Mapping Report > Section II. Inventory of Specific Acts of Violence > CHAPTER I. Acts of violence committed against women and sexual violence
The acts of violence listed in the previous section clearly show that women and girls paid a particularly heavy price over the course of the decade. The widespread violence that took hold in Zaire, later the DRC, between 1993 and 2003 had particularly serious consequences for women because of their socio-economic and cultural vulnerability. It was also reflected in specific forms of violence, such as sexual violence, the main victims of which were women959 and it is widely accepted that Congolese women and girls have been the target of widespread acts of violence since 1993.960
Violence in the DRC was accompanied by the systematic use of rape and sexual assault by the combatant forces. Although primarily committed under cover of an armed conflict in both occupied and combat zones, acts of violence also occurred in times of peace and in areas far removed from the conflict.
The successive and concurrent wars in the DRC contributed to widespread sexual violence both during the fighting, during the withdrawal of combatants, after the fighting, in areas where troops were stationed, in occupied areas, during patrols, during reprisals against the civilian population and during raids conducted by isolated and sometimes unidentified armed groups. These acts of sexual violence can be mainly attributed to armed actors in the field, although civilians did sometimes also take part in the abuse.
Impunity, a lack of discipline, ethnic hatred, the normalization of violence, mystical beliefs, mental coercion exercised over child soldiers, the passive or active encouragement of the institutional and rebel military hierarchies all help to explain the widespread sexual violence to which women of all ages, from girls sometimes as young as five to elderly women, were subjected. Men also suffered sexual violence, albeit to a lesser extent. The damage caused to the social fabric due to the collapse of national institutions and the repeated conflicts contributed to fostering an atmosphere of impunity and chaos.
The unequal place of women in society and the family also encouraged sexual violence in wartime. As stated by Yakin Ertürk, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, “Sexual violence in armed conflicts in the DRC is fuelled by gender-based discrimination in the society at large”.961 Congolese law and discriminatory customary practices with regard to women maintain them in a social reality and mental pattern of domination.962 Prior to the adoption of the new 2006 law on sexual violence,963 the highly restrictive definition of rape thus covered only a limited number of the situations with which women might be confronted.
While cases of sexual violence have been more specifically and systematically documented for a number of years now, particularly those directly linked to the armed conflicts, the same cannot be said for cases that took place between 1993 and 2003. The Mapping Exercise was, nonetheless, able to find information relating to sexual violence committed over this period in general reports concerning violations of human rights and in some reports specifically addressing the issue of sexual violence.964
The limited amount of time (six months) and resources (five teams) available to cover the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed throughout the DRC over the course of 10 years of armed conflicts meant that most effort had to be focused on incidents involving the deaths of a large number of victims. Aware that such a methodology prevents full justice from being done to the numerous victims of sexual violence and fails to reflect appropriately the widespread use of this form of violence by all armed groups involved in the different conflicts in the DRC, it was decided from the outset to seek information and documents supporting the perpetration of sexual violence in certain contexts rather than seeking to confirm each individual case, the victims being unfortunately too numerous and dispersed across the whole country.965 This approach has enabled the recurrent, widespread and systematic nature of this phenomenon to be emphasised, as demonstrated in this chapter. It has also enabled some mass occurrences of sexual violence to be confirmed, such as the rape of women during the massacres of Hutu refugees by the AFDL/APR. Such events had previously been little documented.
The fact that some major incidents are not mentioned in this chapter certainly does not imply that they were not accompanied by sexual violence. Similarly, some armed groups committed acts of sexual violence that have not been mentioned here.
Finally, the figures given in this chapter only represent the tip of the iceberg. Many places still remain inaccessible, victims and witnesses have sometimes not survived the violations or are still too ashamed to talk about what happened. Finally, the documentation of sexual violence was not always sufficiently specific or systematic to be used in this report.
Whilst most of the acts of sexual violence examined in this report represent offences and crimes in national law as well as in human rights and international humanitarian law, the level of impunity is striking. Very few cases of sexual violence ever reach the justice system, few of those that do result in decisions, and even fewer in convictions. Finally, in the rare cases of convictions, the defendants almost invariably escape from prison.966
The first part of this chapter presents the national and international legal framework applicable to acts of sexual violence and briefly analyses the legal practice in this regard. Acts of sexual violence committed over the period 1993-2003 are then presented and analysed in the following sections and placed chronologically in time, according to the four periods used in the previous section.967 Finally, certain specific features of the sexual violence in the DRC are studied in greater detail in order to highlight the indefensible, organised, widespread and systematic nature of the innumerable acts of sexual violence perpetrated.
959 Acts of sexual violence involving men and boys, whilst being far less frequent in comparison to those involving women, will also be mentioned in this chapter.
960 Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences (A/HRC/7/6/Add.4), 27 February 2008.
961 Women face discrimination and suffer from oppression in virtually all areas. The country is 130th (out of 136) in UNDP’s gender-related development index (GDI). Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women (A/HRC/7/6/Add.4), para. 96.
962 Ibid, para. 97. For example, the Congolese Family Code considers married woman as legal minors.
963 Law on sexual violence, which comprises Law No. 06/018 of 20 July 2006, supplemented by Law No. 06/019 of 20 July 2006 modifying and supplementing the Decree of 6 August 1959 on the Code of Criminal Procedure.
964 Réseau des femmes pour un développement associatif (RFDA), Réseau des femmes pour la défense des droits et la paix (RFDP) and International Alert (IA), Women’s bodies as a battleground. Sexual violence against women and girls during the war in the DRC, 2004; Dignité des sans-voix (DSV), “Femmes dans la tourmente des guerres en RDC”, 2002; MSF, I Have no Joy, no Peace of Mind; Medical, Psychosocial and Socio-economic Consequences of Sexual Violence in Eastern DRC, 2004; AI, Surviving Rape: voices from the east, 2004; AI, Mass rape: time for remedies, 2004; HRW, The War within the War: sexual violence against women and girls in eastern Congo, 2002; HRW, Seeking justice. The prosecution of sexual violence in the Congo War, 2005.
965 Most of the available documentation only covers cases of individual violence based on anonymous evidence, deliberately incomplete for reasons of security and confidentiality. Because of this, it was often difficult to identify the places and dates of the violations with any accuracy. Each of the Mapping Exercise’s teams of investigators was, however, asked to specifically question witnesses to the main incidents listed with regard to the use of sexual violence.
966 Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women (A/HRC/7/6/Add.4).
967 The first period, from March 1993 to September 1996, covers the violations committed during the last years of power of President Mobutu, marked by the failure of the democratisation process and the devastating consequences of the Rwandan genocide, particularly in the provinces of North and South Kivu. The second period, from July 1996 to July 1998, focuses on violations perpetrated during the first war and the first 14 months of the regime of President Laurent Désiré Kabila. The third period lists the violations committed between the start of the second war, in August 1998, and the death of President Kabila, in January 2001. Finally, the last period covers the violations perpetrated in a context of gradual respect for the ceasefire along the front line and the speeding up of the peace negotiations with a view to launching the transition period, on 30 June 2003.
