WORLD BRIDGE BLOG

My colleague, Camilla Olson and I are currently on mission in Goma, researching the implementation of a new comprehensive strategy on gender-based violence (GBV) in Democratic Republic of Congo. During this trip we have met with many local women’s groups that support victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence, many started by women who are survivors themselves.

One woman explained to us how she was motivated to start a support group to help others who had gone through what she had. She told us, “I was a victim, but I am not a victim now.”

She described being gang-raped in front of her husband and children by armed men who were part of a rebel group. They also stole all her possessions and abducted her children. After the attack, other members of the rebel group persuaded her rapists not to kill her.  She spoke about the irony of having her life saved by some of the same men who attacked her.

Three days after the rape, while she was still recovering from her injuries, her husband left her. Her father-in-law had persuaded him that she must be HIV positive after being gang-raped. Only her mother-in-law stayed behind to help her.  She sought medical help from a general hospital but they required payment, which she could not afford. A woman from a UN agency eventually paid the medical fees for her so that she could receive treatment, and she has always remembered and been grateful for this assistance. After the attack she continued to suffer harassment by armed men and she was eventually forced to flee the area.

Four months after this terrible incident, and soon after her neighbor had died as a result of another sexual assault by armed men, she set up a group to support HIV positive women and survivors of gender-based violence. This developed into a network of over hundreds of members in the province of North Kivu.

This network assists survivors of sexual assault by accompanying them to ensure that they get access to medical help and if they want to report their case to the police, legal assistance. They also run a counseling center (a maison d’écoute) where women can stay overnight, and they help survivors of sexual assaults who have been abandoned by their families restart their lives by training them in crafts, agriculture or animal husbandry. They do awareness-raising sessions with communities on violence against women and on HIV/AIDS to try to overcome the stigmatization suffered by many survivors of rape.  

She explained to us how women like herself understand the impact of the conflict on women and therefore must be involved in strategies for addressing violence against women in the country. And yet her organization receives minimal financial support, like far too many of the local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) we have met with this last week in Goma.

The new strategy to fight against sexual violence in the DRC covers essential components needed to address GBV, such as fighting impunity, security sector reform, prevention, protection and assistance for survivors. But the UN agencies taking leadership of the strategy have not yet done enough to involve local NGOs. This is not a simple proposition, and it is always difficult for UN agencies and international NGOs to determine which local NGOs have the capacity to run programs, handle funds transparently and be sufficiently independent of political influences.

Despite these concerns, vetting processes can be developed, and identification of suitable local NGOs is successfully carried out by many agencies who currently partner with them. This needs to be undertaken seriously by many more. Too many local NGOs have told us that they feel discouraged by the new GBV strategy because they do not feel a part of it.

No comprehensive national GBV strategy can be successful if it fails to involve the people most directly affected by it, namely the local women’s groups that have fought for women’s rights in their country for years, and will continue to do so long after the international agencies have left.