Introduction
In early 2025, conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC or Congo) surged to horrifying levels amid renewed fighting involving the M23 rebellion. In North and South Kivu provinces, humanitarian agencies reported a sharp spike in rapes and sexual assaults as violence intensified. Although both the DRC’s Constitution and Military Criminal Code designate sexual violence as a crime against humanity, prosecution is rare, partly due to the high evidentiary threshold of proving the widespread or systematic nature of the crime. The crippling impunity for CRSV emboldens perpetrators and deepens survivors’ trauma. Armed groups such as the March 23 Movement (M23) have weaponised sexual and reproductive violence for territorial and political gain, further destabilising eastern provinces like North Kivu and South Kivu. Meanwhile, widespread corruption of the national judicial system, inadequate judicial resources, and fear of reprisal render legal remedies largely illusory. Impunity for CRSV in the Congo is an epidemic. It is incumbent that international legal frameworks respond accordingly.
At present, CRSV in the Congo is primarily framed as a war crime or a crime against humanity; this means that accountability hinges on proving that sexual violence was part of a widespread or systematic attack on civilians. This narrow framing has left many victims without legal reprisal when incidents are isolated or not explicitly linked to a broader campaign. This blog proposes reframing CRSV in the Congo as torture as a critical doctrinal and jurisprudential path to address the continued rise of gendered violence. Torture is a violation of a jus cogens norm i.e., prohibited at all times. Crucially, the definition of torture does not require that the commission of crimes by conducted in a manner legally bound by the ‘widespread or systematic’ context that crimes against humanity requires (as provided under Article 7 of the Rome Statute ). Thus, even isolated incidents of CRSV by authorities may give rise to compel action under the Rome Statute (e.g. under Article 8 of the Rome Statute as war crimes) and under the Convention against Torture (CAT) framework, without the need to prove a large-scale pattern.
Analysis
Under Article 1 of CAT, torture is defined by four key elements: (1) the infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering; (2) the intentional infliction of such pain; (3) a specific purpose behind the act (such as obtaining information, punishment, intimidation or coercion, or discrimination of any kind); and (4) the involvement of, or at least the consent or acquiescence of, a public official or person acting in an official capacity. Each of these elements can be readily satisfied by instances of CRSV in the conflict in Congo, as the following analysis shows.
(1) Severe Pain and Suffering (Physical and/or Mental)
Rape and sexual violence inherently cause severe pain and suffering, both bodily and psychological. Survivors of conflict rape in the DRC commonly endure brutal physical injuries – for example, fistulae, internal organ damage, and other lasting disabilities as a result of violent gang rapes. The mental anguish is equally severe: being sexually violated, often in front of one’s family or community, inflicts deep trauma, shame, and psychological scars that can endure for a lifetime. The severity of suffering in these cases is not in question – indeed, international tribunals have repeatedly found that rape constitutes one of the most severe forms of pain imaginable, easily meeting the threshold for torture’s first element. In eastern DRC, the cruelty of many attacks (such as militia members raping women to the point of destroying their bladders, or the sexual torture and murder of female detainees in Goma’s prison) underscores an extreme level of pain deliberately inflicted on victims.
(2) Intentional Act
The perpetrators of CRSV in the conflict are not acting by accident or for sexual gratification alone – the violence is intentional and strategic. Reports from the Kivu conflicts show that many rapes are systematically orchestrated; M23 fighters and other combatants have been documented planning and executing mass rape operations as part of attacks on villages. Even when sexual assaults occur in opportunistic settings (for instance, a soldier raping a woman while looting during a retreat), the act itself is a deliberate use of force to dominate and terrorise the victim. The element of intent is therefore clearly present. The law does not require the perpetrator to have premeditated the act long in advance – only that he meant to inflict pain and violation in that moment, which is intrinsic to the act of rape. Moreover, many cases involve an organised context (e.g. detention facilities, or villages under occupation) where superiors instigate or encourage sexual violence as a tactic, further underscoring intentionality at a command level.
(3) Purpose (Punishment, Intimidation, Coercion, Discrimination)
Perhaps the most salient link between CRSV in Congo and torture is the purpose behind the violence. Sexual violence in war is seldom a random occurrence; it is frequently used purposefully to achieve military or political ends. In the DRC’s conflicts, multiple prohibited purposes under CAT can be identified:
- Punishment: Armed groups have used rape to punish Congolese civilians for their perceived loyalty to enemies or to retaliate against communities. Rape has been deployed as collective punishment against communities or villages accused of harboring rebel fighters.
- Intimidation and Coercion: The terrorising effect of rape is well-known; militias and even State forces use sexual violence to instill fear in populations, to force displacement or to coerce cooperation (such as extracting information or compliance by threatening women with rape). The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has warned that in the current fighting, sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war to destroy the social fabric of Congolese communities.
- Discrimination: Many CRSV incidents have an ethnic or gendered- dimension. For instance, certain ethnic groups in eastern DRC have been targeted for atrocious sexual violence as part of ethnic cleansing strategies. And gender-based discrimination is inherent to the violence: it specifically targets women and girls as a means to humiliate and dominate them because of their gender. In some instances, men and boys have been subject to sexual violence, often with the aim of emasculating and feminising them as a form of deliberate humiliation and domination. The CAT definition of torture requires one of these purposes, not necessarily all of them to be fulfilled; in the DRC cases, there is often significant overlap, i.e. a single incident of conflict rape may simultaneously serve to punish, intimidate, and discriminate. The bottom line is that conflict rapes are instrumentalised to intimidate communities, punish dissent or affiliation, and enforce social control through terror – indeed the kind of aims the torture definition contemplates.
(4) Official Capacity, State Link or Acquiescence
The final element that torture must involve a public official (directly or through acquiescence) is a nuanced but surmountable hurdle in applying CAT to DRC sexual violence cases. In many documented cases, State actors themselves are the perpetrators, which straightforwardly satisfies this requirement. The DRC’s own armed forces (FARDC), police, and intelligence agents have been repeatedly implicated in sexual violence against civilians and detainees. For example, the 2023 US State Department report on the DRC noted credible accounts of Congolese security forces raping women, street children, and others – acts which, by definition, involve public officials inflicting harm. Furthermore, DRC law enforcement personnel have committed sexualised torture of detainees during interrogations or detention. All such incidents clearly fall under CAT since the perpetrators are agents of the State. However, this is not straightforward for other actors, as discussed below.
Non-State Actors and Torture Framing
CRSV perpetrated by non-State armed groups (like M23 or various militias) can also fall within CAT’s ambit through the concept of official acquiescence or de facto authority. The Convention’s language ‘consent or acquiescence of a public official’ is critical. It means that if the State knows of and fails to prevent or prosecute acts of severe sexual violence by paramilitaries or rebels under its control, the State can be considered complicit. The DRC government’s track record of effectively zero accountability for many militia rapes could be construed as acquiescence, especially where elements of the national army cooperate with or tacitly support allied militias that commit such crimes. Additionally, some armed groups control territory and exercise government-like functions; international tribunals have reasoned that when a group exercises de facto authority over an area, its agents might be treated as de facto officials for purposes of human rights obligations, especially if the State is absent.
In the case of M23 in early 2025, the rebels seized Goma and parts of North Kivu, effectively replacing the State authority there. During that period, their fighters’ commission of mass rape in Goma’s prison and city could arguably engage CAT obligations: either through the DRC’s failure to protect its citizens, or by viewing M23 as temporarily assuming an official role in areas it occupied. Moreover, Rwanda’s direct support for M23 ties another State actor to the rebels’ conduct. The UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict has explicitly condemned the M23 (and its Rwandan backers) for an offensive marked by heightened risk of sexual violence, reinforcing that these acts are of international concern and not beyond the reach of doctrines like CAT.
In practice, proving acquiescence requires showing that authorities knew or willfully ignored the abuse. It is not necessary that a State official directly participate in the sexual violence; the legal standard is met if officials had awareness (or reasonable grounds to suspect) that such acts were occurring and failed to take effective action. International precedent confirms that government inaction in the face of known abuse can constitute tacit approval: the U.N. Committee Against Torture, for example, considers a State’s failure to exercise due diligence to prevent and punish pervasive rape or other gender-based violence as amounting to consent or acquiescence. Thus, if State authorities are aware of CRSV by their forces or within their jurisdiction yet systematically turn a blind eye, that omission satisfies CAT’s ‘official involvement’ requirement by imputing official responsibility for the torture.
Conclusion
Reframing sexual violence as torture in the DRC is firmly grounded in law. When a Congolese soldier or rebel fighter rapes a civilian, causing excruciating harm and terror to punish or subjugate that person (and by extension, the community), it is not a crime of passion or opportunism – it is torture by any reasonable legal standard. This recognition is more than rhetorical: it triggers a suite of heightened obligations. Torture is absolutely prohibited and subject to universal jurisdiction; States must pursue alleged torturers, wherever found, with no safe harbour. Victims of torture have an explicit right to rehabilitation and redress under CAT. Reframing CRSV as torture offers more than a nominal or semantic change; it is a necessary legal perspective that may galvanise both international and domestic actors to finally close the accountability gap.
Winona Xu is a Research Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she is responsible for developing and instructing the first undergraduate international human rights and reproductive health curriculum at UCLA.