Human rights

Human rights
Human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2006 expressed concern that in the post-war transition period, the promotion of women’s human rights and gender equality is not seen as a priority. The east of the country in particular, has been described as the “rape capital of the world” and the prevalence of sexual violence has been described as the worst in the world. Violence against women seems to be perceived by large sectors of society to be normal. In July 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross expressed concern about the situation in eastern DROC. A phenomenon of ‘pendulum displacement’ has developed, where people hasten at night to safety. According to Yakin Ertürk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women who toured eastern Congo in July 2007, violence against women in North and South Kivu included ‘unimaginable brutality’. ‘Armed groups attack local communities, loot, rape, kidnap women and children, and make them work as sexual slaves,’ Ertürk said. In December 2008 GuardianFilms of The Guardian released a film documenting the testimony of over 400 women and girls who had been abused by marauding militia. In June 2010, UK aid group Oxfam reported a dramatic increase in the number of rapes occurring in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while researchers from Harvard discovered that rapes committed by civilians had increased seventeenfold.

In 2003, Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, told the UN’s Indigenous People’s Forum that during the war, his people were hunted down and eaten as though they were game animals. In neighbouring North Kivu province there has been cannibalism by a group known as Les Effaceurs (“the erasers”) who wanted to clear the land of people to open it up for mineral exploitation. Both sides of the war regarded them as “subhuman” and some say their flesh can confer magical powers.