The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) ratified the 2000 UN TIP Protocol in October 2005. United Nations Treaty Collection website, Chapter XVIII Penal Matters section, Section 12a, retrieved August 19, 2024
In 2010, the country was a source and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically conditions of forced labor and forced prostitution. The majority of this trafficking was internal, and much of it was perpetrated by armed groups and government forces outside government control within the DRC's unstable eastern provinces.
In 2010 the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo did not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and did not make significant efforts to do so. The government did not show evidence of progress in prosecuting and punishing labor or sex trafficking offenders, including members of its own armed forces, providing protective services for the vast majority of trafficking victims, or raising public awareness of human trafficking. In addition, the government's anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts decreased during the 2010 reporting period.
The U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 3" in 2017. By 2023 the country was placed at Tier 2. US Government website, Trafficking in Persons Report 2023
Realms in 2010 A significant number of unlicensed Congolese artisanal miners - men and boys - are exploited in situations of debt bondage by businessmen and supply dealers from whom they acquire cash advances, tools, food, and other provisions at inflated prices, and to whom they must sell the mined minerals at prices below the market value. The miners are forced to continue to work to repay constantly accumulating debts that are virtually impossible to repay. In North Kivu, South Kivu, and Katanga provinces, armed groups and Congolese national army (FARDC) troops reportedly use threats and coercion to force men and children to mine for minerals.
A number of policemen in eastern DRC reportedly arrested people arbitrarily in order to extort money from them. Those who could not pay were forced to work until they had "earned" their freedom. Congolese girls are forced into prostitution in tent- or hut-based brothels or informal camps - including in markets and mining areas - by loosely organized networks, gangs, and madams. Congolese women and children are exploited internally in conditions of involuntary domestic servitude and taken, in smaller numbers, to Angola, South Africa, Republic of the Congo, and European nations for commercial sexual exploitation. Some members of Batwa, or pygmy groups, are subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude in agriculture, mining, and domestic work in eastern DRC.
Indigenous and foreign armed militia groups, notably, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), Patriotes Résistants Congolais (PARECO), various local militia (Mai-Mai), the Alliance of Patriots for a Free and Sovereign Congo (APCLS), and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), continued to abduct and forcibly recruit Congolese men, women, and children to serve as laborers, porters, domestics, combatants, and in sexual servitude. In 2009, the LRA continued operations in areas in and near the DRC's Orientale Province, violently abducting more than 1,700 Congolese citizens, including children. Some of these abductees were later taken to southern Sudan or the Central African Republic. Likewise, abducted Sudanese and Central African citizens experienced conditions of forced labor and sexual servitude at the hands of the LRA after being forcibly taken to the DRC.
In 2009, the FARDC resumed recruitment, at times through force, of children for use as combatants, escorts, and porters, a practice which observers believed to have ended by 2008. From November 2008 to October 2009, 623 confirmed cases of unlawful child soldier recruitment were attributed to the FARDC, 75 percent of which were attributable to ex-CNDP (National Congress for the Defense of the People, a former Congolese rebel group) elements absorbed into the FARDC in 2009. In April 2009, for example, 100 children, ages 13 to 15, were recruited by the FARDC along the Bunyakiri-Hombo axis.
An unspecified number of children recruited by the CNDP during past reporting periods remain within integrated FARDC units. In addition, FARDC elements pressed hundreds of civilians, including children, into forced labor to carry ammunition, supplies, and looted goods, to fetch water and firewood, to serve as guides, or to construct military facilities and temporary huts. Those who resisted were sometimes killed. Others died under the weight of their heavy loads.
Elements of the national army perpetrated severe human trafficking abuses in 2010, including forcibly recruiting hundreds of children and using local populations to perform forced labor. Some army commanders blocked efforts to remove children from their units. Furthermore, a number of FARDC commanders accused of child soldiering and forced labor abuses in previous reporting periods remained in leadership positions within the army and were not investigated, disciplined in any way, or brought to trial. Therefore, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is placed on Tier 3. The government continued to lack sufficient financial, technical, and human resources to effectively address trafficking crimes and provide basic levels of security and social services in most parts of the country.
The military lacked the capacity to demobilize armed groups or adequately prevent the trafficking violations committed by members of its own forces. The country's criminal and military justice systems, including the police, courts, and prisons were practically nonexistent; there were few functioning courts or secure prisons in the country. Some advances, however, were noted during the reporting period in demobilizing children from fighting factions, including from the national army, and in sensitizing military officials about the illegality of committing forced labor abuses."Democratic Republic of the Congo". Trafficking in Persons Report 2010. U.S. Department of State (June 14, 2010).
History Between 1996 and 2003, the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPF/RPA) entered the Democratic Republic of the Congo to kill Hutu refugees and anti-Tutsis who had fled to the DRC to escape the Rwandan Genocide. RPF/RPA was led by General Paul Kagame, who ended the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda. After allying with the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL), Kagame was given reason for “entree into the DRC for the sole reason of going after Hutu refugees.”
The Tutsi-led armies killed innocent citizens, including women, children, and the elderly. In the First Congo War, the conflict that resulted from this invasion, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, leader of the AFDL and opponent to President Mobutu, took power in May 1997. He subsequently exiled Mobutu from the DRC.
The desired elimination of Hutus by Kabila was unsuccessful and disliked by Rwanda, which led to the Second Congo War. In 1998, a group of African powers, headed by Rwanda, sought to remove Kabila from power. His assassination in office led to the rise of Joseph Kabila, his son. The war ended with the Pretoria Accords in 2002, signed between the DRC and Rwanda. Since the beginning of the wars, the country has seen numerous human rights violations, as well as human trafficking.
In 2011, the United Nations Human Development Index marked the DRC as 187 out of the 187 countries used for calculation. In 2022, the same index noted that it had slightly improved and had risen to 175 out of 187; United Nations website, Human Development Index, retrieved August 30, 2024 the country was scored 48 out of 100 for development.
Gender-Based Violence From 1996 to 2013, more than 200,000 victims, specifically women and children, were the target of gender-based, sexual violence. More than 8,000 cases of assault from women or girls were reported between January and September of 2008. According to a 2011 report, there is a possibility of over 2 million sexual violence victims across the DRC.
Gender-based violence is used as a method of power during times of conflict. Conflict and gender-based violence symbiotically assist in the “destabilization of [a] region and its people.” The United States Department of State states that human trafficking in the DRC predominantly occurs through the forced prostitution of women and children, child labor in mines, and child soldiers. Reliance on women as providers of survival materials, like water, kindling, and food, makes them more susceptible to abduction. In the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the prominent form of human trafficking is “conflict-based sexual slavery of women and girls.
Information collected by the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office (UNJHRO) from the Democratic Republic of the Congo from January 2010 to December 2013 shows “3,635 incidences of sexual violence (rape and gang rape) by armed groups and state agents.” Within those cases, 73% of those victims were women, 25% were girls, and 2% were men. Additionally, almost 50% of the actions were committed by Congolese state agents, and 35.2% of acts within that category committed by FARDC. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) conducted a study that showed that 39% of sexual, gender-based violence in the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, Orientale, Katanga and Maniema, was related to armed conflict and committed by armed people. A survey that was taken from the North Kivu province "showed that 22% of women and 10% of men were victims of sexual violence within the conflict."
Sexual violence has also occurred between different ethnic communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the Tanganyika province, there has been violence between the militias of the Twa and the Luba. Violence and conflict has moved to the Kasaï province, the Kasaï-central province, and the Kasaï-Oriental province. The anti-government militia Kamuina Nsapu and the pro-government militia Bana Mura’s targeting of civilians has led to increased sexual violence. Examples of actions committed include “victims being raped in front of relatives, a pregnant woman having her fetus ripped out and at least one victim being forced to perform sex acts on a family member before being executed.”
In 2017, the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) confirmed 804 cases of sexual violence (507 women, 265 girls, 30 men, and 2 boys). Of those cases, 72% were found to be a result of non-state armed groups. These groups include the “Twa militia and Tanganyika and the Force de resistance patriotique de l’Ituri (FRPI) operating in Irumu territory in Ituri.” On May 1, 2015, an attack on Kikamba in South Kivu led to the rape of 100 women.
In 2017, three cases of sexual violence were resolved within the courts. A FARDC colonel was convicted for “command responsibility for rape as a war crime” in the village of Musenyi. A commander in the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda was convicted for utilizing sexual violence as a war crime in Nzovu. A member of parliament was convicted, along with his militia, for the abduction and rape of 39 children on the grounds of a crime against humanity.
Trafficking of Children