Metrics details. The population in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo DRC has been terrorized by widespread sexual violence for decades. Local armed groups, including the government army, continue to systematically rape civilians for strategic reasons. With the violence being concentrated in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, armed groups have not only fought each other but defenceless civilians have been targeted directly on a large scale as well.
One puzzling but central aspect of the violence perpetrated on the local civil population has received special attention by the media, scholars and the international community. This is the continuous, large-scale and systematic use of sexual violence on the local population by virtually all armed groups, both government and non-government, that have been fighting in the region UNSG ; Kippenberg et al.
UN agencies estimate that , women have become the victims of sexual violence perpetrated by armed groups in the eastern DRC since Baaz and Stern ; UN News Official statistics for recent years are scarce, but for , the UN reported documented cases of conflict-related sexual violence in the DRC, of which attributed to government forces and the remainder to armed groups UNSG Statistics show that armed combatants are by far the most common attackers of the victims of sexual violence that do get registered in the eastern provinces of the DRC Bartels et al.
They believe that the attacks by local soldiers and militias in which women are sometimes raped by the hundreds are not just incidents resulting from chaos and sexual desire.
This large and diverse group of observers sees strategic intention as the primary motivation: a perception that flows for a large part from the local pattern of systematic, coordinated and organized collective acts of sexual violence that are seemingly authorized and ordered by commanders in power OHCHR ; HRW ; Maedl ; Schneider et al.
