Attachments
Gender-based violence (GBV) is widespread throughout the Irumu and Djugu territories in the Ituri province of north-east DRC. More than 1.1 million internally displaced persons (IDP), primarily women and children, live in over-crowded camps and informal settlements rife with GBV protection risks, many of which are linked to inter-sectoral humanitarian interventions.
Members of the GBV Area of Responsibility (AoR), the country-wide coordination mechanism for GBV interventions in humanitarian settings that is led by UNFPA, recently assessed GBV risks in Kigonze and Rhoe IDP camps using a safety auditing tool designed for this purpose. The assessment team relied on consultations with community members, interviews with key informants such as community leaders and service providers and first-person observations of the camp setting to inform their findings and recommendations.
The team focused on the potential risks associated with water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), food security, shelter and camp coordination and camp management (CCCM) activities due to initial anecdotal evidence that these were areas of concern in terms of protection. The audit did not specifically intend to address food insecurity but the issue was mentioned repeatedly by community members as a contributing factor to women and girls being forced to adopt negative coping strategies such as engaging in transactional sex.
KEY FINDINGS
There are very few latrines (one block services 500 HHs) and other WASH facilities in the IDP cites given the size of the population; those that are still functional are in need of repairs; they are not segregated by sex and do not have locks and lights. This has created overlapping protection concerns, specifically exposure to sexual assault.
Women shared reports of physical attacks, sexual assaults and even killings that were committed while community members walked long distances to fetch water and firewood. There are not enough pumps in the camps and many of the existing ones are not functioning.
There is a severe housing shortage; the team viewed small, windowless, one-room structures made of found materials that were housing on average 6 people but some had as many as 18; there were often no doors and locks, thus making female headed households especially vulnerable to attacks and exploitation.
Informants mentioned repeatedly that lack of a sustainable food supply was forcing women and girls to engage in survival sex to buy food and basic necessities for their families.
Women were underrepresented in the camp leadership structures. For instance, in Rhoe Camp only 3 out of the 11 members of the camp committee were female.