Violence, and particularly sexual violence, is happening "daily" in and around displaced persons camps in part of east DR Congo, a survey from an MSF research group said on Tuesday.
The M23, which had lain dormant for about a decade, launched an offensive in North Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at the end of 2021 and since then has seized large swathes of territory.
The rebels have almost completely encircled Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, killing scores of people and displacing hundreds of thousands more.
The report from Epicentre, which surveyed households living in four camps to the west of Goma said that "more than one in ten young women report having been raped" between November 2023 to April 2024.
'Alarming levels of violence'
The survey "shows the daily frequency and alarming levels of violence, particularly sexual violence, that persist in and around the camps", MSF – Doctors without Borders – said in a statement.
"Once again this year, victims and survivors of sexual violence report being attacked by men, often armed, in the forests and fields where they have to go to collect firewood or the food they need to feed their families," Camille Niel, MSF's emergency coordinator in Goma, said.
"Their precarious situation, and that of their makeshift shelters, make them particularly vulnerable to this type of violence," he added.
Neil said the results of the survey are "consistent with the extremely high number of cases of sexual violence treated by MSF's medical teams in the various displaced people's sites around Goma".
North Kivu displacements
"MSF reiterates our requests to the authorities to guarantee the security of displaced people's sites," the statement read.
There are already 2.8 million displaced people in North Kivu, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
DR Congo's mineral-rich east has been racked for 30 years by fighting between both local and foreign-based armed groups, going back to conflicts from the 1990s.
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