Forgotten Women: What does the future hold for the country that ‘never turned the page of conflict’?

They call it “la chosification de la femme” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Reducing a woman to a thing.

The central African nation has been decimated by conflict. It’s a country that’s been torn apart by warfare and power struggles, where millions live in poverty. A culture of violence has bled into a culture of sexual violence, with DRC having one of the highest rape rates in the world.

But this nation is so much more than “the heart of darkness” or “the rape capital of the world”. It is a country rich in resources, with a population resilient despite decades of unimaginable trauma. In the wake of last year’s “peaceful” elections, and the most recent Nobel Peace prize going to a doctor who treats survivors of sexual violence, is there new hope for DRC?

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Approximately 1,000 people were killed in the infamous 1998 Kasika massacre carried out by rebel forces. Kasika is a small jungle village near the Rwandan border, and is highly vulnerable to violence because it lies on the road to a gold mine. There is constant conflict over the country’s immense natural resources, with DRC’s mineral wealth worth an estimated $24 trillion (£19 trillion).

We spoke to several women who are victims of sexual violence during the massacre, and whose daily struggles are symptomatic of the wider issues being faced by women today.

Manyumba, 46, was one of many people taken during the 90s. “I was kidnapped while in refuge in the forest during the conflict ... I was raped by 17 rebels.” Along with her husband, three of her children died in the forest. When Manyumba was captured, she was forced to live alongside her kidnapper. After three months of imprisonment, she eventually managed to escape while going to the river to fetch water and do laundry.

Mombo, another war widow with seven children, was also held captive in the forest in 1998. She was beaten, raped and tied naked to a tree for two days. “I still think about what happened every day.” Since then, she has been expelled by her husband’s family.

The trauma of these attacks has had a lasting effect of thousands of Congolese women. Dr Denis Mukwege won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 along with Nadia Murad, an Iraqi Yazidi woman who was held captive by Isis. He actually found out he won the prize while performing surgery in Bukavu. Dr Mukwege – known as “Doctor Miracle” – is a Congolese gynaecologist and pastor who has been treating victims of sexual violence for decades.

“The effects of sexual violence leave deep scars on the hearts and souls of survivors,” Dr Mukwege says. “And unfortunately, these scars are often deepened by crippling social stigma associated with sexual violence.”

This stigma can often lead to women being shunned, as Esther Dingemans, director of the Mukwege Foundation, explains: “Women are often rejected by their husbands – who are also severely traumatised having watched it, and feel as though they failed in their masculine role of protecting their wife.”

Mashozi is one such woman. After being kidnapped and violently assaulted during the Kasika massacre, her husband left her – and their three children – because she had been raped. “My husband’s relatives see me as a curse on the family,” she says.

Due to the violent nature of the assaults, women often suffer physical problems for years after. Dr Mukwege, has seen many such cases among the tens of thousands of women he has treated.

“Physically, severe damage is often done by foreign objects and sharp weapons,” Dr Mukwege says. “Survivors can have trauma to their genitals and reproductive systems, including fistula and organ damage as well as other injuries, from burns and lacerations to bullet wounds.”

Mashozi, 40, was operated on at Dr Mukwege’s Panzi foundation for obstetric fistula – which is linked to the problem of obstructed labour. Since then she has lost three children through C-section delivery. “Any time I conceive, the children are born but die after one month. I am currently coming from hospital after losing my third unborn child.”

It is not just adult women being treated in DRC. Approximately 30 per cent of the victims who seek care at Panzi Hospital are under 18, Dr Mukwege says, and “as many of these survivors’ bodies are quite small, they often suffer greatly”. The Panzi foundation has treated children as young as six months old.

“I came to realise that the patients who were coming in to be treated for complications related to sexual violence were actually the children of survivors I had treated only a few years prior,” Dr Mukwege says. “Now, we are beginning to see the grandchildren of those original survivors.

“Sexual violence in DRC targets no one – it is blind. It is systematic. It affects each and every generation – regardless of age, clothes, economic status, religion, or any other factor ... This must stop. We must find a way to free the next generations from the cycle of sexual violence.”

The second Congo war ended in 2003, yet more than half of women have experienced physical violence. More than a quarter in the last year, and 16 per cent of women experienced sexual violence in 2017.

As the power struggle for resources and land continues, so does conflict. Rape is often used as a way to control both individuals and whole communities. Kris Berwouts, an independent analyst on conflict in Central Africa, gives a clearer picture of the current landscape.

“Events in Congo, especially in the eastern provinces, have resulted in a culture of violence becoming a state of lawlessness and total impunity, where justice has ceased to exist.”

Mr Berwouts says the systemic problem of rape in Central Africa does not “find its roots” in the civil wars of the late twentieth century, rather he attributes it to three phrases.

The first, as a “gruesome offshoot of the conflict, part of the right of the victor ... ‘La chosification de la femme’, as they call it in Congo, the crime of reducing a woman to a thing.” In the second phase, rape has become a tool with which to break a community, and “strike it in its most intimate and most vulnerable part: its womb”.

In the third, and perhaps most alarming phase, is the idea of rape as “the only form of human rights violation that does not diminish”.

As seen in DRC, the “damage caused by sexual violence does not stop with a peace agreement or a ceasefire”. So although the perpetrator may not be in uniform, sexual violence is still rife. “This means that sexual violence penetrates the values and the culture, and that the ‘thingification’ of woman is a very hard process to reverse.”

Although a general election in December 2018 was the first peaceful transition of power since 1960, Mr Berwouts claims it is perhaps too soon to claim a democratic victory over the deep-rooted culture of violence. There are more than 100 different armed groups active in eastern DRC alone, and 4.5 million people remain displaced within the country. “Congo has been declared much too soon a post-conflict environment,” Mr Berwouts says. “The country never turned the page of conflict.”

Dr Mukwege, who has treated women both in wartime and out, echoes these sentiments. “When a country has been in the midst of conflict for as long as the DRC has, the so-called end of war looks much less like a period and much more like an ellipsis. There is no noticeable end to conflict for those who live within it. The battlefield seeps into communities, families, bodies and lifetimes without discretion.”

Conflict may continue, but gradual change is happening, particularly for Congolese women.

Despite the disputed outcome of the 2018 election, Wabiwa, a rape victim from the Kasika massacre, sees hope in their new government. “With the new government in place, I hope there will be change because everything seems to be working well, no more rebels groups or gun fighting,” she says.

According to Awa Ndiaye Seek, the UN Women representative in DRC, women are increasingly speaking out about their experiences, seeking change for future generations. “More and more women are coming together to try and challenge the wrongs, to challenge patriarchy,” Ms Ndiaya Seek says.

Since the election, gender has increasingly been part of DRC’s political agenda, from the new president Félix Tshisekedi and his wife talking openly about women’s issues to having a female speaker of the house.

“We are not naive, we know that very often when people come and are not convinced at the beginning they try to use gender to advance their own agenda. But we are being as opportunistic as we can by playing the same game,” Ms Ndiaya Seek says.

Organisations on a local level are also having a huge impact. For example, the Mukwege Foundation has helped connect more than 1,000 survivors to speak out about what has happened to them, and is making a short fiction movie to challenge stigma in the community.

“After 20 years of rape there are women who are taking things into their own hands and trying to make change,” Esther Dingemans, director of the foundation, says.

The women we spoke to in Kasika are beginning the difficult process of overcoming their past. All of them – among more than 98,732 others – are part of the Women for Women International project in DRC, which offers sessions in health, legal rights, numeracy, basic business management and more.

“Women learning how to save money is essential to escape the cycle of poverty and discuss different ways to save. We also encourage women to pool their knowledge, skills and resources,” WFWI DRC director Abdoulaye Toure says.

Along with training, the women receive $10 a month, which can be the difference between sending a child to school or not, paying that month’s rent or not, and is often the first time many of them have had control of their own money.

“God gave us a golden opportunity to be part of [the] WFWI program,” Mashozi says. “The knowledge acquired should help us to be autonomous and stop being dependent. The loan I have taken will help me to develop a small business.”

Hearing these women is key to DRC’s development, but they are not alone. The country is seeing an exceptional engagement from men and boys on the ongoing issue of sexual violence.

“This is not only a women’s fight,” Ms Ndiaya Seek says. The UN’s HeForShe project, which aims to engage men globally in women’s rights, has been hugely successful in DRC. “We have become number three in the world in the number of men who have joined the campaign ... men have told me they want to become number one in the world by the end of the year.”

“For many years we have named and shamed the Congolese men who went the wrong way. It’s time that we raise and praise the men and boys of this country who try to do the right thing, and maybe by insisting on positive masculinity we will show the right example we want people to follow.”

It takes years, decades, to change ingrained attitudes. As Dr Mukwege says, “there are generations of men who have been taught that extreme violence is the only way ... These attitudes and scars do not disappear with the declaration of a so-called end.”

“Patriarchy and toxic masculinity fuel everything from the wage gap to sexual violence in conflict,” Dr Mukwege adds. “Ignoring the link between the two will be fatal for the future of gender equality. It is not up to Africa and Congo to change gender relations, it is up to each and every one of us, from Boston to Bukavu.”

Speaking with victims, activists, political analysts, a similar message rings out: it may take time, but people are ready for change.

“The Congolese people are resilient, courageous, innovative and unbelievably hopeful given the circumstances,” Dr Mukwege says. “I believe in them. I believe in their will and I believe in their faith. The people of DRC deserve a bright future.”

The women from Kasika interviewed all attend the year-long training programme provided by Women for Women International. Women for Women International’s work in the DRC is generously supported by players of the People’s Postcode Lottery.