Abstract

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has suffered from continuous conflict, at least in parts of its territory, since 1993. Altogether, the (mostly indirect) death toll of this sustained violence was estimated by the International Rescue Committee (2007) to have reached in excess of 5 million. A 2011 study also found that up to 1.8 million Congolese women had been raped, with the greatest likelihood occurring in North Kivu, the epicentre of Congolese political violence (Peterman et al. 2011). And, despite the country being officially post-conflict since 2006, there were still as many as 2.7 million internally displaced Congolese as of November 2014, mostly in the North and South Kivu, Maniema, Katanga and Orientale provinces (OCHA 2014), a greater amount than in 2006.