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Life after rape in Congo
A local women's organization is teaching rape survivors shunned by their villages new life and work skills.
from the April 25, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Pacuriema, who once held a job as an outreach worker with a local radio station, formed her first women's club in 2000. Traveling to rural villages for her radio job, she had been shocked to meet women who had never been to school and who looked at her with awe for speaking in public. She wanted to teach them to read and write, and wanted them to realize that under Congolese law they were equal to their husbands.
But as the violence increased, her focus shifted. Her hometown, Bunia, is the capital of Ituri Province, a mineral-rich but infrastructure-poor region that is still considered the least stable area of Congo. Toward the beginning of the war, fighting ravaged the Ituri countryside, and hundreds of women fled to this city. They slept under trees and bridges. Some wept constantly, Pacuriema recalls. Others did not talk at all.
Pacuriema and some friends decided they needed to do something to help these refugees. So they created a new organization that would give some assistance itself – funded in part by modest local donations, in part by NGOs – but would also try to coordinate the various women's associations that are sprinkled across this region. They called their group "Forum des Mamans de Ituri" or Ituri Women's Forum.
"So many women were killed; so many were raped; so many were displaced," Pacuriema says. "When the militias came, the husbands fled – the women often stayed alone. They had to support all the weight of the family on their heads. We realized that we needed to help each other."
By 2003, the war had come to Bunia, too. Different ethnic groups fought for control, and periodically one militia group would triumph, killing and raping its way through town. A few weeks later, another ethnic group would take revenge. One humanitarian agency, Cooperatione Italiano, estimated that in Bunia – population 250,000 – approximately 10 women were raped every day during 2004.
Pacuriema said her group tried to unify women during this violent period – bringing women from different ethnic groups together for meetings and workshops. They would sew together and pack food parcels.
"Women were divided because they belonged to different ethnic groups," she says. "We helped women to meet and to look for peaceful cohabitation."
They also tried to find help for rape victims. They talked about the attacks and told women that they should not flee their villages in shame. If a woman's family refused to take her back, Pacuriema's group would try to arrange other housing. Sometimes Pacuriema would invite women to stay with her own family.
The forum also organized work programs and microfinance loans, coordinating with some of the donor groups pouring into eastern Congo. They opened a makeshift sewing center.
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