Many have taken refuge in overcrowded camps such as Bulango.
Goma, Congo:
Four men armed with knives as a group of women wade through the dense forests surrounding the city of Goma in eastern Congo, desperate to reach a displacement camp they left to collect firewood.
Fell down after hitting a stone. He didn’t have time to react before one of the men grabbed him.
“He raped me,” she recalled two weeks later in Bulango, one of several camps near Goma that sheltered some 600,000 people who had fled conflict zones.
“He told me he would kill me if I screamed,” she said. “I felt dirty.”
The 35-year-old victim, who did not want to be named, is one of hundreds of displaced women who have been sexually assaulted when they ventured out of the camps to get wood or food.
The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) treated more than 670 women – or about 50 per day – who had been victims of sexual violence at three sites between 17 and 30 April.
More than half of attacks were by armed men, it said last week, adding that its figures may be an underestimate.
Rape has been widely documented as a weapon of war used by armed militia groups operating in the east of Congo since the end of two civil wars between 1996 and 2003.
The unrest escalated after a major attack in North Kivu province last year by the M23 group, which forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee as the army retaliated.
Many have taken refuge in overcrowded camps like Bulango, where humanitarian workers are struggling to cope.
MSF activist Dellis Sages Tulinabo said hunger pushes women outside the camp in search of food and firewood to sell, leaving them vulnerable to sexual crimes.
UNICEF said this week that reports of gender-based violence in North Kivu were up by more than a third in the first three months of 2023 compared to 2022, when more than 38,000 cases were reported.
Most survivors reported being attacked by armed and displaced persons in and around the camps.
Humanitarian activists have also raised concerns about the army. In Bulango, women said they had to pay soldiers to enter the forest. Some of them even commit rape, he added.
Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Bemba said the allegations were being investigated.
Yvonne Tumaini Asifwe, 55, decided to stop hanging out with two of her friends after she was raped. But she’s already feeling the pinch.
“what are we going to eat?” He asked.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)