Rape and Sexual Violence in Kwamouth Territory Maindombe Province

The use of rape and sexual violence by Mobondo Militia in Maindombe against women

According to the recent briefing of the United Nations, the Democratic Republic of Congo is now ranked 5^th top countries in the world with a high number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), with more than 6millions IDPs. However we think these statistics are not exhaustive because the United Nations Mission in DRC has also limit to access certain zones which host IDPs, we estimate IDPs at around 10milions in DRCongo.

More information about IDPs in DRC is available generally covering the eastern part of the country and it is there we have massive presence of International Humanitarian Organizations, the media coverage and interventions. However not much is known about other IDPs in other different provinces. Kwamouth Territory in Maindombe Province for example has been serious hit by the brutality of Mobondo Militia Group and thousands of people are victims.

Rape is one among the strategy of Mobondo

Women particularly are generally victims of rape, subjected to sexual violence, sexual exploitation and others are made sexual slaves in Kwamouth and other areas which are under Mobondo. Unfortunately not much is reported in the media about this situation and this has hide victims from the public in order to really know their situation. Our efforts aims at the inclusion of all victims of violence in DRC.

Available reports on sexual violence, rape and other forms of violence against women focus more in eastern DRCongo, however we have now observed that violence against women and rape are also conducted in Maindombe in the same way as it is in the North Kivu.

This particular young girl of 14 years we visited one day, left Kwamouth on that night when Mobondo came and attacked her village. She was in the house hiding, the militia group cut off the head of her father and her mother, and they also took her two brothers and went with them into the bush. When they came for her in the house, they decided to rape her and in total 5 militia group raped her on that very night. Later on after recovering she left the village in order to seek protection and safety somewhere else.  Two months later other women helped her realized that she was pregnant which was now after three months, where she is, she has no access to a health center and other women helped to go through the situation until she gave birth to twins both baby girls.

When we visited her, this is how the twins were sleeping and this touched my Team who then thought of what they can do in order to improve the situation and to ensure these little young girls are safe.

Now when we went back for the second visit we came with this and now this is how the two baby girls are sleeping as they are now safe from Mosquito bite. We also gave her some clothes, nutritious food and other particular things she needed. But this is for a while actually what we gave may only cover one month. Now she is 15 years old and she does not know what to do and how to survive with her two babies.

The only hope we have and the only thing she is expecting is your generosity towards her, that is why we call upon your support to our projects.