One female political activist who fled to the UK after being detained, raped and tortured by police in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, said: "Many are raped by secret police and other security officials.
The programme, run by the Department for International Development (DfID), states: "This programme will benefit Congolese citizens through improved security and justice delivery with a special attention to women and girls".
This evidence has raised questions about the UK government's programme to give more than £60m to agencies working with the Congolese national police and "internal security sector" to improve its performance and accountability.
A spokesman for DfID said they did not provide "any direct aid to the Congolese government" and instead relied on international agencies to "improve the police's human rights record and provide increased accountability for the police".
"Congolese people know about the rape and torture they face if they challenge the government, but the British government doesn't seem to know about it.
For years engineers have looked longingly at the Congo river where it plunges down the Inga falls, between Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, and the Atlantic ocean.
But it is said to have links to elements in the Congolese security forces, which help to sustain it.The UN does have some form in stamping out murderous militias.
In 2013, with the aid of Congolese soldiers, it dispersed another homicidal group in eastern Congo called M23.
American evangelists draw huge crowds in Kenya, for example, and thrill them with lucrative displays of "faith healing .Your correspondent was not asked to heal the sick, but he was told to perform the last rites on one of those Congolese rebels' slain comrades.
A more concerted approach to eastern Congo emerged last November when the M23 routed the Congolese army and overran the UN force to capture Goma.
The export of illicit gold alone is reckoned to be worth $1.2 billion a year, almost none of it accruing to Congo's treasury; the Congolese army and the former rebels who have been accommodated within it still levy their own informal taxes.
