Kagame's War and Donor Cuts Are Abandoning Congo's Girls to Ebola

Six months into an Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo, the girls are the ones paying the price. Pregnant teenagers are staying away from clinics. Orphans are hauling bricks and serving meals in hotels. Mothers are dying in childbirth because the hospital has become a place people believe they will not walk out of. Ask yourself what kind of world lets a fifteen-year-old carry a pregnancy, a dead parent, and a sick sibling at the same time, with no one coming to help.

The International Rescue Committee reports that more than 1,000 people with protection needs have come through its teams in Ituri province in six months. Of those, 194 were survivors of gender-based violence. Nearly 200 pregnant girls aged 13 to 19 have received group psychotherapy, and seven of them are under fifteen. Those are not abstractions. Each number is a child who was raped, sold, starved, or forced to become the head of a household.

The rumours are as damning as the numbers. Between 19 and 23 October, IRC teams logged 84 rumours in the affected communities. One of the most dangerous is that people who go into treatment centres "do not come out." Believe it or not, that rumour is keeping women away from postnatal care, and many are turning to self-medication instead. When a mother is too afraid to see a midwife after giving birth, the question is not whether she will get sick. The question is how many will die quietly, in their homes, and never appear in a statistic. A health system that loses the trust of its own women has already failed.

The violence is also moving into the spaces that used to protect women. Women once farmed in groups, and that collective labour was their shield against attack on the roads and in the fields. Now many feel unsafe working alone, so the fields lie half-empty and hunger deepens. IRC reports more domestic violence in North Kivu, and the sexual abuse and exploitation of girls is growing. Almost half of the protection cases the organisation has handled since 15 May involved girls under eighteen. Let that sink in: in a crisis supposedly about a virus, the majority of people needing protection are children.

Of 183 children who lost one or both parents, 110 are girls. Among 115 unaccompanied or separated children, 68 are girls. Without a parent or income, these children face Ebola stigma, malnutrition, and rejection. They are being pushed into early marriage and sexual exploitation. Boys and girls alike are being used as cheap labour on construction sites, in restaurants, and in hotels. This is what a collapsed state looks like at the level of a single child.

Now ask the question nobody in Kinshasa, Kigali, or the donor capitals wants to answer. Why is this country so fragile that a known disease, one we have fought before, becomes a catastrophe? The answer is a war. Eastern Congo has been bleeding for decades, and for years Rwanda's army has been operating inside Congolese territory and backing the M23 rebellion that holds large parts of North Kivu. UN experts have documented Rwandan Defence Force units on Congolese soil. When a foreign army invades a neighbour, ostensibly to fight its own proxies, it does not just take territory. It takes hospitals, schools, and farms. It turns mothers into refugees and girls into property. Paul Kagame is presented to the world as a development miracle, a leader who hosts conferences and promotes gorilla tourism. But the displaced families of Rutshuru and Masisi know what his soldiers do. They do not need a conference to tell them.

Then add the cuts. The IRC notes that cuts to global aid have left eastern Congo with a weaker health system and fewer resources than it had during the 2018 to 2020 outbreak. Donors who once paid for midwives, safe spaces, and psychosocial counsellors have pulled back, often citing budget pressures in their own capitals. We are told that aid is charity. In truth, when aid is withdrawn in the middle of an epidemic, it is a decision about who lives. Western governments lecture us constantly about democracy and human rights. Here is the test of whether those values are real. Will they keep funding the services that protect women from violence and keep mothers alive, or will they treat Congolese girls as an acceptable loss?

Our own governments carry responsibility too. The Abuja Declaration of 2001 committed African states to spending at least 15 percent of their national budgets on health. Most have never come close. Congo's leaders have had decades to build a health system that does not depend on foreign cheques, and they have spent that time on patronage, security contracts, and the mining wealth that never reaches the villages where these girls live. A government that cannot keep a clinic open during an outbreak has no moral right to claim sovereignty over the land its people are dying on.

There is a better path, and Africa has already walked it. In 2014, Nigeria faced an Ebola outbreak in Lagos. Its health ministry, its emergency operations, and its public communication worked together. Contacts were traced, the public was told the truth, and the outbreak was declared over within months. Nigeria did not do it with miracles. It did it with competent institutions, transparent reporting, and a government that treated its citizens as people instead of problems. Botswana has shown that disciplined public finance and independent institutions can build resilient services. Mauritius and Senegal have proven that strong rule of law and peaceful democratic transitions create the stability that health systems need to function. Congo can learn from all of them. What it needs is the political will to put women and children at the center of its budget, and a Security Council willing to end the war that keeps them in danger.

So here is what we demand. We demand that the African Union stop issuing communiqués and start enforcing its own principles. The AU must demand the immediate withdrawal of Rwandan forces from Congolese territory and must back that demand with sanctions on those responsible for the war. We demand that the UN Security Council stop hiding behind diplomatic language. It must press for Rwanda's withdrawal, name the commanders who sustain the M23 war, and ensure that humanitarian access is never traded away at the negotiating table. We demand that donors who fund aid in eastern Congo commit multi-year funding for gender-based violence services, mental health care, and child protection, and that they keep that money flowing after the outbreak is declared over. We demand that the Congolese government publish its health budget, open its contracts to public scrutiny, and fund midwives and women's associations instead of security cronies. And we demand that the independent civil society groups, the women's associations, and the local journalists of Ituri and North Kivu be protected and funded, because they are the ones who know the truth before any report reaches Geneva or New York.

Do not scroll past this. A rumour that people do not come out of treatment centres is killing mothers, and a war that has displaced millions is making every outbreak worse. Girls in Ituri are being told their bodies are currency. Somewhere in eastern Congo, a fourteen-year-old is deciding whether to walk into a clinic or stay home and die. We are the ones who can make that choice easier. Share this story. Ask your government what it is doing. Demand that your ambassador explain the silence. The girls of Congo cannot wait for better news. They need us to stop accepting this as normal.

Based on reporting by RELIEFWEB