YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – A leading Christian charity has described the Democratic Republic of Congo as the “rape capital of the world”, noting that because the DRC is a predominantly Christian nation, most of the victims are also Christian.

Jeremy Frith, chief of operations (US) for Barnabas Aid USA, a Pennsylvania-based company dedicated to helping persecuted Christians around the world, said Crux that the violence in eastern DRC has led to serious human rights violations, including the rape of women and girls and the recruitment of children as child soldiers.

“The DRC is said to be the ‘rape capital’ of the world because of the continuous attacks,” Frith said Crux.

“There is hardly any part of the DRC that is not under pressure from the conflict, but the regions of North Kivu and Beni, which border Uganda and Rwanda, have suffered the most recently,” he said.

Frith’s comments follow an Oct. 22 report by Physicians for Human Rights that cited nearly 90,000 documented sexual assaults in 2023 in the DRC, up from 40,000 in 2021.

The group’s representatives say they interviewed local clinicians about rape victims, and the stories they were told were horrifying: children as young as 3 years old raped; victims were sometimes held captive for days or weeks; others penetrated with sharp objects.

Doctors for Human Rights director Saman Zia-Zarifi described the level of sexual violence as “shocking” and “amazing”.

He suggested that the available statistics may actually pale in comparison to the actual numbers. Many survivors, he said, especially girls, are reluctant to come forward. Furthermore, large numbers of survivors do not have access to clinicians and, worst of all, an undetermined number of victims are killed.

The Physicians for Human Rights report is supported by one published two weeks ago by Doctors without Borders, which said it documented an “explosion in sexual violence” and cared for more than 25,000 survivors of sexual assault last year, compared to a average of 10,000. victims a year ago.

said Frith Crux that most of the victims are Christians, perhaps because the DRC is a predominantly Christian country: 95.8% of the population of 105 million people is Christian. According to the Vatican, there are over 52 million Catholics in the DRC.

“Christians have suffered enormously at the hands of the M23 rebels and many others,” Frith said.

On October 3, around 18 Christians were killed in separate attacks in Ituri, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with the Islamic State Central Africa province claiming responsibility.

Before the killing of 18 people in October, more than 45 people were killed on June 12 in Lala camp near Bule in North Kivu.

“In the same area, in January, 23 people were hacked to death in Makugwe village in Beni council. The killings are appalling and we continue to wonder how the massacres in the DRC have defied any solution for over 50 years now,” said Frith.

“Rape, murder, mass murder, destruction of churches, homes, farmland and businesses; orphaned children used as sex slaves or child soldiers or forced to work in mines and the list of atrocities goes on. This is what Christians face,” Frith said Crux.

“As unarmed civilians, they are victims of every atrocity in the region at the hands of different rebel groups, each with their own agenda,” he said.

Eastern DRC is home to at least 120 armed groups, some of which are supported by neighboring countries such as Rwanda. Notable among these are M23 and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which continue to wreak havoc in eastern DRC. M23 is primarily an ethnic Tutsi rebel group with ties to the Rwandan and Ugandan governments, while the ADF is an ISIS-affiliated militia group.

The decades-old fighting has killed millions and displaced millions more, with the UN reporting in March 2024 that at least 7.2 million people are now internally displaced in the DRC.

With insecurity escalating, charities such as Barnabas Aid are finding it increasingly difficult to work, Frith said.

“Barnabas Aid has not done as much as we would have liked because of these challenges,” he said, but there is no question of giving up.

“Recently we had to engage our partners in Uganda and through the church, especially the Anglican Church in Kasese, to help reach some communities in the North Kivu region. We are still developing the projects there and reaching the rural communities. “

But the Christians in the war-ravaged county have only one desire: To return to peace.

“The heart of the people I’ve interacted with is for the killing to stop so people can start rebuilding their lives and communities and shaping a future,” Frith said.

“Many know they may never get justice, but they at least want to be allowed to live their lives without fear. They are already traumatized and many have lost years without being able to go to school or continue their education, especially young people who have lost decades of their lives to conflict. They desperately want peace. Whether the international community actually cares is a different matter.”

While they wait, Frith said Barnabas Aid is “working to provide for their immediate needs and where possible some economic empowerment schemes, (as well as) helping with agriculture, medicine and schools where possible. We are still developing them together with our partners. They haven’t kicked in yet, but we’re praying we can start getting results early next year.”