Sexual Violence on the Rise in Congo

Acts of civilian sexual violence have become increasingly pervasive in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to a recent study released on April 15 by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Oxfam America, an international relief and development organization.

The study’s analysis of violence trends over time revealed that although the total number of sexual assaults reported steadily decreased between 2004 and 2008, the number of civilian rapes increased seventeen-fold.

“These findings imply a normalization of rape among the civilian population, suggesting the erosion of all constructive social mechanism that ought to protect civilians from sexual violence,” according to the study.

The study, Now the World is Without Me, reported that women in South Kivu are subject to sexual violence regardless of age, marital status, or ethnicity, and that they are attacked not only in fields and forests but also in their own homes.

“Some of the results were shocking, mostly that the women are really attacked everywhere and that everyone is at risk” said Susan A. Bartels, a researcher at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, emergency room physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and primary author of the report. “I was shocked by the number of women who were attacked in their own home, specifically at night when they were sleeping with their families.”

The study also demonstrates how sexual violence can be used as a tool to ignite terror.

“It’s a very important study and a very disturbing study because it documents how the use of rape in times of war can then spill over into peacetime and devastate a whole community,” said Jaqueline Bhabha, director of the University Committee on Human Rights Studies.

The study offers several key recommendations to help ameliorate the situation in the Congo, including ensuring quality care is available for women, working to reduce sexual violence, and building on the legal and justice initiative taken to date.

“A lot of people wonder what they can do here, in Boston or in the US,” Bartels said, “and to that I would say to help raise awareness and to perhaps consider supporting organizations that are working [in the Congo].”