I've traveled the world as a writer and an activist
for my entire life.
What we are talking about is a revolution.
We are the women
that our parents warned us about.
And I can tell you that by confronting the problems
once marginalized as women's issues,
we can tackle the greatest dangers
of the 21st century.
Behind every major crisis,
there's an unseen factor at play.
A story you're never been told.
The greatest indicator
of the world's stability, wealth,
and safety is the status of women.
Rape in times of war is a form of terrorism
designed to instill fear, create trauma, and destroy communities.
The victims are attacked, mutilated, and then shunned.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo alone,
1.8 million women have been targets
of brutal sexual assault.
And today in the DRC,
mass rapes are no longer confined to war zones,
they've become routine.
Hi.
This is little baby Horeb.
He's super cute.
He's a product of rape, like most of the kids here.
They're all growing up in this little community
because just like the women ashamed from rape,
the products of the rape, these kids,
are also shamed and ignored.
It's very hard for them to grow up
in regular Congolese society.
So this is a place
that they can legitimately grow up and be accepted.
We wanted to find out why these rapes are happening.
More then 20 years ago,
armed forces from Rwanda invaded the DRC.
This set off a wave of conflicts
between tribal militias, ethnic groups,
and guerilla units from other countries all battling for power
in the mineral-rich hills of central Africa.
And almost every one of these groups
has used mass rape of civilians as a terror tactic.
The war officially ended in 2003.
The question is, why have the rapes continued years later.
We went deeper into the region to find out.
So, we're still in eastern Congo.
We're just leaving the very last buildings
that are under government control.
One of the rebel warlords
has actually agreed to speak with us,
so he sent some of his soldiers to meet us,
which just means getting past these roads first.
Is it far from here?
Over the years, groups of local militia,
known as Mai Mai,
have sprung up to defend against rebel attacks
on their villages.
So we've been walking for about six kilometers
with these guys guarding us.
We're just getting to the village
where these rebels
and their warlord are based.
Can you describe what your life was like before this war?
To this day, 13 years after the end of the war,
splinter rebel groups from Rwanda
and local Mai Mai militia like this one
continue to fight over territory.
Can you just explain what your tribe does
and why do you guys still need to be here
with the heavy weaponry that you have?
As these rapes continue,
the survivors often have no place to turn,
so many of them end up here.
This is Masika Katsuva.
Around here, she's known as Mama Masika.
She began bringing survivors of rape to Buganga Village
in 2000.
Most of them come for medical and community support.
It's kind of a mini refugee camp,
so they kind of try to start to rebuild their lives again.
Come in.
Mama Masika? Hi!
Jambo jambo! I'm Isobel.
It's nice to meet you.
Hello. Mama Masika
asks me to wait
while she documents the progress
of Gorgeta, who was brought here
physically and emotionally drained around a month ago.
Do you know who these men were?
With so many women like Gorgeta
falling victim to this horrific violence,
it's easy to imagine the harm it's doing to the society
as a whole.
Visiting Mama Masika
in this village full of rape survivors,
the sheer number of atrocities and the effect
it's having on society at large begins to sink in.
The pain of rape is something
Mama Masika has experienced firsthand.
She and two of her daughters
are survivors of violent sexual assaults.
This is the real tragedy of rape in the DRC.
Not only are the women brutalized,
they also lose all status in society.
Survivors are often shunned by their communities
and driven from their homes.
With no home to go back to
and no other source of income,
the women rent plots of land
and grow just enough staples to feed the village.
They sell the excess to pay for supplies.
They are somehow surviving, but still in constant danger.
There are rebels all around this region,
so it's still a really vulnerable place
for women to be farming.
Militias like the one we visited say
they need to exist to protect their communities.
But several Mai Mai groups
have been publicly accused of perpetrating their own rapes
and murders.
Because it's obviously so hard to control all your troops
as a general, do you think that it's possible
that any of your soldiers could have ever raped anyone?
This is where we're gonna spend the night.
Everyone's kind of still eating and chattering around us,
but we've got a bunch of guys and soldiers
with their AK-47s
and their RPGs guarding over us.
Don't know if that makes me feel safer or not, but...
For the people of eastern Congo,
the raids, rapes, and fighting in their land
never ended with the war.
The reason is simple.
The DRC is sitting on a fortune of precious metals and minerals,
and all of these armed groups
are desperate to get their share.
This is one of hundreds of mines in this district,
which they are mining for gold and coltan
and various other minerals,
which is where the majority of the wealth comes from in Congo.
Eastern Congo is one of the world's
top five producers of coltan,
a mineral essential to the production
of laptops, tablets, and cell pones.
Prices for coltan are soaring, making the mines
high-value targets for different rebel groups.
These groups raid the mines
and then use the spoils to buy weapons and supplies.
This makes working conditions
extremely dangerous for these women
who have no choice but to work here
after losing their farms and families
to the same rebel raiders.
So when was the last time they came here?
And what happened to the women working here in this mine?
So are you safe working here?
If rebels showed up right now, it's really...
not easy to escape.
I mean, there's nowhere to run to.
These women are completely helpless and vulnerable.
And these miners aren't the only ones at risk.
This plague of sexual violence
has been spreading beyond the conflict zones
and into everyday life.
So we're at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu.
This is a place where women come from all
over eastern Congo from miles and miles
to come and seek medical help for rape with extreme violence.
This place was set up by Dr. Denis Mukwege,
who we're about to meet.
In the town's clinic, we have two tents.
Dr. Mukwege is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee
and the world's leading expert
on treating victims of gang rape.
Dr. Mukwege takes me to the hospital's pediatric room
to see for myself.
- Bonjour. - Bonjour.
Bonjour.
How old is your child?
Six years old.
We have a protocol of how to treat this kind of lesion.
We have five classes.
So here we have when only the skin was touched.
The physical effects of rape on a child
can be devastating.
In some cases, the vagina and anus
are completely destroyed,
leading to incontinence and infection.
In the worst case, the child's abdomen
is punctured, which is usually fatal.
This child's injuries are healing.
She will not need surgery.
Seeing a six-year-old child
who's been raped really brings home how horrific all this is.
Why do you think it is that we're seeing the increase
in rape incidences
amongst children and various different provinces?
In fact, of the 1.8 million rapes
committed in the last 20 years,
only a fraction of the cases have ever gone to trial.
That means the vast majority
of rapists in the DRC remain completely free.
We're just entering the village of Minova,
which is right on the border between North Kivu
and South Kivu.
Back in 2012,
this is where government troops
swarmed in and raped well over a hundred women.
According to survivors,
the culprits were not foreign rebels
or unregulated militia --
they were the DRC's own army.
In response, the government
took an unusual step for the DRC.
They held a military trail
to bring the perpetrators to justice.
39 soldiers,
including five high-ranking officers,
were brought up on charges of rape, looting,
and failure to maintain control of troops.
After a six-month trial, a verdict was reached.
Only two junior soldiers were convicted.
We're just outside Goma, and we're gonna go talk
to some of the perpetrators of the Minova rape.
We were told that to get access to these prisoners,
we should first interview the vice governor of Goma.
Even though the vice governor
had said we should be admitted,
when we tried to go inside with our cameras,
we were refused.
The minister that we spoke to was
telling us how great their justice system is,
how many men have been convicted of rape in the last few years,
how man prisoners they're holding in here.
They haven't let us see a single prisoner.
So it's impossible to tell.
I don't know how the justice system is working at this point.
What is clear is that every single month,
Panzi Hospital documents nearly 100 new cases
of sexual violence against women and children,
and these are just the cases that are reported.
Without an effective judicial process consistently
handing down real punishments,
this statistic is not going down any time soon.
So what hope is there for the DRC?
For the women and girls in Mama Masika's village?
Since we filmed this piece in the DRC,
Masika Katsuva
died suddenly from complications of malaria.
It's a profound loss
of a woman who changed the lives of countless people.
Meanwhile, the rapes continue.
As we've seen in many parts
of the Congo,
sexualized violence from war has been normalized.
Until that is remedied,
any other hope for peace will be in vain.
To help survivors of rape in the DRC, go to viceland.com/woman.