Nobel Prize winner: Ukraine offers victims of sexual war violence a way out

In his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been rocked by violence for years, he has treated tens of thousands of women who have been raped or mutilated by rampaging militias.

Many victims feel invisible and unable to speak out against the men who commit their crimes because they know they will likely never be held accountable.

Mukwege believes that perpetrators should be punished, but victims should not have to wait until their attacker stands trial years or even decades later.

“It is absolutely necessary to develop reparation programs in countries so that when women are raped and society has not protected them, society can at least make amends for what has happened to it,” he told the AFP news agency in Los Angeles.

This is exactly what Ukraine is trying to do, he said, even as it continues to fight against Russian troops that the United Nations says have repeatedly committed war crimes and human rights abuses.

Kyiv is working with the Global Fund for Survivors, an NGO that Mukwege founded with Nadia Murad, a victim of sexual violence with whom he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.

The Ukrainian government hopes to use Russian assets frozen after the invasion to compensate victims.

“Ukraine will be the first country in wartime to compensate 500 victims of sexual violence,” Mukwege said.

“The victims cannot wait until the war is over,” he added. “If you ask them to wait until the war is over, many of them could disappear… They could die of disease or depression. They could die of exclusion, plain and simple.”

Mukwege’s life as a gynecologist was shaped by her confrontation with the cruel violence that men committed against women in war.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been plagued by decades of violence, fuelled by civil wars and internal conflicts, often sparked by the fight over the country’s valuable natural resources.

“When I treated the first victim, I was almost certain that this was a one-off problem and not one that would last for 25 years,” he told AFP in Los Angeles, where he was awarded the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity this month, a $1 million prize for activists and humanitarian workers.

“The war changed my life completely.”

Mukwege founded the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where he and his staff have now treated tens of thousands of women.

He says he can tell a woman’s background by the way she was abused.

“In Bunyakiri they burn women’s buttocks. In Fizi-Baraka they shoot them in the genitals. In Shabunda it’s bayonets,” he told the New York Times in an earlier interview.

The targets of sexual violence also vary from conflict to conflict, he adds.

In Haiti, Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, rape is abused for the purpose of sexual slavery and human trafficking, while in South Sudan it is abused for ethnic cleansing, he told AFP.

Panzi Hospital takes a holistic approach to treating women, addressing medical, psychological, socioeconomic and legal needs, he says.

The horror of the situation he faces is tempered by the courage of the people he treats, some of whom use their experiences as motivation to help other victims.

The hospital and his work have made him unpopular in some circles – there has been at least one assassination attempt on his life, and when he ran for president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, he received fewer than 40,000 votes from a population of more than 100 million people.

Sometimes the fight to end sexual violence in wartime gives him hope.

But he knows he won’t stop.

New conflicts – such as that between Israel and Hamas – bring new reports of atrocities against women.

“It is a disgrace for humanity … that sexual violence occurs in all conflicts,” he said.

“If we do not fight impunity, I think the future looks bleak.”

pr/hg/md