Funding cuts to international aid organizations also mean medical assistance has dried up for vulnerable people affected by conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
As the M23 rebels advancedon Bukavu during January and February of 2025, several villages along Lake Kivu were turned into battlefields. While fighters from all sides have committed atrocities, civil society groups and activists have singled out the Congolese military and allied Wazalendo militias from the North Kivu province for raping women and children.
Riziki (not her real name) was just one survivor of an attack.
"Three soldiers broke into my house to loot. One of them came into my bedroom to rape me, but I resisted," she reports.
"The others shouted at him to leave, but he refused," she adds. "Luckily, my son came to my rescue and they left after they had trashed everything."
The crime took place in February 2025 in Kavumu village, around 30 kilometers north of Bukavu. After that, Riziki, a mother of five, has found refuge in Bukavu.
She hoped to receive justice in Bukavu during a planned show trial. But then, M23 fighters took the city. Judges, lawyers, defendants, convicts, and even some survivors, fled.
"I started trading. Unfortunately, armed men came back to the neighborhood where I had fled with my children. They killed two neighbors. We fled again, and I only came back recently," Riziki told DW.
The new occupiers did not improve much: eyewitnesses reported cases ofrape and sexual violencein the M23-occupied cities ofBukavu and Goma— especially against married women and girls. Women were also forced to perform sexual acts in exchange for various services, and in many cases, survivors did not press charges out of fear and shame.
One young woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, was wrongfully locked up in a secret service prison. She told DW of her experience there.
"At night, one guards threatened to rape me. When I pushed him away, he hit me. I screamed out in pain. Luckily, the superior officer came, and the guard was whipped. Those who witnessed the scene told me guards usually rape women without their superiors knowing," she said.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF), an emergency medical organization, says sexual violence cases have exploded, especially in North Kivu, since fighting between the Congolese army and the M23 began.
MSF says it treated almost 40,000victims there in 2024; and between January and April 2025, there were almost 7,400 victims and survivors. In South Kivu, MSF has assisted almost 700 people in the Kalehe and Uvira regions since the start of 2025. According to MSF's report, the vast majority of attacks reported by victims in 2025 were committed at gunpoint, with perpetrators remaining unaccountable.
"The systematic use of rape as a weapon of war is not only a violation ofhuman rights, but also a deliberate strategy to destabilize communities," Amadou Bocoum, DRC country director for Care International, told DW.
Care says it registered 67,000 cases of sexual violence against women and girls in the first four months of 2025 alone – a 38% jump on 2024.
"Because of the ongoing fighting, more women are being attacked and raped," Bocoum tells DW.
"At the same time, the United States government has cut financial aid, which is normally 40%. We no longer have emergency drugs to prevent HIV infection after rape in stock at our health centers," he adds.
Willermine Ntakebuka, coordinator of the women's rights organization Vision Communautaire, speaks of "alarming figures" in view of the MSF report and demands: "This war should already be over. 30 years of war are too much, with all the consequences suffered by the civilian population, especially women and girls. Women should not have to pay the high price of armed conflict."
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Adapted from German by Silja Fröhlich