Travelling south from Uvira, Eastern DR Congo, a number of large concrete plaques line the road on the way to Nundu Hospital. At first glance they look like headstones, and in some ways that’s exactly what they are. Each plaque is a memorial to a massacre that took place in that region during the notoriously brutal war that was waged between soldiers and rebel forces in the Eastern DRC between 1998 and 2003.
I count at least four before we arrive at the hospital; four grim reminders that a bloody chapter in history has only recently concluded for the many people of this vast region.
However, as one chapter closes, another one begins and, sadly for the people of South Kivu, violence remains a continuous part of their daily existence.
While the war may have officially ended, conflict continues across the province between various rebel factions and the FARDC (Congolese Armed Forces) and, as is so often the case, it is the innocent inhabitants of this sprawling battleground who frequently suffer the most.
‘It never stops’
At the hospital, I am greeted by a young doctor in her early-thirties. Her name is Ester and, while I am welcomed with a warm smile and a friendly handshake, her open hospitality cannot hide the fact that she is tired. I ask if she’s getting enough sleep and she pauses for a moment before replying.
‘A bit,’ she says unconvincingly, ‘but there is so much work to do. The hospital receives patients twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. We recently just received another nine women who had all been raped together. It never stops.’
Ester has been working as a doctor at Nundu Hospital since 2009 and, since 2010, her work has been supported by DanChurchAid’s Sexual Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) project, a two and a half year intervention funded by DANIDA. The project incorporates three levels of support via three national Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).
While DCA supports doctors and Psychosocial Workers in Nundu Hospital in collaboration with national NGO ECC-Methodiste, ECC-MERU, another national NGO, is supported by DCA to sensitize the military and police on issues related to SGBV in order to increase awareness and reduce the occurrences of sexual violence.
Furthermore, DCA also works with Heritiers de la Justice (HdJ), a national NGO who helps victims to claim their rights through advocacy and legal assistance. Via this three-tiered approach, DCA works not only to provide victim assistance; it also attempts to combat the root of the problem by working to change negative attitudes and perceptions towards women.
Nowhere Else To Go
As the doctor shows me around the hospital, I soon understand her fatigue. Hundreds of women and children fill the hospital and many more wait outside to receive treatment. Many beds are occupied with patients and, while there is currently nobody in the surgery room, the midwives are busy cleaning up following the successful delivery of a healthy newborn baby.
As we stand outside in grounds of the hospital, I ask the doctor why there are so many people here. ‘There’s nowhere else for them to go,’ she replies. ‘The next option from here is Panzi hospital in Bukavu (over 150km away), but even if patients could afford to travel there, their injuries are often so severe that they simply wouldn’t be able to make it that far.’
When I ask how many patients the hospital receives, she tells me that, on average, 500-600 new cases are identified every month, mainly women and girls but occasionally men as well. While I talk to the doctor, one of DanChurchAid’s psychosocial workers is currently in another part of the hospital providing support to a traumatized 14 year-old boy who was recently raped by a group of men while herding goats.
‘Approximately forty percent of the patients we receive are children, and about half of those are between two to five years of age. As you may be able to imagine, the injuries are often very serious.’
Children’s clothes hang out to dry outside of the hospital while other children fill the beds of the pediatric unit. I find it difficult to comprehend and, when I ask who is responsible for such crimes, the doctor pauses for a few seconds in order to find the right words. ‘People in uniforms,’ she tells me finally.
Bringing Families Back Together
Afterwards, the doctor introduces me to the five Psychosocial Workers supported by DanChurchAid. Every day for them is spent speaking to victims of sexual violence and occasionally, they too require support to cope with the psychological strain of such difficult work.
‘Psychosocial support is important for so many reasons,’ I am told when I ask about the impact of their work. ‘When a person is raped, they stay at home, thinking, crying and questioning what has happened without finding any answers. There is a huge amount of stigma attached to rape here in the Congo. People feel that they are not normal and husbands and families often reject victims of sexual violence if they discover that they have been raped. Because of this, many women remain quiet and instead internalize their pain.’
Not only do DCA Psychosocial Workers provide these women with counseling; they also provide family mediation between the victims and their family in order to bring them back together.
‘We have one girl here with mental health problems who fell pregnant after being raped. Her mother came to us requesting that we perform an abortion. “Take that thing out of my daughter”, she said. When we refused, she threatened to seek a traditional solution. Such solutions are frequently dangerous and often life-threatening but, after we spoke to her at length, she finally agreed to allow her daughter to give birth safely in the hospital. If we hadn’t convinced her, the daughter and the baby would not have survived.’
No Peace Without Justice
Back outside the hospital, I ask the doctor why these crimes continue to happen so frequently in the Eastern DR Congo.
‘I am a doctor,’ she tells me, ‘but I’ll answer that as a Congolese citizen. All of the Congolese people want peace, but we cannot have peace and impunity living together. The people who commit these crimes, they operate with impunity because they know that they will not be punished. On the rare occasion that the perpetrators of these crimes get put into prison, they are back out again very quickly so that they can commit the same crime again. Until we overcome this problem, there will be no peace in the Congo.’
As I am leaving, the sudden sound of ululating women fills the air. I turn towards the noise and see a woman emerging from one of the wards holding her newborn baby while the other women – other victims – joyously welcome the new arrival. It is a somewhat ambiguous celebration; a woman giving birth after falling pregnant from rape. However, while I struggle to share their joy, the fact remains that neither the mother nor her child would have had much hope of survival had it not been for DanChurchAid’s support for Nundu Hospital. That, at least, is a cause for celebration.