Doctors Without Borders treats more than two victims of sexual violence per hour in the DRC

This trend accelerated in the first months of 2024. In North Kivu province alone, 17,363 victims and survivors were treated with help from Doctors Without Borders between January and May. Not even halfway through the year, this already represented 69 percent of the total number of victims treated in 2023 in the five provinces mentioned above.

Displaced women are the first victims

The 2023 data presented in the report has been analyzed and verified over several months. We call for helpResearch shows that 91 percent of victims treated in the DRC with the help of Doctors Without Borders were hospitalized in North Kivu province. Clashes between the M23 group, the Congolese army and their respective allies have been raging in the province since late 2021, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

The vast majority of victims (17,829) were treated at IDP sites around Goma, the capital of North Kivu. The number of IDP locations continued to grow in 2023.

“According to patients’ testimonies, two-thirds of them were attacked at gunpoint,” said Christopher Mambula, head of MSF programs in the DRC. “These attacks took place at the sites themselves, but also in the surrounding areas when women and girls – who made up 98 percent of the victims treated by Doctors Without Borders in DRC in 2023 – went out to get wood or water, or to working in the fields.”