MSF has and continues to treat more than two victims of sexual violence per hour in DRC

This trend accelerated in the first months of 2024. In North Kivu province alone, 17,363 victims and survivors were treated with MSF assistance between January and May. Not even halfway through the year, this already represented 69 per cent of the total number of victims treated in 2023 in the five provinces mentioned above.   

Displaced women are the first victims

Analysed and verified over several months, the 2023 data presented in the report, We are calling for help, show that 91 per cent of victims treated with MSF assistance in DRC were admitted 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 in displacement sites around Goma, North Kivu’s capital. The number of displacement sites continued to grow throughout 2023.  

“According to the testimonies of patients, two-thirds of them were attacked at gunpoint,” says Christopher Mambula, head of MSF’s programmes in DRC. “These attacks took place on the sites themselves, but also in the surrounding area when women and girls – who accounted for 98 per cent of the victims treated by MSF in DRC in 2023 – went out to collect wood or water, or to work in the fields.”