JWW co-founder, Janice Kamenir-Reznik in conversation with Nobel Prize winner Dr. Denis Mukwege at USC
Since our first visit with Dr. Denis Mukwege, who has just been named the 2018 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, JWW has met on multiple occasions in in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with Dr. Mukwege, and we have proudly supported his remarkable work with rape survivors at the Panzi hospital in Bukavu. As a guest of JWW, Dr. Mukwege visited Los Angeles in 2013, where he met with many JWW supporters. We at JWW could not be more thrilled about Dr. Mukwege being awarded the Prize — not only as a reward for the love, selfless commitment and extraordinary surgical skills he has demonstrated to the mostly invisible survivors of horrific sexual violence, but also because this Prize helps to amplify the voices of JWW and other activists about the scourge of abuse and violence visited upon women in Congo and other places.
Born in the DRC, Dr. Mukwege is a gynecological surgeon who operates his Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, in the easternmost region of the DRC. He has committed his life to the herculean task of curbing gender-based violence and helping restore its survivors to health in a country where, at times over the last 15 years,, as many as 1,500 women and girls a day were raped; as a result, the DRC has often been referred to as the “rape capital of the world.” For the past 15 years, the country has been plagued by violence, as multiple competing militias, a corrupt government and its lawless military vie for power, killing and ruthlessly raping in the process. In the years of war, more than 5 million people have been killed and, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of women have been the targets of horrific sexual violence. In his country, Dr. Mukwege has been dubbed the “mender of women” for the extraordinary surgical skills he developed to repair fistulae and other damage to women’s organs caused by extreme sexual violence. Women walk hundreds of miles to have their physical and psychological wounds repaired by Dr. Mukwege.
Denis Mukwege and JWW co-chair Diana Buckhantz
On JWW’s multiple trips to Congo, the JWW travel team personally witnessed Dr. Mukwege’s surgical capabilities and directly experienced the enormous compassion and love he shows to his thousands of patients. With Dr. Mukwege, we visited the post-surgical rape wards and spoke to the women and girls who are among the fortunate to have made it into Dr. Mukwege’s care. On one such visit, one of my own many visits to Congo, upon entering the ward with Dr. Mukwege, my eyes were drawn to a small cot shared by a mother and her child, both connected to drainage and IV equipment. Dr. Mukwege told us that a few days before we arrived, both the mother and her 2-year-old baby had been gang raped and abused with foreign objects. Dr. Mukwege had performed the first of what would be many surgeries on both mother and child.
In another part of the hospital complex, our JWW team met with women who had been in residence there for more than 6 months; not only for a place to recover from their multiple surgeries, but also because the hospital provides them with economic development training so the women can become self-sufficient after they leave the hospital. We learned that, once raped, such women are stigmatized and no longer allowed to live with or be supported by their own families.
After JWW’s initial visit with Dr. Mukwege at Panzi in 2009, JWW embarked upon a longterm partnership in which we began to help fund the work at Panzi.
Diana Buckhantz, JWW’s Board Co-Chair, who has also traveled multiple times to the DRC to visit our grantees, said of Dr. Mukwege, “We at JWW believe that Dr. Mukwege deserves this lofty prize because of his heart and his belief that humanity can do better … be better. I will never forget seeing this extraordinary man, this larger-than-life hero reduced to tears when he spoke to us about having to treat children, themselves the product of rape perpetrated against young women, who were once his patients, too. Despite the cyclical nature of these violations, and the wars in the DRC themselves, Dr. Mukwege has never been defeated. Instead, he has looked for new ways to empower women, support their self-sufficiency, rehabilitate their souls, and keep them and their children safe.”
Dr. Mukwege sporting JWW’s signature pin bearing the words “Do Not Stand Idly By”
I saw myself that Dr. Mukwege cried for every woman and child that he cared for. He never became immune to the suffering in his midst. He cried for his country; he cried for the women; he cried for each and every one of his patients. Once, we were there right after four little baby girls had been raped. He seemed sadder than it is humanly possible to be sad. But his eyes lit up when he saw the quote from Leviticus on our JWW button, which says, “Do not stand idly by.” He said to us: “‘That is the only answer, to not stand idly by. ”
JWW and Dr. Mukwege’s Panzi Hospital are inextricably linked through our shared refusal to be defeated and paralyzed in the face of mass atrocities. Dr. Mukwege immediately pinned the JWW button onto his white coat as a sign of the kindred nature of our efforts. When the JWW team returned to his hospital a year later, that button was still attached to his medical jacket. A sign of solidarity then, and always.
Dr. Mukwege has risked his life for his work on multiple occasions, including by taking the stage at the United Nations to admonish the world for not doing enough to stop the protracted conflict and to decry the weaponization of rape in the DRC. Following his return to Congo after the speech, armed men entered his compound in Bukavu and took his children hostage, then awaited his return home from work. When he arrived, he faced a barrage of gunfire and his guard was killed, but he survived. He fled for a brief time, but returned to Bukavu to continue his essential work helping victims of rape.
From left: JWW co-founder Janice Kamenir-Reznik, Dr. Denis Mukwege and Tzivia Schwartz-Getzug in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Dr. Mukwege agrees that sexual violence is a global dilemma, telling reporters: “This Nobel Prize reflects the recognition of suffering and the lack of a just reparation for women victims of rape and sexual violence in all countries of the world and on all continents.”
We applaud the Nobel Prize selection committee for shining a light on this cross-cultural phenomenon. The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize also was awarded to Nadia Murad, herself a survivor of rape within the context of the Yazidi genocide. Murad became a powerful and brave voice for female survivors of sexual violence perpetrated by the Islamic State, which has wielded rape as a weapon of war in its genocidal campaign to completely wipe out this Iraqi religious minority group. Though JWW does not share the same close relationship with Murad that we do with Dr. Mukwege, we have been advocating for the U.S. government to prioritize the Yazidi population of Iraq in its reconstruction assistance, and have called out the Islamic State for its unconscionable use of sexual abuse as a means of eradicating this ancient religion.
A sampling of JWW’s work with Dr. Mukwege and Panzi Hospital
JWW has long supported Maison Dorcas, Dr. Mukwege’s empowerment center for women and girls. The Center organizes housing and vocational training aimed at giving economic power to women and girls affected by sexual and gender-based violence. It also offers support to other vulnerable women and girls living in the vicinity of Panzi hospital.
At Maison Dorcas, women, young girls, and their dependents receive comprehensive services, including: schooling for all school-aged children and their progeny; literacy and life-skills training, including rights education and leadership development; vocational and business skills training (e.g., sewing, basket making, embroidery, soap making, computer literacy); and psychosocial support, ranging from individual counseling to music therapy. This holistic and multifaceted program provides a whole-woman approach to survivorship. In this way, it represents the epitome of what Jewish World Watch aspires to achieve through our projects on the ground: interventions that yield sustainable, life-altering change for victims of mass atrocities so that they can harness their awe-inspiring resilience to help themselves regain their health and also help their communities transition from chaos to stability.
During our 2015 trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, our team members were able to witness the basketweaving class, one of the vocational skills classes taught to women at the facility.
Inspired by Dr. Mukwege and because of all we have observed of him and of Panzi, JWW has sought out partners working in the arena of rape prevention, including addressing the root causes of the massive amount of violence against women in DRC. One of our longest running projects in Congo, and a project for which JWW was the initial funder, is a project called Sons of Congo; this project provides male support groups with lessons on relationships and the proper treatment of women. So far, some 37,000 men have graduated from Sons of Congo, which we believe is making a significant impact in the DRC. These are just a few of the rape-related projects of JWW. For a more information on Panzi projects, click here.