“Not Women Anymore”
The Congo’s rape survivors face pain, shame and AIDS
By Stephanie Nolen
It took Thérèse Mwandeko a year to save the money. She knew she could walk the first 40 kilometres of her journey, but would need to pay for a lift for the last 20. So she traded bananas and peanuts until she’d saved $1.50 in Congolese francs, then set out for Bukavu. She walked with balled-up fabric clenched between her thighs, to soak up blood that had been oozing from her vagina for two years, since she had been gang-raped by Rwandan militia soldiers who plundered her village in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Finally, she arrived at Panzi Hospital. Here, Thérèse takes her place in line, along with 80 women, waiting for surgery to rebuild her vagina. Dr. Denis Mukwege, Panzi’s sole gynaecologist and one of two doctors in the eastern Congo who can perform such reconstructive surgeries, can repair only five women a week. The air is thick with flies. It reeks from women with fistula: rips in the vaginal wall where rape tore out chunks of flesh separating the bladder and rectum from the vagina. Yet Thérèse, 47, is happier than she’s been in years. “Until I came here, I had no hope I could be helped,” she says.
Part of a Featured article from the spring 2005 edition of
Ms. MagazineCongo Facts


- Since 1994 the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DROC; formerly called Zaire) has been rent by ethnic strife and civil war, touched off by a massive inflow of refugees from the fighting in Rwanda and Burundi.
- A cease-fire was signed on 10 July 1999, but sporadic fighting continued.
- The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo is arguably the world’s most deadly crisis since World War II and the death toll far exceeds those of other recent and more prominent crises, including those in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur.
- Today, in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, rape is taking place on a scale that is almost unimaginable.
- In the last ten years, hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped - but their suffering goes unacknowledged. Instead, they are invisible, shamed and mute.
- According to a new survey (click for more) released by the International Rescue Committee, an estimated 5.4 million people have died as a consequence of the war and its lingering effects since 1998. Survey Conducted: January 2006–April 2007
- 5.4 million people have died since 1998
- 45,000 people continue to die every month
- National mortality rate is nearly 60 percent higher than sub-Saharan average
- Most deaths are from malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition and other preventable diseases.