The plight of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo

10Feb10

Denis Mukwege. Ever heard of him?

Mukwege is a 54-year old physician who has been instrumental in improving the health of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s people and specializes in treating the region’s rape victims — a sizable portion of the population.

He was also a 2009 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mukwege’s story started at a young age, visiting the region as a child with his father and later returning after studying medicine in Burundi. Eventually he worked at  the Christian hospital of Lemera in South-Kivu of the DRC and after further witnessing the carnage amongst the region’s women, decided to study gynecology and obstetrics at the CHU of Angers in France.

Those experiences led him to found the Panzi General Hospital in the provincial capital of Bakavu which today treats more than 300 women per month, according to its website.

Mukwege’s work is especially needed given the nature and frequency of the attacks. These women are not being raped simply for the sexual gratification, but instead are victims of a civil war. These guerrilla factions are using rape as a weapon of mass destruction, destroying women from within and destroying their communities in the process.

In an interview with Time, Mukwege described the effects of these rapes by armed military groups:

“Once they have raped these women in such a public way,” he said, “sometimes maiming them, destroying their sexual organs — and with everybody watching — the women themselves are destroyed, or virtually destroyed. They are traumatized and humiliated on every level, physical and psychological. That’s the first consequence.

“The second consequence is that the whole family and the entire neighborhood is traumatized by what they have seen. The ordinary sense of family and community is lost after a man has been forced to watch his wife being raped, or parents are forced to watch the rape of their daughters, or children see their mothers raped.

“Neighbors are witnesses to this. Many flee. Families are dislocated. Social relationships are lost. There is no more social network, village network. Not only the victims have been destroyed; the whole village is destroyed.”

Below is a video highlighting some of Mukwege’s work.

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