In February, EENET featured a blog from the organisation, ONG RENAISSANCE AFRICAINE RENAF, KIVU, Bukavu Office, South Kivu, DRC. They have kept us up-to-date with the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and have now written with an urgent message:
“Sexual violence is reaching alarming levels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, with nearly 2,000 rapes recorded in two weeks from February 2025 to May 15, 2025, in South Kivu Province/DRC. In 2024, more than 130,000 cases were reported, more than 70% of which were in the provinces of North and South Kivu. This violence, used as a weapon of war by armed groups and loyalist forces, aims to break up local communities. Survivors, mostly women and girls, struggle to access emergency care as there are no medications in health centers in combatant areas.”
They continue: “In South Kivu (DRC) and North Kivu, this humanitarian crisis is also affecting children, who are suffering appalling violence. Two two-year-old children were raped on May 10, 2025, in Kalonge by the Wazalendo in Mule.” They describe further examples of rape and sexual violence, torture, and death.
Children make up 35% to 45% of the nearly 10,000 cases of rape and sexual violence reported January and February this year, James Elder, the spokesperson for UNICEF told reporters in Geneva: “In short, based on initial data (…) a child was raped every half an hour.”
Children are abducted and recruited by armed groups. UNICEF reported in 2023:
“Recruitment and use of children in armed groups has spiked by 45 per cent in the first six months of the year. In 2022, 1,545 children – some as young as 5 years old – were verified as having been recruited and used by armed groups.”
In March this year, UNICEF wrote:
“The number of incidents [of grave violations against children] has tripled from December since the latest escalation of violence which began on 24 January 2025. During this period, data reveals that cases of sexual violence have risen by more than two and a half times, abductions have increased sixfold, killing and maiming is up sevenfold, and attacks on schools and hospitals have multiplied by 12.”
All this has a devastating impact on children’s education. Schools had to close, were destroyed or used as emergency shelters. Children had to flee their homes together with their parents. Only a minority of children in displacements camps receive education. There are only a few facilities that allow children to sit final exams to obtain a formal qualification. In North and South Kivu, more than 2,500 schools and learning spaces are closed, affecting 795,000 children.
In an article on “Broken Chalk”, Z. Alford writes:
“This current situation unravels decades of progress in the DRC, where great strides had been made … to create universal access to education. Access to primary school education has increased significantly in the last few decades, with net attendance rates increasing from 52% in 2001 to 78% in 2018 (UNICEF, 2024).”
The DRC still faces significant issues around education, with children from poorer backgrounds and 50% of girls not able to attend school despite the promise of free primary education. For those children going to school, the quality of teaching might be low due to insufficient budget and fraud, and teachers who have to have second or even third jobs to get a sufficient income.
“Many of the 500,000 teachers in the country have gone without government pay for many years, leaving parents responsible to supplement their pay.” (ibid)
In an opinion piece, S May and J Kimmelman write:
“If we do not address the root causes of instability, the cycle of violence will persist. One of these root causes is the dire state of education in North and South Kivu.”’
In North and South Kivu, even as far back as 25 years ago, 42% of children had never attended school. In the DRC as a whole, 91% of 10-year-olds cannot read and understand simple texts.
“Think about what that means: an entire nation where the vast majority of children are functionally illiterate. If eastern Congo continues to be a place where nearly half of all children never set foot in a classroom, or at best a place where they attend school but fail to learn, the conditions for conflict will persist.” (ibid)
ONG RENAISSANCE AFRICAINE RENAF, KIVU en RDC continues to work in the DRC and in North and South Kivu. They are now aiming to distribute resilience kits to women. They continue to speak out.
For more information on the situation and how to support ONG RENAISSANCE AFRICAINE RENAF, KIVU en RDC in South Kivu please contact Mr Laurent Balagizi at: renafsudkivu@gmail.com.
Post script: The organisation provided another update. The fighting continues, civilians have been murdered, property looted. Malnutrition of children is on the rise and cases of cholera have been reported at the Ndolera mine in Luhihi.