[TW: rape, war violence] Congo's scars won’t heal until the raping stops - doctor
By Emma Batha
LONDON (TrustLaw) - The first rape victim who doctor Denis Mukwege treated in his hospital in eastern Congo had been so badly mutilated he thought it was a one-off attack by “some nutter”.
But she was soon followed by many others who had been subjected to equally unimaginable cruelty. Some were just 12 or 13 years old.
It was 1999 and war was raging across Democratic Republic of Congo. The conflict formally ended in 2003, but the raping has not stopped.
The big problem for Congo is indifference, Mukwege said at a London event highlighting the issue.
He contrasted the speed with which the international community had responded to mass rape in the Balkans to its silence on Congo.
“What really scandalises me is that 10 years ago we did a round of all the capitals (to raise awareness). People felt an enormous amount of sympathy for us, but nothing was done,” he said.
“If it’s not acceptable in the Balkans, why is it acceptable in Congo? … What’s going on in East Congo is appalling and something must be done about it.”
Despite the end of the war, fighting persists in Congo, particularly in the east where Mukwege’s team, at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, South Kivu province, has treated 36,000 rape survivors in the last decade.
Rape is a horribly efficient weapon of war because it doesn’t just destroy women physically and mentally, it also tears up families and annihilates entire communities, Mukwege said.
“It’s effective because first of all most women in Congo are raped publically so their children, husbands, neighbours witness this atrocity,” he told TrustLaw ahead of the event.
“Secondly, they’re not just raped by one person but many at the same time …. And sometimes I have seen genitals completely destroyed by guns and bayonets.
“When a man or child witnesses that they are completely mentally destroyed. I’ve seen many men ask themselves, ‘How can I say I’m a man if I can’t protect my wife or daughters?’ They often leave so they can seek anonymity because they can’t bear to stay.”
“WE’RE ALL RESPONSIBLE”
The violence destroys communities by leaving many women unable to bear children and by condemning others to die from HIV/AIDS.
It also causes social disintegration, Mukwege said. When the men leave the village, the rapists take their place, the community is broken up and the population becomes very poor.
At least half a million women have been raped in Congo since the war began in 1998, prompting the United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Margot Wallstrom, to call the country “the rape capital of the world”.
Even young children and babies are raped.
American playwright and activist Eve Ensler, who also spoke at the London event, highlighted the story of one eight-year-old girl she had met at Panzi Hospital who had been gang raped every day for two weeks and was so badly injured that she was incontinent and would not let anyone cuddle her.
Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, linked the continuing atrocities against girls and women to the scramble for Congo’s valuable minerals which are used in everyday technology.
“We’re all responsible for that war because every time we use our cell phones, every time we use a playstation we use minerals that come from Congo,” she said.
“And the way minerals are accessed is through destroying villages and communities so the militias can get access to the mines. And the way they do that often is to rape and terrorise and torture …”
Many women are also raped by soldiers. Mukwege told TrustLaw a major problem was the fact that the army included ex-rebels who were brutalised as child fighters during the war and never rehabilitated.
He wants the government to reform the security services, end the culture of impunity and pay reparations to rape victims.
TAKING CHARGE
At Panzi, repairing women’s physical injuries is only the first step.
This year a refuge called City of Joy opened near the hospital to provide psychological and socio-economic support to help the women reintegrate into society.
“We decided to empower Congolese women and girls so they can take back their country…,” said the centre’s director Christine Deschryver, a Belgian-Congolese rights activist, who witnessed the rape and murder of her best friend in 2000.
Women at City of Joy can learn literacy, English, computer skills, self-defence and small-business management among other things. They also receive sex education - normally taboo in Congo.
The psychotherapy at the centre is based on dance, art and music. Western one-to-one talking therapies don’t work in a culture where the focus is on the community, Deschryver said.
The centre is a joint project between the Panzi Foundation, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and Ensler’s global V-Day movement to end violence against women.
Although Panzi has received a stream of visits from dignitaries, Deschryver said they only came to look, not to help.
“It’s like a zoo – the new attraction of Congo,” she said.
“So many people have come to visit us. … They all come, they cry and then they leave and we never hear from them again,” she added. “Nothing is changing.”
See also: Congo should pay reparations to rape victims - doctor
(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)
Dr Mukwege was speaking at an event called Congo Monologues hosted by lawfirm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights
So, I’ve actually heard people say that not only is abortion not a human right but that reproductive rights themselves don’t exist. That it’s just “feminist rhetoric” made up by feminists.
No, I’m not even kidding.
Due to the UN’s special report talking about how making abortion illegal is a human rights violation, and the antichoice backlash this is causing, I wanted to compile a list of human rights treaties and other documents that can be (and are) used to make the case that reproductive rights are human rights. I think it’s also important to remember one thing: these documents are often short and broad, not extensive and covering every minute right that every human on earth could possibly think of. They are much like the (US) Constitution in the respect that they have broad categories in which derivative rights can be attributed to: essentially, just because a right isn’t explicitly named doesn’t mean it can’t be upheld with a particular document, nor does it mean that it “doesn’t exist.”
[These documents are all, unfortunately, cis-centric and binarist.]
A great place to start is the legal scholarship done by the Center for Reproductive Rights. They participate in several legal battles each year and often use human rights treaties to argue their cases from a legal standpoint. They’ve compiled a few documents that outline how various treaties uphold reproductive rights as human rights.
First is their pdf Twelve Human Rights Key to Reproductive Rights. From the pdf:
All individuals have reproductive rights, which are grounded in a constellation of fundamental human rights guarantees. These guarantees are found in the oldest and most accepted human rights instruments, as well as in more recently adopted international and regional treaties. A series of documents adopted at United Nations conferences, most notably the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), have explicitly linked governments’ duties under international treaties to their obligations to uphold reproductive rights.
As stated in Paragraph 7.3 of the ICPD Programme of Action:
“[R]eproductive rights embrace certain human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus documents. These rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. It also includes their right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence, as expressed in human rights documents.”
These legal principles have been given added force and depth in a series of interpretations made by UN and regional human rights bodies in groundbreaking cases. In addition, the UN treaty monitoring bodies, which are charged with monitoring government compliance with major human rights treaties, now routinely recommend that governments take action to ensure sexual and reproductive rights for women.
Building upon these developments are two new instruments that explicitly recognize women’s reproductive rights. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Disability Rights Convention) is the first comprehensive international human rights instrument to specifically identify the right to reproductive and sexual health as a human right. At the regional level, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa) expressly articulates women’s reproductive rights as human rights, and explicitly guarantees a woman’s right to control her fertility. It also provides a detailed guarantee of women’s right to reproductive health and family planning services. The protocol affirms women’s right to reproductive choice and autonomy, and clarifies African states’ duties in relation to women’s sexual and reproductive health.
In this document they outline twelve human rights which are important to upholding reproductive rights. These are:
- The Right to Life
- The Right to Liberty and Security of Person
- The Right to Health, including Sexual and Reproductive Health
- The Right to Decide the Number and Spacing of Children
- The Right to Consent to Marriage and to Equality in Marriage
- The Right to Privacy
- The Right to Equality and Non-Discrimination
- The Right to be Free from Practices that Harm Women and Girls
- The Right to Not be Subjected to Torture or Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
- The Right to be Free from Sexual and Gender-Based Violence
- The Right to Access Sexual and Reproductive Health Education and Family Planning Information
- The Right to Enjoy Scientific Progress
They then go on to examine a multitude of international and regional human rights treaties and the specific articles in each document which relate to each of the twelve key rights. They examine:
International Treaties and Conventions
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)
- International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966)
- International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965)
- Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979)
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984)
- Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)
- Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998)
- Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006)
Regional Treaties and Conventions
- European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950)
- American Convention on Human Rights (1969)
- African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981)
- Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women (1994)
- Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1992)
- European Social Charter (Revised) (1997)
- Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine (1997)
- Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (2003)
International Conference Documents
- Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, United Nations World Conference on Human Rights (1993)
- Programme of Action, United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (1994)
- Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action, United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women (1995)
Sexual and Reproductive Rights: More Than Just Health
FRIDAY FILE: Four years ago, in 2007, a Brazilian judge prosecuted 1,500 women for procuring abortions. [i] That same year, a twenty-year-old woman, Ana María Acevedo, died in Argentina of cancer-related complications because her doctors refused to treat her; she was pregnant and an abortion might have saved her life. [ii]
By Sandra Dughman Manzur with Shareen Gokal
Discriminatory laws and the exercise of control over women’s bodies often justified through arguments based in religion, culture and tradition and public morality oppress, subjugate and violate women’s rights all over the world. Using the law to control women’s sexuality and reproductive decisions and actions is the ultimate assertion of patriarchy by States. These laws are often supported by fundamentalist agendas of power and control, and misguided conceptualizations of women’s role in society that are centered on social and biological reproduction.
A Ground-breaking Report
On October 24th, 2011 Anand Grover, the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (part of the UN human rights special procedures system) will present, before the UN General Assembly, a ground-breaking report. The report will make one of the clearest statements to date within the international human rights system condemning the negative impacts that criminal laws and other legal restrictions relating to sexual and reproductive health have over women’s freedom, decision-making process, and autonomy.
Moreover, until now, most of the arguments for women’s reproductive and sexual control were formulated, within the UN system, on the basis of risks to the women’s health. With this report there is a historic shift in these arguments away from health-based ones to one that is clearly about respecting women’s agency, bodily autonomy and reproductive and sexual rights.
UN report says all states should provide access to safe abortion, contraception
A groundbreaking new report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Anand Grover, was released yesterday. And it is big!!
In the new report, Grover calls for the immediate removal of all impeding restrictions to abortion, full access to modern contraceptive methods, and complete and accurate information on sexual and reproductive health.
As the International Planned Parenthood Federation explains, “the report examines the disproportionate impact these laws and policies have on those who already suffer human rights violations and the denial of adequate heath care (e.g., women, impoverished peoples) and emphasizes individuals’ right to dignity and autonomy in health-related decision making.”
Having someone this high up basically say that all UN members states should provide safe abortion and contraception is a big deal, and many women’s health orgs are already hailing this as a huge victory for global sexual and reproductive rights and health.
For more, check out AWID’s analysis of the report (also available in Spanish and French).
RH Reality Check is also running a series looking at the issues in the report from different angles, including US policy.
Free Rice
FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Programme.
FreeRice has two goals:
- Provide education to everyone for free.
- Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
Pick the correct definition for each word and automatically donate 10 grains of rice!
