Congo's War on Women


  • Photographer
    Mary F. Calvert
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Company/Studios
    ZUMAPress
  • Date of Photograph
    March/April 2009
  • Technical Info
    digital image

In The Democratic Republic of the Congo, it is more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier. In a country plagued by decades of violence, rape has become the weapon of choice on both sides of the ongoing civil unrest; it is cheaper than bullets and is guaranteed to leave a community subservient or destroyed. Tens of thousands of women have been raped in Congo in the last ten years of civil war, most of them gang raped. According to the United Nations Population Fund, an average of 1,100 rape cases are reported each month.

Story

In The Democratic Republic of the Congo, it is more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier. In a country plagued by decades of violence, rape has become the weapon of choice on both sides of the ongoing civil unrest; it is cheaper than bullets and is guaranteed to leave a community subservient or destroyed. Rape has been a tool of war since the beginning of time, but what is different in Congo is the systematic nature of this crime and the shear numbers of women being attacked. Tens of thousands of women have been raped in Congo in the last ten years of civil war, most of them gang raped. According to the United Nations Population Fund, an average of 1,100 rape cases are reported each month. The future of Congo remains uncertain. Each new battle between government forces and rebel militias leaves behind the scar of more brutalized women and girls. The rape epidemic continues to jeopardize the chances for recovery from this brutal war.

I first became interested in covering the rape crisis in Congo when I came across the reports of violent assaults during Internet research for a project. The numbers of women being raped there were staggering and the details of the heinous attacks were vicious beyond belief. As I read article after article it was as if I could hear the women screaming from a deep well and I knew that I had to tell their story with pictures and sound. My bosses at the Washington Times thought it was a compelling project, but they did not have the money to send me to Congo. So I applied for the photography grant sponsored by the White House News Photographers Association and as thrilled as I was to be awarded the grant, I also felt like the dog that caught the car.

I spent five weeks in Congo documenting the lives of women and girls who had been so brutally attacked and it was the most difficult, frightening project I have ever worked on. A photographer friend of mine recently critiqued my website and told me I ought to remove some of the depressing content. That people do not want to see stories about rape, obstetric fistula, and polio epidemics. I agree. Most people do not want to see such things, but they need to see them. In the old media world, these stories from Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are usually allocated 15 inches on page A-16 or shoehorned into 30-second slots midway through news broadcasts, if they are reported at all.

The mind cannot fathom the horror of a humanitarian crisis in 30 seconds. Only when one bears witness to a scene frozen in a photograph or hears the cries of a traumatized woman or child, can they begin to internalize such injustice and suffering; only when people internalize such suffering are they moved to act.


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