Where we work

DR CONGO

The two eastern Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are the worst places in the world to be a woman. Over the last decade, a complex and ongoing series of conflicts, described as the world’s “deadliest crisis since World War II,” unleashed unprecedented violence on the bodies of women and girls in this region. The brutality is extreme: “gang rapes; the raping of three-month-old infants and eighty-year-old women; the dispatching of militias who have HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases to rape entire villages; women being held as sex slaves for weeks, months and years; and women being forced to eat murdered babies.”Women and girls are raped with such frequency that the Congolese have invented a new word to describe the phenomenon: révioler, to re-rape. For years, the international community has attempted to stop mass rape in the DRC; yet, as recently as 2008, the United Nation’s (UN) Special Rapporteur on violence against women described the situation in the Kivus as, “the worst crisis of violence against women documented so far.”This has been echoed by aid workers and humanitarians who have called this region the “rape capital of the world” and the “the worst place in the world to be a woman.”

NORTHERN UGANDA

Over the twenty three year war in northern Uganda, 60,000-80,000 children and youth have been abducted by the rebel-led Lords Resistance Army (LRA), and forced to serve as soldiers, 'wives' and labourers. Many have been forced to commit grave atrocities against their own communities. In 2004-05, thousands of young women escaped with their children during heated battles with the Ugandan military and have since returned to their communities.

Their return has not been easy. They are sometimes rejected, considered ‘unclean’ after rape. Children born of rape are too often violently rejected. Rehabilitation centres exist and offer vocational and educational opportunities, but there are little opportunities to exercise these skills after they graduate. Any many, many injustices continue: young women are exploited as labourers on farms, engage in risky relationships and sometimes, are forced to reunite with their former 'husbands' out of economic desparation.

Dozens of peer support groups have formed however, linking the women together as a form of social and economic support.