Watch on Google Video
Goma, DRC -- The long and brutal war in the huge, mineral rich Democratic Republic of Congo has been raging since 1996, and has claimed more lives than any war since World War 2. Meanwhile, a shadow 'War within a War' has targeted women and children there. As in neighboring Rwanda, mass rape, often involving weapons, is being used as a weapon of war, one that is also spreading HIV/AIDS to the survivors. The horrific pattern of rape in the Congo is staggering and historic in its scope. Last year alone, in one province of eastern Congo alone, some 42,000 women were estimated to have survived rape, according to Global Rights.
But that story - the story of horror and sexual violence - is only one chapter in the lives of the Congolese women and children who are survivors of rape there. The story many are focused on today is recovery - an effort to heal from brutal attacks that damage their bodies and scar their reproductive organs, as well as their mental health, their ability to work or take up their former lives. In Goma, a city on the eastern border where many refugees have fled the war, a steady stream of women and children have trickled in from across the country seeking surgical operations for their wounds of rape. The Heal Africa clinic there treats fistula - tears or ruptures of the reproductive organs caused by brutal rape. Today, the number of women getting surgeries every week remains steady; so does the waiting list of women seeking an operation that may be repeated several times before their bodies completely heal. Some never do. Others are so traumatized they can never return home.
"The crisis today remains very urgent," says Heal Africa Program Director Lyn Lusi. "We have mobile units going out every week to try to find women who are trapped behind the front lines of the fighting, to bring them back here. The level of rape remains very high, and we are doing everything we can to reach them, but with the fighting it's not safe and it remains difficult. Still, we are making steady progress. But it's really the women who are amazing, who have the strength to recover and help each other. That's the story that is encouraging - how, despite the horror that they've endured, they are committed to building a better future here in the Congo."
---
More Choice Word from our visit to Heal Africa:
But that story - the story of horror and sexual violence - is only one chapter in the lives of the Congolese women and children who are survivors of rape there. The story many are focused on today is recovery - an effort to heal from brutal attacks that damage their bodies and scar their reproductive organs, as well as their mental health, their ability to work or take up their former lives. In Goma, a city on the eastern border where many refugees have fled the war, a steady stream of women and children have trickled in from across the country seeking surgical operations for their wounds of rape. The Heal Africa clinic there treats fistula - tears or ruptures of the reproductive organs caused by brutal rape. Today, the number of women getting surgeries every week remains steady; so does the waiting list of women seeking an operation that may be repeated several times before their bodies completely heal. Some never do. Others are so traumatized they can never return home.
"The crisis today remains very urgent," says Heal Africa Program Director Lyn Lusi. "We have mobile units going out every week to try to find women who are trapped behind the front lines of the fighting, to bring them back here. The level of rape remains very high, and we are doing everything we can to reach them, but with the fighting it's not safe and it remains difficult. Still, we are making steady progress. But it's really the women who are amazing, who have the strength to recover and help each other. That's the story that is encouraging - how, despite the horror that they've endured, they are committed to building a better future here in the Congo."
---
More Choice Word from our visit to Heal Africa:
"It's really the women of the Congo who are amazing, who have the strength to recover and help each other. That's the story that is encouraging... how, despite the horror that they've endured, they are committed to building a better future for themselves and their families and their country." - Lyn Lusi, Program Director, Heal Africa, DRC.
Leave a comment