedented number.
Marie is grateful for medical care received at the clinic, but also for the psychological help which helped her fall on her feet after very traumatic assaults. “I was shown to lower emotions,” she sums up.
A great-grandmother on the lookout
During the meeting, Amoin Sulemane keeps his eyes riveted on Marie’s baby. This great-grandmother, manager of midwife practice activities in the assistance program for victims of sexual violence, has seen all the distress of the world over his missions, whether in his native Ivory Coast, in Haiti, in Niger, in the Central African Republic and aboard the MSF ship in the Mediterranean, where she practiced childbirth in the open sea.
Photo Martin Tremblay, the press
Amoin Sulemane is the manager of midwife practice activities in the assistance program for victims of sexual violence of doctors without borders.
She can see that there is something wrong with Marie’s baby. She takes her arm, detects an edema there, a probable sign of malnutrition. “She’s 1 year old?” What is she eating? “, She inquires.
“She’s weaned,” said the mother, who only breastfeeds her nascent boy.
The midwife intervenes: she explains to the mother that breast milk must also be given to the eldest too. She takes him away, offers him juice and cookies, then tries to register it for a program to combat malnutrition. She asks Marie her phone number to follow up on children’s health. The mother has no phone, but a SIM card that she can insert into her neighbor’s phone if necessary, the time of a call. A follow-up meeting is set.
“It is a dramatic situation. I will try to see what we can do, ”sums up Mme Sulemane.
In Buhimba, The press was able to meet five women followed by MSF. All were victims of armed men, in military uniform, who seized them by force and sexually assaulted.
They ignore what faction they belonged to: a multitude of armed groups have operated in the region in recent years. “They all wear the same kind of outfits,” said Mr.me Sulemane.
The United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women stressed last winter that sexual violence was used as a “war weapon” in the DRC, “in particular by non -state armed groups, but also by the armed forces and the Congolese police forces”. The goal is to “punish rival groups and inspire fear of civilians”.
Say nothing to husbands
For Maombi, who resided until recently in a moving camp with her husband and six children, the drama occurred because of a bus breakdown. She had heard that humanitarian workers distributed food in her region of origin, a few hours away from the camp. She had used public transport, with a group of men and women. Unfortunately, the vehicle broke down in the middle of the night. Men in fighting clothes have arrived. They beat the men, then “all the women were raped”. Four armed men attacked her.
Photo Martin Tremblay, the press
Many women raped while the crisis in the DRC rages fear being rejected by their husband if the thing is known.
When she returned home, she didn’t say anything to her husband, for fear of her reaction. “He’s going to throw me, if he knows,” she said.
Many men in the DRC reject women victims of sexual assault, as if it were a defect.
“I cannot tell my family because the family could tell my husband, and he could not agree to see me like that,” adds Sifa, 35 and mother of four, raped too when she had ventured into the bush to pick up firewood.
“I am still a young girl. If boys hear that I have been raped, I risk losing the possibility of a marriage, “said Judith, 28, who saw armed attackers burst at 2 a.m. in the house she shares with her mother.
Civilians often feel powerless to change things, in a country where weapons impose their law. Nadège, sexually assaulted by looters who had invested his house at 4 a.m. and stole all his value, says that his neighbors did not dare to intervene.
“If you cry, we’re going to get to your place and kill you,” she says.
She says she has managed to feel better thanks to the help of the MSF program and hopes that care will remain accessible as long as the crisis is not absorbed. For the rest, “we leave everything in the hands of God,” she says.
“If he could change things, it would be good. »»
* Fictive first name: all the victims of sexual assault encountered within the framework of this report expressed themselves provided that their identity is protected.
