What we do

In our region, young feminists face impediments to their activism such as limited access to funding and support, lack of capacity-building opportunities, and a significant increase of attacks on human rights defenders. This creates a lack of visibility that makes it more difficult for their inclusion and effective participation within women’s rights movements. For women and girls in northeastern DR Cong, rape is a constant threat. Sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war to control, humiliate, and intimidate millions of women and girls. A weak functioning government in the area, a breakdown of social norms due to violence, a lack of respect for the rule of law, readily-available guns, and a destabilized society as a result of a struggle for the country’s national resources have allowed rape to become tragically endemic in the region. The perpetrators largely go unpunished. Armed groups that used rape as a weapon of war are not brought to justice, but instead given amnesty and integrated into the national army or let into general society, where they rape once more. Many women and girls are still experiencing sexual violence at the hands of ordinary civilians.

As a starting point, Solidarity G4G Fizi’s activists initiated demonstrations highlighting human rights abuse in the East of D R Congo where Government security forces and armed groups committed scores of human rights violations. The demonstrations were aimed at seeking justice for victims of sexual violence and human rights violations. As a result of these demonstrations, nine soldiers from the Congolese armed forces, including a lieutenant colonel, were convicted of crimes against humanity, notably rape, committed on 1 January 2017 in the town of Fizi, South Kivu. They were sentenced to jail in February 2018 in a rare example of perpetrators being promptly brought to justice.