During his 2018 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Dr. Denis Mukwege described some of his first days at Panzi Hospital in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic Congo.
The very first patient: a rape survivor who had been shot in her genitals. Some time later: an 18-month-old girl who had been raped. After that: a 29-year-old woman who was taken hostage, tied to a tree and gang-raped daily after the massacre of her family. Such chilling descriptions offered only a brief glimpse into the every day horrors of the conflict that has claimed millions of lives in the DRC since 1996.
“Rape, massacres, torture, widespread insecurity and a flagrant lack of education create a spiral of unprecedented violence,” the hospital founder said in his Dec. 2018 speech, blaming the rebel factions that war over the country’s abundance of natural resources. “The human cost of this perverted, organized chaos has been hundreds of thousands of women raped, over 4 million people displaced within the country and the loss of 6 million human lives. Imagine, the equivalent of the entire population of Denmark decimated.”
