Sexual violence has been a scourge in eastern DRC for nearly 30 years.
Swaddled on her mother's knees, Queen breastfeeds peacefully._ "It happened the first time I left the camp," explains Charmante*, 18 years old and a mother for a month. While breastfeeding, she continues her story: "he was wearing a FARDC (Congolese Armed Forces) outfit, when he finished I could no longer walk, it was my friends who carried me back to the camp".
Like her 19-year-old sister and at least two of her friends, Charmante was raped while she was collecting wood in Virunga Park (north of Goma) to resell it and buy something to feed her brothers and sisters.
A week later, she went to an MSF health post where she "tested positive for pregnancy", in her words. Her mother opposes
HUMANITARIAN AID
Some of the raped women met by AFP had received humanitarian aid
, others had not. All of them had, at some point, to choose between the risk of being raped or going hungry with their children.Last November, Rose, 43, walked for three days with her seven children to escape M23 rebels who were entering Kiwanja (about 70 km north of Goma). Since then, she has lived in Rusayo and says she has received no help.
His eyes blur, and his throat tightens. Sandra Kavira listens while Rose retraces the thread of her life—a life of violence, pregnancies, punches, miscarriages and vigilantes.
Already a victim of gang rape in 2017 - in front of her husband, who subsequently beat her daily - she knows the risks of leaving the camps to "look for wood".
She resigned herself to it in June: "We were three friends, there were four men in FARDC uniform. We were all raped. "
Before abandoning her with their seven children in the mud of the Rusayo camp, her husband beats her one last time to make her pay for this second rape and disappears.
In the MSF tent, Rose wipes her tears and hugs her little 4-year-old Jean. "In the camp, it's hard to talk about it. But here, we find neighbours, girls we know, and we say to ourselves: ah... you too?"