As thousands of civilians swamp DRC’s refugee camps, the sanctuaries are becoming increasingly unsafe for women and children
The women had fled into the sprawling camps of Goma hoping they would find safety.
As the M23 rebel group has swept this corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it has been accused of murders, rapes and kidnappings.
Hundreds of thousands have left their homes to escape such atrocities and seek refuge in the city.
Yet the women, 35 of them, found little sanctuary inside the besieged Goma enclave. Starving and desperate, they were hunted by armed gangs of men seeking to exploit their vulnerability.
Together, they queued quietly at a medical clinic on the edge of the city, having escaped the M23 only to become victims of what aid agencies say is rape and sexual assault on a catastrophic scale, in one of the world’s worst, and most neglected, humanitarian disasters.
It is estimated at least 50 women from the Goma camps are being raped and sexually assaulted every day, many of whom are targeted as they search for scraps of food beyond the city’s borders.
The current crisis here, marked by rampant sexual violence, severe food shortages and extreme poverty, has been fuelled by the resurgence of the M23 rebel group. The militia is backed by neighbouring Rwanda, a country currently receiving large sums of UK money under a deal to host some of those seeking asylum in Britain.
Having once sanctioned Rwanda in response to the M23’s crimes, the UK now looks on, publicly condemning, but no longer willing to intervene.
The return of the M23 fighters comes on top of years of conflicts in DRC, ruthless competition over mineral resources and ethnic tensions that have forced millions from their homes. Yet this current situation may be the worst in nearly 30 years.
“We are really observing one of the most severe protection and humanitarian crises globally,” Gillian Triggs, assistant high commissioner for protection at the United Nations refugees agency, told the Telegraph.
“It is not only the particular circumstances, but the sheer scale and dimension of this humanitarian crisis which is particularly overwhelming.”
Johan Brieussel, a coordinator at one clinic run by Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), says the organisation has “been here for decades – and this is not business as usual.”
“We are on the edge of something that reminds us of previous wars,” he adds. “It’s quite massive. It’s very, very appalling conditions.”
The M23 militia, largely drawn from the Tutsi ethnic group, first arose more than a decade ago and captured Goma in 2012. They later withdrew but, in early 2022, the group re-appeared with new arms and equipment and has since taken swathes of North Kivu province.
A United Nations expert panel said in December there was “substantial evidence” Rwanda was directly backing M23 with arms, ammunition and uniforms. The rebels carry new weapons, helmets and body armour, while Rwandan troops have been found inside DRC territory.
“The M23’s unrelenting killings and rapes are bolstered by the military support Rwandan commanders provide the rebel armed group,” Clémentine de Montjoye, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, said this week.
The M23 has claimed it is defending the interests of Tutsis against Hutu militias. It denies committing atrocities, while Rwanda has said it is not supporting the group.
Rwanda considers eastern DRC to be its “near abroad” and has a history of involving itself in its neighbour both politically and economically, says Alex Vines of the Chatham House think tank. It has said in the past it is hunting groups responsible for the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s, a claim that has been challenged by experts, but it is also accused of pursuing DRC’s vast mineral wealth.
Goma and its roughly one million inhabitants are now surrounded, trapped by fighters who man checkpoints only 10 or 20 miles from the city. Goma’s residents have been joined by an estimated 600,000 refugees from the countryside.
While the lakeside city, which sits in the shadow of an active volcano, may resemble a pleasant Mediterranean resort along parts of its waterfront, on the outskirts are despair and hunger.
Individual camps which each hold tens of thousands of people have sprouted fields of makeshift shelters around the city. Most are little more than tarpaulin stretched over a mesh of branches and bolstered with piles of black volcanic rock.
Many of those who have taken up residence are vulnerable women. Often they have been widowed by fighting, or have left their husbands in their villages to guard the family farms.
Those living in the camps are also frequently starving. Food aid distributions have not reached them for months, if at all, and residents often say they have not eaten for three or four days.
The hungry queue for hours to see if their names are on food registration lists for sacks of maize flour that seldom arrive.
“I feed my children scraps and I haven't eaten properly for three days,” says Marie Louise Mukeshimana, a mother-of-five who fled Kitshanga in March. “We go to bed hungry each night.”
It is this hunger that makes the women so vulnerable. Unless they are able to get paid work in the city, their only hope of eating is to forage, or collect firewood in the forest that they can sell. But the bush outside the city is prowled by numerous militia groups, who are often little more than common thugs and criminals brandishing machetes and rifles.
“Many around the camps know that the women will go to the bush to find firewood, so men go early in the day looking for them,” explains one medic working with rape victims.
Marie, a mother-of-six who fled Kiwandja earlier this year, was attacked a month ago while looking for food.
She said: “Unfortunately I was by myself. When I was walking I heard far gunshots and decided to flee, but I went the wrong way. They appeared in front of me. There were many. They said either we kill you, or you have sex with us.
“I thought about my children and if I died, who would look after them. I said: ‘Do what you want with me, but keep me alive’.”
Food is so scarce that even after the attack, she has had little choice but to venture back into the forest. “When I heard my children crying of hunger I had to do something,” she explains.
Others admit they are driven to prostitution to feed their children. There is also sexual violence inside the camps, as gangs of men prey on women.
MSF last month estimated it was treating 48 each day for sexual violence in its clinics alone.
The lack of food is clearly increasing the scale of attacks, as well as leading to malnutrition and disease, say aid workers. Cholera and measles have also both flared up.
The disaster around Goma is part of a wider crisis in eastern DRC where 6.7 million people are short of food. More than 100 militia groups are active in the region, while one million have fled their homes alone this year. One-and-a-half million are on the brink of famine and having to sell off their possessions to eat.
However, the World Food Programme (WFP) says it only has enough funding to feed a small fraction of those. It is trying to reach 3.7 million people this year in the region, but is $700m short of fundraising targets and only on track to feed less than a third of them.
Cynthia Jones, WFP’s emergency coordinator in DRC, says: “There are some huge, huge, huge gaps of what we need to do here.”
The crisis languishes in attention and donations behind disasters like Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Ukraine and most recently Sudan.
“There’s no money for the Congo crisis,” says one doctor. “This is very, very sad.”
In addressing the mounting disaster, America, France, Germany and Belgium have all publicly called on Rwanda to halt its support to the M23, or use its influence to get them to pull back.
The UK has been more circumspect. When the M23 took Goma in 2012, Britain blocked aid to Rwanda in response.
Now, however, Rwanda’s leader, Paul Kagame is a key ally in the UK government’s scheme to deter asylum seekers from crossing the Channel. Britain has already paid Rwanda £120 million to host deported asylum seekers.
When interviewed by the Telegraph in December the Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, three times declined to say whether Kigali was supporting, funding or arming the M23 militia. He denied his reticence was due to the government’s immigration policy.
A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: “The UK strongly condemns violence perpetrated by all armed groups in eastern DRC, including M23.
“We raise our concerns at the highest levels with the DRC and Rwanda, as well as supporting the regional diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the conflict.”
For now, though, there is no end in sight.
Everyday, people continue to arrive in Goma, fleeing what they say is M23’s oppressive occupation.
Munguiko Mastaki, 25-year-old primary school teacher from Kitshanga, said he had lived for months under the rebels hoping the situation would get better.
“We had resisted departing, thinking that after the war there will be peace, but it never came. Many young men are missing each day.”
The city’s camps simply cannot cope with the influx of refugees.
At Mboga primary school in Kanyarutshinya, one of Goma’s many camps, the playground outside is full of tents. Refugees sleep in the classrooms by night, while in the day, bedding and stoves are pushed to the side and pupils try to study, as hundreds of the displaced mill around outside.
“The children can’t follow the lessons, they are distracted,” says Bimenyimana Pascal, director of the school.
Aid workers in Goma meanwhile fear the situation is quickly sliding. Among the hundreds of thousands trapped, there is also little sign of optimism. Abuses by the rebels mean they are scared to return home, but in the camps they have found only hunger, disease and often violence.
“Life in this camp is very difficult,” explained 17-year-old Francine Buhunda, who asked that her real name not be used.
“We don’t have anything and there are also men doing violence on women.
“When I am staying in this tent, I am awake all night because someone can get in here and do whatever they want.”
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