Fighting behind the frontlines: Army wives in the eastern DRC

The report examines the precarious lives of FARDC army wives in the DRC, who often follow their husbands to insecure deployment zones due to a lack of family benefits and the high cost of travel. These women face severe housing shortages, irregular salaries, and social stigmatization, forcing them into diverse survival strategies ranging from petty trade and day labor to illicit activities. The document also highlights the extreme vulnerability of army widows and argues that military reform must address the social and service conditions of personnel and their families to be effective.

• The FARDC officially prohibits families from following soldiers into operational zones through a policy of 'mouvement sans famille', but in practice, many wives do so, leading to a nomadic existence that worsens their living conditions.
• Army wives are driven to follow their husbands by 'push factors' such as the difficulty of obtaining leave and the prohibitive cost of travel; a round trip from Kinshasa to the east can cost over US$500, which is more than five times a soldier's monthly salary.
• Poor service conditions, including low and irregular salaries (ranging between US$85 and 100 a month) and a lack of social benefits or pensions, force army wives to engage in various income-earning activities to survive.
• Housing for military families is often inadequate; while some live in overcrowded barracks with poor hygiene, many in the east live in makeshift camps consisting of tents or 'manyata' (huts) made from bamboo, mud, and banana leaves.
• Army wives employ diverse survival strategies, including day labor (such as weeding fields or crushing cassiterite), petty trade in goods like palm oil, and charcoal production, the latter of which causes significant environmental deforestation.
• Due to salary arrears, many army wives fall into cycles of debt through the 'Banque Lambert' system, taking out loans at usurious interest rates that can reach as high as 50%.
• Some army wives use their military status to evade taxes, such as the 'taxe d’étalage' (display tax) in markets, or engage in illegal activities including the trade of cannabis and the sale of stolen livestock.
• Army widows face extreme hardship due to disputes over the legitimacy of the spouse entitled to the deceased's salary, embezzlement in the payment chain, and the difficulty of returning to their areas of origin.
• The 2013 Law on the Statute of FARDC Personnel provides for family allowances and health care, but these benefits are largely restricted to officers and NCOs, excluding the rank and file.

APA

Baaz, M. E., & Verweijen, J. (2016). Fighting behind the frontlines: Army wives in the eastern DRC. Institute for Security Studies. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/CentralAfricaReportNo5V2.pdf

Chicago

Baaz, Maria Eriksson, and Judith Verweijen. Fighting behind the frontlines: Army wives in the eastern DRC. Institute for Security Studies, 2016. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/CentralAfricaReportNo5V2.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Baaz |first1=Maria Eriksson |last2=Verweijen |first2=Judith |title=Fighting behind the frontlines: Army wives in the eastern DRC |publisher=Institute for Security Studies |date=January 2016 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/CentralAfricaReportNo5V2.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{baaz2016fighting, author = {Baaz, Maria Eriksson and Verweijen, Judith}, title = {{Fighting behind the frontlines: Army wives in the eastern DRC}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2016}, month = jan, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/CentralAfricaReportNo5V2.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }