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Goma suffers again

peter.murphy — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 13:03:24 +0000

One survivor reveals her experience of the endemic sexual violence prevalent in eastern DRC.

I’ve watched the past few days news from Goma in eastern Congo with a ghastly sense of déjà vu. Four years ago, to the day, I was in Goma, at that time still precariously held by the government army, but with rebel forces just outside the town, a few hundred yards away from vast camps of people displaced by decades of conflict. That time the rebels decided not to enter the city but used their position of strength to negotiate a deal with the DRC government. That deal has since disintegrated and this time they’ve taken the town. What will happen next is extremely unclear.

Despite its beautiful setting of volcanoes and lakes, eastern Congo has become a place of horror, especially for women and children: abducted children forced into becoming soldiers, rape used as a weapon against women and girls. While I was there I heard the story of one rape survivor, which you can see here. Lord Malloch Brown, then British government minister with responsibility for Africa was visiting the region at the time and talking about the use of rape as a weapon of war said,

it is a catastrophe, a human catastrophe, which has been largely hidden from international view, and we have to solve it as part of solving the overall problem.

But it hasn’t been solved, and the situation is still as bad, if not worse.

Today my thoughts are with my colleagues still in Goma and the many thousands of vulnerable civilians caught up in the turmoil, displaced once again and exposed to hunger, disease and multiple human-rights abuses. I can only hope that this awful spiral will be halted by concerted action by the international community, the African Union, the East Africa Community and the combatants to end the fighting and bring about a lasting peace that will, finally, allow the population of this fertile land to return to their villages and resume their lives with dignity and security.

Introducing the Child Sponsorhip Programme in DRC

florence.mwenge — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:04:25 +0000

Child Sponsorship is a programme which has been a crucial part of ActionAid International for many years and we are proud to say that it has just been introduced to DRC.

The Programme was introduced in DRC in May 2011 after ActionAid DRC had been considered to be a fully fledged country programme (one that could be managed independently) by ActionAid International. This is a really exciting step forward in the development of ActionAid DRC. Child sponsorship is a very powerful initiative as it connects individuals (sponsors) and communities so that they can see and understand the issues and challenges of people in the developing world. There are so many children who need urgent care and the programme has the power to maximise our chances of supporting those children and their communities.

Child sponsorship is a very powerful initiative as it connects individuals (sponsors) and communities so that they can see and understand the issues and challenges of people in the developing world.

Children from an area in a developing country (a minimum of 500 children per area, called Local Rights Program) are linked to sponsors in a developed country, essentially in Europe and USA. The sponsors consent to allocate money each month which will be used to develop the Local Rights Program. In developing countries, projects aimed to sustain not only the sponsored children (who are considered like community ambassadors) but help the whole community to find lasting solutions to put an end to the root causes of poverty and injustice. The money raised through child sponsorship is not therefore merely to help an individual (the sponsored child) but is also to contribute to the transformation of whole communities, helping equip them to successfully fight poverty and injustice and bring them a dignified life.

Child sponsorship is not therefore merely to help an individual but is also to contribute to the transformation of whole communities, helping equip them to successfully fight poverty and injustice and bring them a dignified life.

The Child Sponsorship Program at ActionAid DRC is managed by Mr. Claude de Marie Nezehose, who joined the Organisation in May 2011 after having different experiences from NGOs, especially leading literacy and vocational programmes for youth. Introducing Child Sponsorship to ActionAid DRC is an extremely effective means of raising more funds which will in turn greatly increase the impact of its activities on poor and marginalised people.

Fighting for dignity for those living with HIV

Yves.ntole — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:57:41 +0000

Since the death of her husband from an AIDS-related illness in 1997, Françoise Kayiti has been campaigning for respect for the dignity of people living with HIV.

Françoise is in charge of three organisations: Patients Support Group (GRAM), Tumaini Association (which means hope in Kiswahili) and her newest group, the AIDS Union for life (UNIVIE SIDA) of which she is chair.

Born in Bukavu in 1965, she has one child.

Following her husband’s death, Françoise withdrew from society, wanting to be alone and avoiding contact with people.

“I didn’t want to believe that my husband had died of AIDS. I preferred to believe that he had been poisoned. Several months later a doctor told me that I was sick as well. This came late because I had been in denial for so long,” she recalls.

I didn’t want to believe that my husband had died of AIDS. I preferred to believe that he had been poisoned.

Françoise vowed to challenge the ignorance surrounding HIV and AIDS. Through the different organisations she is connected with she aims to bring people living with HIV and AIDS out of the shadows.

With the support of ActionAid’s Reducing VAW project, UNIVIE SIDA has enabled women living with HIV to take charge of their own lives through the provision of a dressmaking training centre, counselling sessions and access to medical services. They can now make a living as seamstresses and are able to consult health services when necessary.

Among the difficulties she has encountered in her quest to raise awareness and support people living with HIV, Françoise notes that being a woman has been a significant obstacle.

“When I had to meet certain financial backers I had to ask some of the men to represent me,” she explains.

Today Françoise Kayiti is considered one of the most active women in the field of HIV and AIDS in the whole of the DRC. With the support of the Reducing VAW project, and thanks to her personal courage, she has brought hope to, and restored the dignity of, thousands of women living with HIV.

It's either cabbages or onions to survive

florence.mwenge — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:17:22 +0000

Anastasia Bavuga is 60 years old, living in the dip area of Nyiragongo. Since 2006 she has been the only bread winner in her family as her husband is very ill, but due to the effects of climate change this has proved a very hard task.

Anastasia is one of over 500,000 people who have been forced to flee their homes to the bush in order to escape the dangers of chronic war. After running from Kirumba to Kibumba (a village near Goma town) in The North-Kivu region in 1994, Anastasia tried to support her family through agricultural farming, particularly growing cabbages. However, the excessive rain has prevented her, and she has not been able to find any available farm where she can grow cabbages and onions to sell to urban areas.

We have now been experiencing heavy rains since August this year.

Though desperate to keep her son in education, he had to drop out of Kalangala school, constructed by ActionAid DRC, as she could not afford the school fees of $18USD every 9 months because this year, cabbage cultivation has not provided them with any income.

It takes four months for these cabbages and onions to be reaped and now we can’t predict the weather conditions as we used to do in the late nineties. I don't know what to do... It is impossible to get food now, let alone afford school fees.

Anastasia Bavuga has desperately tried to find work cultivating other people's farms, but has been unsuccessful. She says that as long as she still has the strength she will continue to work wherever she can to try to afford to send her son back to school, but with out her own harvest it is impossible to save enough.

Anastasia Bavuga is not alone in this situation, but she is among the most vulnerable in the Nyiragongo territory. Most of the people living in this area are facing such difficulties, which has a knock on effect for urban areas. For instance, in Goma town, one cabbage was costing as much as 50FC, due to the harvest shortage. In 2010 the price of one cabbage leapt to 150FC and continues to increase in 2011.

Excessive looting and murder has been the main danger which inhabitants have faced due to non-stop war in the Eastern DR Congo for over 10 years now. But now, in addition, farmers in DR Congo wonder how they are going to survive as climate change causes increasingly erratic weather leaving with them little to no financial security and ever-increasing food shortages.

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Many women were in complete despair because they felt totally disowned

Yves.ntole — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:36:35 +0000

She had never imagined herself campaigning against violence towards women. And yet she is one of the most active champions of women’s rights in the province of South Kivu. Solange Kasiba Ngobobo, a mother of seven children, including three daughters, is the coordinator of IFRAD, a non-profit-making organization that she set up in 2002 in Bukavu to help women benefit from development projects.

I’d started working with vulnerable women, particularly victims of violence, when coming home from my classes one night I met a girl who had been raped and left semi-conscious and bleeding by the side of the road. I was really shocked by this situation

South Kivu Province has the highest rates of violence against women in the DRC, with 12,500 cases of rape recorded in 2005 alone. As well as the trauma of the physical act of rape, most of the victims are often stigmatised and excluded. “I’d noticed that many women were in complete despair because they felt totally disowned,” she continues.

Thanks to ActionAid’s Reducing VAW project, during which she participated in a training course on women’s rights held in Bujumbura in 2007, Solange learned a new approach to dealing with cases of violence against women: an approach based on their rights. From then on, IFRAD concentrated on raising women’s awareness of their rights as the first step in the fight to stop violence against women. Of all the activities implemented as part of the Reducing VAW project in DRC, it is the initiatives on psychosocial support and livelihood activities such as embroidery and sewing skills that have assisted Solange the most in achieving her aim to actively involve survivors of sexual violence in the process of their own development. To date IFRAD has trained more than 67 women in key skills such as dressmaking and soap-making. These women are now able to begin a new life, supporting their families with the income they earn from the trades they learned at IFRAD.

“To begin with I found it difficult to do all this just because I was a woman,” Solange recalls. “The strategy I chose to overcome this problem was to get men involved in my campaign. I started with my own husband. And I can say that I was successful, because he has helped me by financing some of my projects out of his own pocket.”

Solange tells us she is particularly proud of one rape victim she worked with, who was able to overcome the shame attached to her status and shrug off her fears to go and share her story with the US Senate: “Thanks to this woman, the whole world is aware of the atrocities committed on women in the east of DRC,” she comments. When asked what advice she would give to Congolese women and girls wishing to follow in her footsteps, Solange replies: “Just have courage and confidence in yourself. For young girls, I recommend study. Only through education can we restore the dignity of women in DRC.”