“You take women, you rape them (…) And the world closes its eyes”

During a hearing at the National Assembly on January 12, Denis Mukwege spoke of the many rape victims who come to his hospital in the DRC. Nobel Peace Prize winner since 2018, this gynecologist indeed campaigns against sexual violence during conflicts. And according to him, women are paying too much for it. “You take women, you walk them naked, you rape them, you walk them at night in the city. Then you impale them, you put them in a hole, alive, they are screaming, you bury them alive. And that, it happened. It’s documented. And the world closes its eyes“, he breathed.

Denis Mukwege also pointed out that rape is not a prohibited act. “On the normative level, we don’t have a convention like the Convention we have on the use of starvation as a method of warfare. We do not have a convention which clearly stipulates that rape is a method of warfare and that this method is prohibited in armed conflicts.“, he lamented. He then felt that support from the French Parliament could help advance the cause of women around the world.