The Congolese army is mired in a culture of sexual violence and should be disarmed because many of its troops are “completely sick”, according to one of the country’s leading gynaecologists.

Dr Denis Mukwege said soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) should be stripped of their weapons and replaced by new recruits who have never committed sexual violence or fought for a violent militia.

Rapists in the the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique (FARDC), he added, ought also to be considered “victims” because they were traumatised by involvement in one of Africa’s most brutal and longest-running wars and needed psychological help that was not available.



Alluding to the town in eastern Congo where Congolese soldiers committed mass rape in 2012, Mukwege said: “In Minova and other places it is the FARDC who are the ones who were raping instead of protecting the population. The FARDC has shown that the army can destroy its population, it’s a big problem.

“If we want to fight against sexual violence then we need to be courageous and say that we need to create an army where people have never been in a militia before or have never been involved in rape or destruction.”

Mukwege, 59, who was last year awarded the EU’s highest human rights award, the Sakharov Prize, for saving the lives of thousands of rape victims, also questioned the wisdom of the international community ploughing large sums of money into a military that routinely perpetrates sexual violence.

Dr Denis Mukwege believes many of the soldiers guilty of rape are ‘victims’ too because many joined the army when they were children. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand /AFP/Getty Images

Mukwege said: “The UK and other countries are spending a lot of money to try and build an army from people who are completely sick and destroyed. They will never succeed.”

According to UN estimates, more than a third of the rapes that occur in the eastern part of the country are committed by the army.

Mukwege’s comments follow the revelation that, despite spending £5.2m on hosting a high-profile summit on ending sexual violence in conflict, the UK government has committed less than a fifth of that amount to tackling rape in warzones in 2015.

A UK parliamentary inquiry will this week begin scrutinising Hague’s initiative and also details of an Observer investigation that found rapists in the army are still operating with impunity within eastern DRC, where Mukwege’s Panzi hospital has helped treat more than 30,000 survivors of sexual violence perpetrated by the military and militias.

Mukwege said: “We should be more courageous. Why can’t we start sending the FARDC to do social work like fixing roads, protecting houses or producing food? They can keep their uniforms but not their guns, that way they can be useful for society.”

Mukwege added that many military recruits had already fought for violent militia and committed rape, meaning that sexual violence was woven into the mindset of the country’s military.

“Many of the perpetrators are themselves victims because many of them were children when they joined the army and there is no psychological support to help them,” said Mukwege.

“We are trying to build something with people who are mentally unsafe … studies show that most have post-traumatic stress disorder. How can you give them guns?”

The UK and other countries are spending a lot of money to try and build an army from people who are sick and destroyed Dr Denis Mukwege

On Sunday an investigation found that the biggest rape tribunal in the country’s history was allegedly fixed by the government and military prosecutors, while rape prosecutions in eastern DRC have fallen and incidents of sexual violence increased despite political pledges at the London summit to act on sexual violence in conflict.

The findings raise questions about the UK government’s commitment to the issue, with data from freedom of information requests revealing that last year just one trip was made to the Congo by a member of the UK team dedicated to sexual violence.

Funding to the DRC from the Department for International Development (DfID) is £149m this year, a portion of which is dedicated to helping the country’s army “increase their ability to fight against impunity”. Other initiatives aimed at defence reform in the country. In addition, the Ministry of Defence says that a handful of officers are based in the east of the country, “working with the UN and Congolese government”.

Despite such efforts, Congoloese troops continue to be implicated in ongoing sexual violence. Rebecca Masika Katsuva, who runs a women’s refuge in Minova, calculates that of the 800 rape victims her centre has helped since the start of 2014, 600 were attacked by the army.

Emmanuel Baboo, of the Heal Africa hospital in Goma, which treats up to 10,000 victims of sexual violence a year, describes cases where soldiers from the 10th military region in eastern Congo deliberately rape children to “corrupt” them early.