The Nobel Peace Prize-winning doctor whose hospital in war-ridden Congo had treated more than 50,000 victims of sexual violence has started a fund with the objective of providing restitution for conflict victims worldwide. In an interview on September 21, Dr. Denis Mukwege said reportedly said that he and his team at his Panzi Hospital in eastern Bukavu province can physically and psychologically assist victims of molestation and other abuse, but the only real way to heal victims is for society to accept the wrong which was done to them through reparations.  

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Highlights of the interview

Dr. Mukwege said that legal action can be taken against the alleged criminal but even in cases where women win there is no reparation. The Nobel laureate said that reparations can be individual or collective, symbolic or financial depending on the victim the case and context. In some cases, women are just asking us to ask the leaders and said that he apologizes for what happened to them because he may be a leader in this place and he did not protect them. Then maybe it shall be enough for women. In other cases, women may want financial repayments to support them, to pay for school or return to previous engagements or start new ones. This fund will work in different ways depending on the conflicts he stated. 

For a decade, Dr. Denis has been fighting for a global fund due to what is happening in Congo, and now everywhere there is a conflict. The fund is attempting to get governments and private undertakings to give money but its board shall also include victims of sexual violence and civil society members. Pledging $2 million a year for three years, France is the first country to commit to the cause in a significant show of support, Mukwege has said. The Nobel laureate is in New York on a tour spearheaded by Doctors of the World, an important funder of the Panzi Hospital. The tour shall take him to the states of California and Washington to talk to several foundations about the fund. On the heels of the UN General Assembly, Mukwege is also planning to meet many world leaders and attend events.

Mukwege has said Female survivors worldwide face similar hardships and that he has recently seen how sexual violence victims from the Bosnian war have overcome their hardships and how they can possibly help Congolese women to help face this problem. Dr. Denise has also travelled to South Korea to see the "comfort women" used as sex slaves by Japanese soldiers in World War II and visited Colombia and victims of the Korean civil war. He plans to start programs for victims of sexual crimes in the Central African Republic and Burundi.

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Nobel laureates to work together

Mukwege shared the 2018 Nobel peace prize with Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who was molested by Islamic State militants in Iraq and has been advocating globally for victims of sex crimes. Dr. Mugweke said that she and he shall work together adding that when he was in Iraq to see what was happening there and he hopes that this year he will start to support Yazidi women. The program will be conducted in different camps where the Yazidis are and not in the Sinjar province where Islamic State militants stormed Yazidi communities in 2014. The doctor has spent a better part of his life medically aiding female victims of sexual assault. Today his policy is to work more with men because he thinks that it is very important to talk about positive masculinity. 

“We are really in a patriarchal system where men dominate everything and women are treated just as objects,” he said. “We need to change our way to treat women and see women in our society and ... let young boys grow up to respect women and understand that women are equal to men — and this has to start very early.”

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