This report considers whether or not it is still valid to describe sexual violence as a weapon of war in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and explores possible reasons for its continuing high levels. Although a global peace agreement (the Lusaka accords) was signed in 2003, elections were conducted in the DRC in 2006 and various local peace agreements were
subsequently signed with North and South Kivu Congolese armed groups in 2008 and 2009, war is not yet over in Eastern DRC. From a community perspective, one of the primary indicators
of this, that ranks above all the other forms of physical insecurity including raids, abductions, looting of goods and livestock, burning of houses and killings, is the persistence of sexual violence.
That all of these remain current realities is evident in all four sites visited, namely Butembo and Rutshuru in North Kivu, and Walungu and Uvira in South Kivu. Women, girls, men and boys all continue to be victims of sexual violence and abuse perpetrated by a range of actors. Although the military and armed groups remain the primary perpetrators, sexual abuse is also perpetrated by civilians, including supposed sources of moral authority, such as teachers, pastors, priests, catechists, and peacekeepers.
Three major clusters of issues appear to underpin the persistence of what is experienced by ordinary people as a state of war. Firstly, poverty, as evidenced in questions of land, livelihoods
and identity. The availability of land for cultivation has been progressively reduced since the mid 1940s through a series of interconnected events and trends that include the arrival of Rwandan refugees in the wake of the 1994 genocide, of foreign armed groups from the mid-1990s to date, and of domestic armed groups seeking to control access to resources. The continued presence of armed groups, as well as generalised insecurity, creates numerous no-go zones for the general population. This, and the resultant impoverishment caused by reduced agricultural production, coupled with increasing disparities of wealth between a land-grabbing elite which has emerged as a result of the war and the poor, whose situation has worsened, are one factor driving young people to join the various armed groups that continue to emerge. This tendency is further aggravated when economic tensions become framed in terms of ethnicity and nationality.
This dynamic in turn is linked to the second cluster, namely the weakness of state structures and resultant patterns of corruption and impunity. The state has yet to enjoy a monopoly on the exercise of force and where its armed forces are present they are frequently implicated in abuses of civilians.
Operations such as Amani Leo (Peace Today) are widely viewed as old wine in new bottles, lacking both concrete impact and popular legitimacy. State authority is further undermined by its inability to ensure the rule of law, in particular through effective administration of justice. In Butembo, for example, the failure of the state either to remove armed groups or to control the appropriation of huge land concessions by the rich elite is a critical catalyst in the emergence of ‘Mai-Mai’ rebel groupings. The introduction of the 2006 law on sexual violence, while an important statement of the state’s intent, has not been matched when it comes to implementation. These weaknesses compound
a situation in which non-state forms of authority such as the churches, the United Nations, the international community, as well as various armed groups that operate parallel to or in competition with the state, also enjoy low levels of accountability at best, and high levels of impunity at worst.
Thirdly, the intertwining of physical and economic insecurity with economic and identity claims, coupled with the severe disconnect between the theory and practice of state authority, profoundly
challenges people’s sense of order and justice, and within this, their sense of self. While many seek refuge by going into exile, others seek refuge through a resort to drugs and alcohol, which are seen by some as contributing to high levels of sexual violence.
More generally, people tend to seek to counter the state of anarchy, and the perceived threat of globalisation, through a resort to “culture’ and “custom” expressed through ethnic identity and gender norms and discourses. Both contribute to and are shaped by armed conflict, and are central to local and provincial power dynamics. For people on the ground, ethnic identity is highly problematic as it can easily become a liability in situations where decisions to kill or let live are often taken on the basis of presumed ethnicity.
For different reasons, gender identities, which both demand and are created by a combination of very specific behaviours, roles and powers, are equally problematic. In a context of severe
poverty, impunity and endemic violence, male gender identity is particularly troubled, and some communities have specific terms to describe men who fail to live up to gender expectations.
Changing gender roles are a reality in all four study sites and pose further challenges to restoring community cohesion. Whether or not one approves of changes in roles and the power of women
and men relative to one another, where they are understood as having been totally inverted, as in the claim that ‘the men have become the women’, it is apparent that gender power is still
perceived as a bi-polar and zero-sum game, rather than something which could be redistributed more equitably to the profit of both women and men. With such perceptions, the changes are a significant source of tension and conflict within households and communities, for they mean that the “enemies” are no longer seen as just coming from outside, they are also believed to have found agents from within the home community. This is reflected in the statement that ‘the women are colonising the men’, itself an example of how conflicts over custom and culture are further related to what are generally dubbed examples of “globalisation”, notably the push for gender parity.
Several impacts of war in turn enable sexual violence to prevail, notably militarisation and impunity: the high visibility and wide deployment of the under/unpaid military is widely regarded as a major source of sexual violence. Meanwhile, the failure to fully implement the 2006 law on sexual violence aggravates a climate of impunity. This is compounded by extreme poverty in which the incentives to leverage resources through sexual exploitation are heightened.
