Afghanistan is world’s most dangerous place for women – followed by DRC, Pakistan, India and Somalia

Afghanistan, Congo and Pakistan are the world's most dangerous countries for women in 2011 due to a barrage of threats ranging from violence and rape to dismal healthcare and "honour killings", an international expert poll showed today. India and Somalia are the next worst places to be a woman.

The global report is shocking and also depressing for showing dismal lack of progress. When will things change? Most of these terrible situations, statistics and suffering are well documented – what more do we need?

The survey has been compiled by the Thomson Reuters Foundation to mark the launch of TrustLaw Women, a website aimed at providing free legal advice for women's groups around the world.

Not surprisingly Afghanistan is named as the world’s most dangerous country for women because of its high levels of violence, poor healthcare and poverty. And the war was supposed to improve the plight of Afghan women…

“Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. That aside, it is also a context that gives a woman minimal opportunity for education, health access, reproductive choice, etc. The lack of hope of the situation of women improving in the near future, as opposed to countries such as Sierra Leone and Southern Sudan, makes the situation comparatively even worse," says Dhammika Perera of International Rescue Committee.

Continuing conflict, Nato airstrikes and cultural practices also combine to make Afghanistan a very dangerous place for women. "In addition, women who do attempt to speak out or take on public roles that challenge ingrained gender stereotypes of what is acceptable for women to do or not, such as working as policewomen or news broadcasters, are often intimidated or killed," says Antonella Notari, head of Women Change Makers,  a group that supports women social entrepreneurs around the world. 

 

The second worse place goes to the Democratic Republic of Congo for the staggering level of sexual violence in the lawless eastern part of the country. One recent US study claimed that more than 400,000 women are raped there each year. The UN has called Congo the rape capital of the world.

Pakistan comes next on the basis of cultural, tribal and religious practices harmful to women. "These include acid attacks, child and forced marriage and punishment or retribution by stoning or other physical abuse," the poll finds.

The fourth worse place goes to India, which is more surprising for a country emerging into an economic super-power and a country not at war. India’s inclusion to the danger list is due to its high level of female infanticide and sex trafficking.

And Somalia completes the list. The country, in a state in political disintegration, suffers high levels of maternal mortality, rape, female genital mutilation and limited access to education and healthcare.

The poll asked 213 experts from five continents to rank countries on issues like overall perception of danger, access to healthcare, violence, cultural discrimination and human trafficking.

"This survey shows that 'hidden dangers' like a lack of education or terrible access to healthcare are as deadly, if not more so, than physical dangers like rape and murder which usually grab the headlines," Monique Villa, chief executive of Thomson-Reuters Foundation, says.

For more information, go to the TrustLaw website, which provides in-depth information, statistics, interviews and videos on the study. Also read the Guardian’s article by Owen Bowcott. The piece also provides links to case studies in all five countries.

 

Run for Congo - follow up

As a freelance journalist, I don’t often receive feedbacks about my stories, but my last piece for the Guardian about Chris’s running to raise awareness of the brutal conflict in the DRC seemed to have resonated with readers.  Many said they had no idea there was even a war there; many were so touched by Generose’s story and by Chris’ dedication that they circulated the story on Twitter, Facebook and donated money. Helen Ashley of Women for Women International said that in just three days readers had donated £2000 to help support women in their programme in the Congo. Amnesty International also said the article generated money and the story was picked up by publications all over the world.

Chris’s last marathon in Luton was cancelled last weekend because of bad weather, so he is now trying to figure out where else to run and what else he could do to keep the issue in people’s minds and on the political agenda. He is thinking of running the marathon des sables in April.

I also got a note from a thriving group of Congolese women in London who are well-organized and desperate to get the right sort of publicity for their cause - not just 'oh the poor victims', but a more active approach, trying to publicize the role of the Western multinationals and Governments who are exacerbating the situation. So I am planning to meet up with them. Stay tuned…

Congo - Because Saying Sorry Was Not Enough

Chris running in the Congo/Fjona Hill

I spent an evening in a bar a couple of weeks ago, listening to Chris Jackson explaining why he felt compelled to run 12 marathons in 12 months – including one in the Congo, one of the most dangerous places on earth.  He was running, he said, because “saying sorry was not enough”. He had met a woman who had been violently raped in a refugee camp in Goma, eastern Congo, and all he could tell her was “sorry.”  He knew she was just one of thousands of women being routinely raped, tortured and killed in this region. He felt he couldn’t just walk away and do nothing. So he did the only thing he could think of: running.  

 “Running 12 marathons in 12 months was a conversation-starter. I wanted to do something that made people sit up and take notice so that more people were aware of the Congo and those who have and continue to suffer in silence.”   

More than 5.4 people have been killed in the brutal conflict in eastern Congo and more than 2 million people have been displaced. Sexual violence in the Congo is the worst in the world, according to the UN.

While running in the Congo, Chris met women who had been attacked by soldiers and rebels, as well as men who had raped, and recorded their stories on his blog and Twitter, and they formed the basis for a BBC World Service report and Channel 4 documentary.

 I had been trying to place stories about the atrocities in the DRC for a long time, but editors were not too keen: it was not something many readers wanted to read and, because the war has been raging there for so many years, the story was not topical enough. Chris’s challenge provided a way to engage the readers. And the fact that he is running his 12^th and last marathon this Sunday, offered editors a perfect news hook for the story.

I approached The Guardian as they were the most likely to want the story. The editor was interested, but had reservations. “He isn’t Eddie Izzard, is he?”  the editor said.  But to me, the story is stronger precisely because Chris isn't a celebrity. He is just an ordinary guy who was so touched by a woman’s plight on the other side of the world, that he was willing to put his life on hold and push his body to the extremes. I find this incredibly beautiful and inspiring. And it gives me so much hope.

 The Guardian did commission the story and gave it nice play on Friday (Dec 3). You can read it here.

To read Chris’s blog, click here or/and donate to a programme helping women in the Congo rebuild their lives and regain their dignity, click here. For more information, click here

Fashion model gives back to Congo

Noella Coursaris Musunka/Maerzinger Photography

Born to a Congolese mother and a Cypriot father in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Noella Coursaris Musunka is a super model whose image graces billboards and magazine pages (Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Arena etc) all over the world and represents brands such as Agent Provocateur, Apple ipod, Virgin Mobile and Barclays.

But Noella is a model in other ways too. The 27-year-old, who started her modelling career through a competition for Agent Provocateur in London and lived there for several years (she now lives in New York), has founded a non-governmental organization to advance girls’ education in Lubumbashi,  where she was born.  She is also a human rights activist, advising the UN, politicians, celebrities and corporations on the situation in her country.

Noella is coming to London on October 2nd to host “Creatives Unite For Congo”, a fashion show in profit of a school her NGO is building in Lubumbashi.  The show will showcase work by Congolese fashion designers IJO and Modahnik, the London brand MF Couture, as well as clothes made by girls from an orphanage supported by her NGO.

Noella’s father died when she was five and her mother, who didn’t have the resources to raise her on her own, sent her to live with relatives in Belgium, then Switzerland where she studied business. The silver lining to this traumatic event was a good education and a modelling career, which allows her to travel all over the world.

When she returned to the Congo to visit her mother 13 yeas later, she felt in love with the country. “The moment I stepped off the plane, I felt at home.”  The visit changed her forever. “From that moment I said to myself that one day I will do something back for my country. Even if I didn’t have my parents, I had been fortunate to have an education. I thought the best thing to do is pass on to others the same opportunity.”

So in 2007, she set up the Georges Malaika Foundation in New York in memory of her father. “His name was George and  “Malaika” in Swahili means angel.”

Noella and her team of non-profit and private industry professionals are building a sustainable school for 300 girls outside Lubumbashi and have already sponsored 16 girls with tuition, uniforms, meals and school supplies. The design for the school was donated by Studio MDA, the architects for Madonna’s Raising Malawi school, and the first stone was laid down in February by Khaliah Ali, the daughter of Mohammed Ali.


Over the last few years, she has addressed the DRC Parliament on violence faced by women of Eastern Congo and spoken at the UN and universities across the US about the war, which as been waged there for the last 10 years and killed more than 5.5 million people, and about rape being used as a weapon of war. But she also wants to focus on the beauty of the DRC, its culture and its people.

Creatives Unite For Congo: October 2^nd at 8pm at The Penthouse, 39-43 Underwood St.  N1 7LG London, for tickets or more information:  rsvp@gmfafrica.og

No independence for women of the Congo

                                                                                                                                         WfWI

This entry is again on the Congo as the nation has just celebrated 50 years of independence from Belgium (my own country!) and I am trying to imagine the future of a state where 1200 women, men and children are dying every day because of the conflict and humanitarian crisis, which rage in the eastern provinces.

The scale of violence in DRC is well documented. More than 5.4 million have died since the conflict began in 1998. The death toll is equivalent to an Asian Tsunami every six months or so and a September 11th every 2.5 days. And yet, the world is still largely ignoring it.

Women have been specifically targeted: in the first 9 months of 2009 alone, there were 7,500 reported cases of rape in eastern DRC. Girls as young as two and women as old as 80 have been victims of rape and sexual violence (Human Rights Watch). In the eastern province of South Kivu, one woman is being raped every two hours. (OCHA, 2010)

 But despite this backdrop of war, poverty and sexual violence, women in DRC are holding families together and rebuilding their communities, according to a new report by Women for Women International, an international charity working with women in areas of conflict around the world. “Their resilience and strength shines through,” says Christine Karumba, WfWI Programme Director for the DRC. “One woman can change anything. Many women can change everything.”

 “DRC 2010 Stronger Women, Stronger Nations”, based on interviews with 1800 women and 200 men in rural and urban areas in the eastern provinces,  shows that:

Out of every 100 women in DRC:

40 have lost their home

80 do not own a mattresses

40 never attended school

50 eat only one meal a day

80 earn US $1 or less per day

80 are from villages that have been attacked

80 think their current village will be attacked

50 have spouses who left because of war

50 are afraid to work outside of their home

80 are unhappy with their lives today

70 think about hurting themselves

75 have lost family members due to the war

80 have lost family due to illness. 

Yet, 93% are working and continue to support their families

And 63 believe there can be peace in the DRC

The WfWI report founds that:

1.      Health and emotional well-being are severely degraded by violence. The war is taking its toll on family structures.  The constant atmosphere of violence and insecurity and the breakdown of the family due to war is leading to a near mental health epidemic in the eastern province of Kivu.  

2.      Health and wealth go hand in hand. Almost all (93%) of women are working. Despite the number of women working, 95% are living in absolute poverty, and women in our sample are well below accepted average income levels.

3.      Women with higher income levels have better physical health and well-being. They save more money to support their families and eat more meals per day. They are respected by their families and communities, think less about hurting themselves, and know where to seek help and information.

4.      The war burdens women with increased responsibilities. Only 2.4% of women reported that their husbands remain at home. This separation inflicted by the war leaves women to shoulder enormous burdens as they take over tasks formerly carried out by men in addition to those for which they are traditionally responsible. Lack of security makes these tasks even harder.

5.      Men suffer along with women. Men have been affected by sexual violence at a higher level than previously understood, with similar emotional effects as women. Male abuse victims suffer from extremely high rates of unemployment.

6.      Group participation offers enormous recovery benefits.

Overall 80% of women surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that being part of a group helps them make friends, express themselves, increase their incomes, and be part of their community.

Women for Women International is calling on the international community, the UK government and the UN to work with the Congolese government to:

• Improve the security situation

• Address mental health  

• Invest in women

•Involve men in solutions for women

• Channel local momentum for peace

Women for Women International is part of the Congo Now campaign (see previous entry). 

 Since 2004, WfWI has provided support to 31,195 women in the DRC. 11,811 women are currently in the DRC programme.  The year-long programme offers women rights awareness and life-skills training,  development of vocational and business skills and opportunities for micro-finance and help in identifying potential markets for self employment.

Watch WfWI video on women in the Congo and their work there (as seen on 60 minutes).

Turning pain to power – Women of DRC

When we hear/read about the Congo (DRC), it is usually terrible stories, particularly those involving women. My own blog entries are no different. But recently there is a sense that things are shifting a bit – women are taking things into their own hands and among all the pain and devastation, there are shoots of hope.

• There is City of Joy in Bukavu, a place conceived and created by women to provide women survivors of sexual violence “a place to heal emotionally as they rebuild their lives, turn their pain to power, and return back into their communities to lead.” City of Joy will provide group therapy, self-defense, theatre, HIV/AIDS and family planning, horticulture and economic empowerment to up to 180 women a year. It is a project of V-Day and UNICEF, in partnership with Panzi Foundation. To find out more, watch this short, powerful video.

• Another source of hope is the Heal My People programme at HEAL Africa, a Congolese relief organization centered in Goma. The programme was launched by Jeanne Muliri Kabekaty, known as “Mama Muliri” to her friends and colleagues, and its aim is to turn women from victims into survivors and eventually into strong women of the community and the hope of the future of Congo.

In this interview below, Mama Muliri explains what this means. (The interview was translated by HEAL’s Executive Director Judy Anderson and posted on the PeaceXPeace network. (To listen to the whole interview, click here.)

“Let me tell you about the work we are doing with women who had real pain, real sorrow. You know the stories of what had happened to women but what we were really concerned about is that they not live with the stories of their past as victims of sexual violence.

When we first started they were victims but then we said they’re no longer victims because these women that we have been working with have been cared for medically, their emotional state has improved. We started thinking: what other words can we use? We started calling them survivors. We thought: survivors, well yeah they are survivors but how long are they going to be survivors? How many years can they live as survivors? Where does that leave them? We need to give them a way to show how strong they can be and we want them to think of themselves as strong within the community. We want to also change the name.

How will that name change? They need to be strong enough to do hard work. It also has to be work that they can do well and that they can see the value of and the worth of. We work with women and then when they return home we put them with the other women in the communities so that they are all strong together. The women that come back have strength that is accepted and valued in the community and they can work together for their own futures. They can do handiwork, they can work in the gardens, they can sell small items in markets. They find a way to see themselves again as a woman, like the other women in the community.

These women also learn how to accept each other and welcome each other. The women that had a terrible experience during the war are no longer pointed out with the finger, “See that one.” The women that we have worked with, that we have helped heal are now with their other women in community. They are working together.

So we have buried the word victim. We have buried the word survivor. Now these women are called the strong women of the community. They are the hope for the future of Congo. These women have buried their pasts and they are going into the future. What we see is that if in the next two or three years we have no more wars Congo will have a whole different look. And that is why we women are standing together to say: NO MORE WAR. If somebody comes to us proposing another war for another reason we will stand together and say: No More. Enough is enough."

DRC - hasty UN peacekeepers' withdrawal puts women in danger

From the statistics in my last posting – about 160 women raped every week in the Kivu provinces and more than 8000 cases of rapes reported in 2009 – you wouldn’t think that Congo has laws against sexual violence. On the books the laws are there though, but the country’s capacity to implement them is near zero.

Since 2003, no more than 50 soldiers have been convicted of sexual violence, although 20 were convicted in the first quarter of 2009 alone, according to Human Rights Watch, so there is slow progress.

However, this progress might be short lived if the U.N. peacekeepers are withdrawing from the country at the demand of the government, as the humanitarian news network, Reuters’ AlertNet, reports. This obviously would make the struggle against endemic rape "a lot more difficult", the United Nations has said. Margot Wallstrom, the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, is at the moment visiting Congo, as the world body tries to persuade the government not to demand a hasty withdrawal of the U.N. force.

Ruined - Finding Mother Courage in DRC

Photo Hugo Glendinning

I went to see the European premiere of Ruined by American playwright Lynn Nottage at the Almeida in London on Friday. The play, presented in partnership with Amnesty International, is gut wrenching but gripping – and a powerful way to bring the huge problem of the DRC civil war and its impact on women to wider audiences. To research Ruined, Nottage travelled to East Africa three times to hear the stories of Congolese women brutalised by the war. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for the play.

“In Ruined,” says Nottage, “Mama Nadi gives three young women refuge and an unsavoury means of survival. As such, the women do a fragile dance between hope and disillusionment in an attempt to navigate life on the edge of an unforgiving conflict. My play is not about victims, but survivors. Ruined in the story of Congo.”

According to the International Rescue Committee, nearly 5.4 million people have died in that country since the conflict began and every month, 45,000 Congolese people die from hunger, preventable diseases and violence related to war. It is the deadliest war since World War II, yet it is still largely ignored by the media and the international community.

In “Finding Ruined,” her account on how the play came about, Nottage said she travelled to East Africa because she wanted “to paint a three dimensional portrait of women caught in the middle of armed conflict.” And she wanted to understand who these women were beyond their status of victims. She writes:

“I was surprised by the number of women who readily wanted to share their stories. One by one, through tears and in voices just above a whisper, they recounted raw, revealing stories of sexual abuse and torture at the hands of both rebels soldiers and government militias. By the end of the interviews I realised that a war was being fought over the bodies of women. Rape was being used as a weapon to punish and destroy communities…”

In the Kivu provinces, where the play takes place, about 160 women are raped every week, mainly by armed men, according to the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (9 February 2010). That is an astounding number. Ruined gives a face and a voice to the real women beyond the grotesque statistics. Like Sophie, many of the women are subjected to horrific injuries and mutilations and will have severe long-term internal vaginal and anal injuries. These women are “ruined” and will often be rejected and ostracised by their husband, family and community.

“When I was writing the play I wanted the audiences to get to know the characters well and empathise with them, so that when they leave the theatre they feel compelled to act rather than feel angry at humanity,” wrote Nottage in the March/April issue of Amnesty Magazine. She says that for her the biggest challenge was "finding hope, humour and optimism where there should be none".

If you would like to read more about the DRC or want to take further action, please visit the Ruined mini-site. Ruined is at the Almeida until 5 June 2010.

The World Most Dangerous Place for Women – Sexual terrorism in the DRC

I’ve watched “The World’s Most Dangerous Place for Women” a couple of days ago and cannot shake it from my mind. It left me deeply moved and unsettled. In this powerful BBC3 documentary, we follow 23-year-old Judith Wanga, who grew up in London as she returns to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she was born. Two decades after she was sent to Britain by her parents, she's returning to Congo to meet them for the first time.

She wants to understand the childhood she missed and the country she was forced to leave. After reuniting with her parents in the capital, Kinshasa, Jude heads east to Kivu, an area of the country that's been devastated by war.

It is the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman, where rape has become a weapon of war – rape with the intent of totally destroying women and through them their families and communities. Jude meets survivors - women and children - as well as perpetrators, and finds out what is partially driving this brutality - the precious minerals that make our mobile phones and laptops work.

We follow Jude as she is trying to make sense of the often blurred line between perpetrators and victims and the awesome beauty of the landscape and the horrors it holds. In a war that has already claimed over 4 million people, women of all ages continue to be the victims of sexual terrorism. “Mass rape. It was like a virus,” writes documentary director Fiona Lloyd-Davies in a blog post on her film.

“In Shabunda, a town deep in the forest, I found that nearly 70% of the women had been raped. Since then I'd gone back to DRC on and off over half a dozen times to write articles and make short films. But I'd never been able to secure a commission to make a whole film about what was happening to these women. It was as though they had been forgotten by the world. The women had totally captured my heart. I felt I couldn't let them down.

The sexual violence has now become generational. Women are being raped for the third or fourth time, and their children who they conceived through rape, are themselves being raped too.”

In most cases, women who have been raped are rejected by their husbands, families and communities because they bring shame and because of fear of HIV and other diseases. There is also the huge question of what is going to happen to all the children born as a result of rape…

In this terrible place, Jude also meet some amazing women, like 24-year-old Delphine, a final year law student who is going out to villages to record survivors' testimonies; Merveille a teenage former child soldier; Masika a survivor who has set up her own support network for other women, and Christine Schuler Descriver, a human right activist and director of V-Day Bukavu. V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. It acts as a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations.

Rape and violence against women as weapon of war: one DRC woman speaks out

One gorilla vs 500,000 women

"We ask: 'Why the silence of the developed countries? When a gorilla is killed in the mountains, there is an outcry, and people mobilize great resources to protect the animals. Yet more than five hundred thousand women have been raped, and there is silence."

This is what Democratic Republic of Congo's journalist Chouchou Namegabe testified at a hearing on sexual violence in the DRC before the US Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations in May.

“The women ask WHY? Why such atrocities? Why do they fight their war on women’s bodies? It is because there is a plan to put fear into the community through the woman, because she is the heart of the community. When she is pushed down, the whole community follows. The rapes are targeted and intentional, and are meant to remove the people from their mineral-rich land through fear, shame, violence, and the intentional spread of HIV throughout entire families and villages.

After all of this you will make memorials and say 'Never Again.' But we don't need commemorations; we want you to act now,” continued Namegabe, visibly anguished and angry.

She is founder of the South Kivu Women’s Media Association, known as Association des Femmes des Medias du Sud Kivu (AFEM-SK). The organization gives a voice to thousands of voiceless women. They use radio to give women the space to express what has happened to them, begin their healing and seek justice.

We don't need memorials, but actions

"We have interviewed over 400 women in South Kivu, and their stories are terrifying. In fact, the word rape fails to truly describe what is happening, because it is not only rape that occurs, but atrocities also accompany the rapes. That is what makes the situation in the eastern Congo so different, and horrible. Of all the testimonies we recorded there are two that stay in my mind that I will share with you.

I met a woman who had 5 children. They took her into the forest with her 5 children, and kept them there for several days. As each day passed the rebels killed one of her children and forced her to eat her child's flesh. She begged to be killed but they refused and said, “No, we can't give you a good death.

Last month, after the joint operation between the Congolese army and the Rwandese army to break down the FDLR1, in their running away the FDLR raped more women. Our journalists were told that after they raped the women, they put fuel in their vaginas and set them on fire, and then extinguished the fire. This was done not to kill them, but to let them suffer. There were many other horrible atrocities."

Why our silence and inaction? What are we waiting for? Namegabe is right to say that the international community would have never let so many gorillas suffer in this way.

To read about the six actions Namegabe is requesting, go to the full transcript of the hearing.

And to watch her testimony on YouTube: