DRC: in Lubumbashi, women mobilized against insecurity

Text by: RFI Follow

Nearly 200 women from Lubumbashi gathered on Wednesday March 11 to discuss insecurity in the city. According to official figures, on average each month since the beginning of the year, 150 women and girls have been raped during a burglary. The meeting, organized by the Common Front for the local Congo, was entitled: "Stop insecurity in Haut-Katanga"

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From our correspondent in Lubumbashi , Denise Maheho

If insecurity concerns all women in the province, it is especially these figures on rape cases that shock. " For the year 2020, from January to February, the statistics are 315 victims of violence and rape, " said Kabera Mugijinma, representative of the Ministry of Women's Rights and Children in Lubumbashi.

Most of these victims were raped during burglaries. For Francine Muyumba, senator and member of the Common Front for the Congo, women should be less afraid of denouncing their attackers. " These are the women who have these bandits in their houses, and these bandits, after having robbed, killed and raped little girls, enter these houses and the women do not report them ."

Christine Kimbilwe, trade unionist at Gécamines, says that insecurity is caused by poverty. " If we start by managing all our income first, companies pay better, we create jobs, you will see that the insecurity will end ."

In their recommendations, the women gathered on Wednesday appealed to the government asking it to improve the living conditions of the security forces too often forced, according to them, to attack the population to survive.

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