Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions that some readers may find distressing
WHEN Dr Denis Mukwege first saw the injuries of a woman who had been raped by a soldier, he was appalled. It was not just the hideousness of the crime. It was the pitiless planning behind it. During the war in eastern Congo, militia commanders orchestrated campaigns of mass rape to terrorise the whole population into submission. “I couldn’t imagine that could be done as a strategy,” Dr Mukwege told The Economist. Since qualifying as a gynaecologist—one of the very few in the Democratic Republic of Congo—he has operated on some 20,000 survivors of sexual violence and devoted his life to publicising their plight.
Nadia Murad’s story is, if anything, more harrowing. She was a quiet, studious 21-year-old when Islamic State arrived in her village in Iraq in 2014. The jihadists separated the men from the women and murdered the men, including six of Ms Murad’s brothers and stepbrothers. They murdered the older women, too, including Ms Murad’s mother. Then they took the young women and sold them as sex slaves. Explicitly, at a slave market. Ms Murad was one of thousands to be violated by men who argued that they were doing their victims a favour, because they were infidels and would have a chance to become Muslims.
Since she escaped, she too has been a tireless campaigner against rape as a weapon of war, sharing her story no matter how much it hurts to tell it, and urging the world to hold Islamic State accountable for the genocide of her people, the Yazidis, a minority faith in Iraq and Syria.
On October 5th Ms Murad and Dr Mukwege were jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize. The hope is that this will inspire others to join their efforts to eradicate military rape. Few causes could be more urgent. Sexual violence during war is horrifically common. Sometimes soldiers do it because, in the chaos of battle, they can get away with it. In Congo, some male fighters repeat the myth that after combat, they experience uncontrollable urges for sexual gratification.
In many wars, however, rape is, as Dr Mukwege put it, a strategy. He has spent almost 20 years operating on women whose insides have been maimed. He founded Panzi Hospital, nestled in the green hills above the city of Bukavu, back in 1999. His original plan was to help women suffering complications during pregnancy, but this quickly changed when he received a flood of patients who had been gang-raped, violated with sticks or even shot in the genitals.
The work was so distressing that he often wanted to give up. “I think the hardest thing I have had to deal with in my career has been seeing babies who were raped. The first time I saw this was with an 18-month old baby whose genitals were completely broken. I was at a point where I actually said ‘I can’t.’ But I could not give up,” he explained.
His loud condemnation of the atrocities he witnessed earned him enemies. In 2012, shortly after making a speech at the United Nations, Dr Mukwege survived an assassination attempt. Four armed men slipped into his compound and shot his guard. They fired at the surgeon, who dived to the ground, but missed and ran away.
Today rebel militia groups, scattered around ten of Congo’s 26 provinces, continue to abduct, rape and murder civilians. A rebel commander, Jean-Pierre Bemba, was charged by the International Criminal Court in the Hague with overseeing mass rape, among other crimes against humanity, but was acquitted and has returned home to run for president. (Though the Congolese electoral commission has ruled that he cannot run.) The Congolese information minister, asked to comment on Dr Mukwege’s award, complained that the doctor had a tendency to “politicise” his work.
Ms Murad’s efforts have perhaps been more successful. Thanks to her lobbying, the UN has backed an investigation into the genocide against the Yazidis. Separately, Islamic State has been defeated in Iraq, and many of its leaders have been killed. But Ms Murad cannot rest. “Every single one of them must be brought to justice,” she told 1843, this newspaper’s sister magazine, in 2016.
Clarification: This article was updated to note that Congo’s electoral commission has ruled that Mr Bemba cannot run for president. He has not accepted this ruling.