HEALing touch for Congo's women
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Neena Bhandari
Kamina Feza, brutally raped and abandoned with serious injuries, symbolises many would, who become victims of the crime each day in conflict-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Gender-based violence is systematically used as a weapon of war by the military and militia in Congo.
Feza, native of a village, 300 kilometres from Kalemie, was raped in the forests surrounding her village in 2001, during the war of the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) against Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the President of DRC. She was left seriously wounded to die. But, miraculously, she survived to tell her plight.
Each months, 1,100 rapes are reported from Congo, leaving daily average of 36 women and girls rape victims. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton highlighted the problem during her recent visit to Goma, a provincial capital in eastern Congo where Lyn Lusi, a social activist and her husband, a Congolese orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Jo Lusi, have established a health service, known as HEAL (Health, Education, Action, Leadership) Africa, to treat and care for these women. Feza is one of the beneficiaries.
The ongoing conflict has claimed 5.4 million lives, left over a million internally displaced people (IDPs) and continues to make women victims. The UN estimates that 200,000 women and girls became rape victims over the past 12 years.
Often through victims are stuck with pointed sticks and rifles on their reproductive organs, causing traumatic fistula or vesico-vaginal fistula, which happens when the wall between a woman's vagina and the bladder and/or rectum tears. Medical complications for women can include miscarriages, infertility or permanent incontinence.
The HEAL Africa hospital, has to conduct, about 300 fistula repair surgeries each year. The youngest victim, who needed fistula repair surgery, was only four years old. The oldest was over 70. As Lusi says, "When rape is used as a tool of war, age is never a factor. Women are the spoils of war."
Though Congo's 2006 Constitution, stipulate equal status to women and at least five years imprisonment for sexual violence, the perpetrators of the crime go unpunished. "As the war intensifies, the number of women being raped and those reporting rape is increasing," said Lusi, while in Australia to raise awareness in the international community and seek its support to end the war.
Some women are brought for treatment by their husbands. Most of them widowed by the war have nobody to look for the support. "In an attack, the strategy is to burn the village, loot the goods and livestock, kill the men, rape the women and take the boys as porters. The boys are often recruited into the militia," explains Lusi, who arrived in Congo as a volunteer teacher in 1971 from England.
Over the past 35 years, she witnessed one of the worst humanitarian disasters unfold. "A girl, who recognised her rapist, was blinded. At the hospital it was discovered that she had also been infected with HIV. We try and ensure that women get Post Exposure Prophylaxis available within 72 hours of rape to prevent HIV," she informs.
HEAL Africa's hospital in Goma and 28 women's houses in Maniema and North Kivu provide social, economic and psychological rehabilitation for women. It also runs a centre to train health professionals and conducts programmes on family planning, safe motherhood, and AIDS education and homecare.
Lusi says, "Women, who suffer from sexual violence, are often demoralised and completely destroyed. So when they come into the hospital, it is not just a question of patching up the plumbing. It is a question of reviving their spirit and this is done with the support of counsellors and people who have compassion and understanding and also who can listen."
Mutual support plays a vital role in rebuilding women's lives at the hospital women learn things that they had no opportunity to learnt before. Women, who come, more often, had no opportunity to go to school to learn how to read and write, are puts at a completely different level of communication. HEAL Africa's remarkable service including education improve their understanding and self-esteem, explains Lusi.
Women are taught to sew and make things that they can sell. Most of had nothing to fall back on when they came. But they return home with enough to start a small business with micro-financing grant, says Lusi. She emphasises that she and her husband, also a visionary, work together as a team.
What pains her most is the abject poverty of the people in eastern Congo, one of the most fertile, naturally beautiful and mineral rich countries in Africa, In North Kivu - the bread basket of the region - about 80,000 displaced people now live on handouts. Recently, the UN's World Food Programme sliced its aid by 50 per cent - from six kilograms to three kilograms of food a week. The right to profit of the wealthy companies must not be bought at the cost of someone else's destitution. In Congo, it is an internationally fuelled conflict. The illegal extraction and exploration of heavy ores and tantalite ores from Congo are used in strong semi conductors, weapons, international space exploration, I-phones and other electronical appliances. Minerals are being exported in return for small arms that sustain the war. The question is, how do the militias get the weapons. Why the international community does not find out the routes to stop the arms smuggling?
Lusi suggests Central Africa should opt for cooperation so that workers from one country could go to another for work, following the example of Europe.
She worked in other African countries too, but Congo is where her heart is. As she put it, "it is a very different experience to try to maintain the most essential services in Congo. The people of Congo are hardworking and resilient. Once there is peace they will rebuild their country and their lives."
For the women, bearing the brunt of the conflict, peace remains a distant dream.
—NewsNetwork/WFS
Kamina Feza, brutally raped and abandoned with serious injuries, symbolises many would, who become victims of the crime each day in conflict-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Gender-based violence is systematically used as a weapon of war by the military and militia in Congo.
Feza, native of a village, 300 kilometres from Kalemie, was raped in the forests surrounding her village in 2001, during the war of the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) against Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the President of DRC. She was left seriously wounded to die. But, miraculously, she survived to tell her plight.
Each months, 1,100 rapes are reported from Congo, leaving daily average of 36 women and girls rape victims. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton highlighted the problem during her recent visit to Goma, a provincial capital in eastern Congo where Lyn Lusi, a social activist and her husband, a Congolese orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Jo Lusi, have established a health service, known as HEAL (Health, Education, Action, Leadership) Africa, to treat and care for these women. Feza is one of the beneficiaries.
The ongoing conflict has claimed 5.4 million lives, left over a million internally displaced people (IDPs) and continues to make women victims. The UN estimates that 200,000 women and girls became rape victims over the past 12 years.
Often through victims are stuck with pointed sticks and rifles on their reproductive organs, causing traumatic fistula or vesico-vaginal fistula, which happens when the wall between a woman's vagina and the bladder and/or rectum tears. Medical complications for women can include miscarriages, infertility or permanent incontinence.
The HEAL Africa hospital, has to conduct, about 300 fistula repair surgeries each year. The youngest victim, who needed fistula repair surgery, was only four years old. The oldest was over 70. As Lusi says, "When rape is used as a tool of war, age is never a factor. Women are the spoils of war."
Though Congo's 2006 Constitution, stipulate equal status to women and at least five years imprisonment for sexual violence, the perpetrators of the crime go unpunished. "As the war intensifies, the number of women being raped and those reporting rape is increasing," said Lusi, while in Australia to raise awareness in the international community and seek its support to end the war.
Some women are brought for treatment by their husbands. Most of them widowed by the war have nobody to look for the support. "In an attack, the strategy is to burn the village, loot the goods and livestock, kill the men, rape the women and take the boys as porters. The boys are often recruited into the militia," explains Lusi, who arrived in Congo as a volunteer teacher in 1971 from England.
Over the past 35 years, she witnessed one of the worst humanitarian disasters unfold. "A girl, who recognised her rapist, was blinded. At the hospital it was discovered that she had also been infected with HIV. We try and ensure that women get Post Exposure Prophylaxis available within 72 hours of rape to prevent HIV," she informs.
HEAL Africa's hospital in Goma and 28 women's houses in Maniema and North Kivu provide social, economic and psychological rehabilitation for women. It also runs a centre to train health professionals and conducts programmes on family planning, safe motherhood, and AIDS education and homecare.
Lusi says, "Women, who suffer from sexual violence, are often demoralised and completely destroyed. So when they come into the hospital, it is not just a question of patching up the plumbing. It is a question of reviving their spirit and this is done with the support of counsellors and people who have compassion and understanding and also who can listen."
Mutual support plays a vital role in rebuilding women's lives at the hospital women learn things that they had no opportunity to learnt before. Women, who come, more often, had no opportunity to go to school to learn how to read and write, are puts at a completely different level of communication. HEAL Africa's remarkable service including education improve their understanding and self-esteem, explains Lusi.
Women are taught to sew and make things that they can sell. Most of had nothing to fall back on when they came. But they return home with enough to start a small business with micro-financing grant, says Lusi. She emphasises that she and her husband, also a visionary, work together as a team.
What pains her most is the abject poverty of the people in eastern Congo, one of the most fertile, naturally beautiful and mineral rich countries in Africa, In North Kivu - the bread basket of the region - about 80,000 displaced people now live on handouts. Recently, the UN's World Food Programme sliced its aid by 50 per cent - from six kilograms to three kilograms of food a week. The right to profit of the wealthy companies must not be bought at the cost of someone else's destitution. In Congo, it is an internationally fuelled conflict. The illegal extraction and exploration of heavy ores and tantalite ores from Congo are used in strong semi conductors, weapons, international space exploration, I-phones and other electronical appliances. Minerals are being exported in return for small arms that sustain the war. The question is, how do the militias get the weapons. Why the international community does not find out the routes to stop the arms smuggling?
Lusi suggests Central Africa should opt for cooperation so that workers from one country could go to another for work, following the example of Europe.
She worked in other African countries too, but Congo is where her heart is. As she put it, "it is a very different experience to try to maintain the most essential services in Congo. The people of Congo are hardworking and resilient. Once there is peace they will rebuild their country and their lives."
For the women, bearing the brunt of the conflict, peace remains a distant dream.
—NewsNetwork/WFS