The UN Joint Human Rights Office in the DRC is liaising with partners and other UN actors in the country to document the allegations and facilitate access to support survivors.

In a context of high insecurity and displacement, as well as under-reporting due to fear of stigma and shame, these figures are merely a snapshot, with many more survivors who could not or have not yet been able to seek care. Such violations may amount to atrocity crimes. Over the same period, 5,292 survivors have sought similar services in Ituri and 4,582 in South Kivu. In only the first three months of this year, 10,339 survivors in North Kivu, of whom 66% were raped, have sought GBV services. The DRC Gender-Based Violence Area of Responsibility (GBV AoR) has reported a 78% increase in survivors seeking GBV response services in North Kivu from 2021 to 2022. A related concern is the risk that other serious crimes like human trafficking become prevalent in the context of armed conflict, such as sexual exploitation, enslavement, and forced marriage and the recruitment and use of children, including in combat. There are also reports of about 1,000 locations in Goma, North Kivu where displaced women and girls are forced to engage in survival sex, including in IDP sites. The UN Action Network is deeply concerned about the dramatic increase in recorded cases of sexual violence in eastern DRC and the targeting of women and girls by armed men in and around IDP camps as they search for food, water and firewood. New York, 13 July 2023 - The 24 UN entities comprising the UN Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict Network - led by the UN Special Representative Pramila Patten – join the Special Representative’s call to urge immediate action to protect women and girls and prevent the use of sexual violence in and around internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Sexual violence and armed conflict