A few weeks ago, I attended a meeting in a private apartment on the Upper West Side in New York, where a Nobel Prize-winning surgeon from the Democratic Republic of the Congo told a small group of human rights activists about his fears for his country.
Dr Denis Mukwege highlighted the prolonged and deteriorating humanitarian crisis in DRC – which the UN calls the one of the world’s “longest and most complex” crises. One in four Congolese – about 27 million people – are acutely food insecure in a country that has been dealing with the fallout of conflicts, epidemics such as Ebola and natural disasters. About 6.4 million people, mainly children under five years old, are affected by acute malnutrition.
But Dr Mukwege did not only speak of hunger. He spoke of how his country is at a tipping point as it faces an election year in 2023. Key civil society leaders in the DRC are urging him to run for the country’s presidency, although he has not announced any intention of doing so.
I had long heard of Dr Mukwege’s extraordinary and courageous work, but it was the first time I met him. He is a large, charismatic yet humble man, a surgeon who trained as a gynaecologist and obstetrician but now treats victims whose bodies have been used as weapons of war. His work is gruelling, heart-breaking, never ending. Scarred women arrive at his clinic weekly.
He has spoken of helpless civilians fleeing the most terrible circumstances. But he has also spoken of the wealth of his country, and the greed of others who exploit it with little concern for those who suffer. Ironically, the DRC is one of the richest countries on the planet in terms of natural resources, but one of the most brutalised and traumatised by war.
Dr Mukwege won the Nobel Prize in 2018 for efforts “to end sexual violence used as a tool of war”. He now runs Panzi, a hospital he founded in his hometown of Bukavu in the east of the the DRC, where he usually works 18-hour days. Naturally, he was in the operating room when he was notified of his Nobel.
Despite the official end of the war in 2003 – which killed an estimated 6 million people and displaced millions more – horrific violence remains largely focused on the country’s raw materials.
The attacks against civilians are innumerable, taking the form of kidnapping, rape, death, and mutilation. Armed rebel groups use sexual violence as a weapon.
The conflict spreads beyond the DRC’s borders, partially fuelled by trade in mineral resources. Gold, tin and coltan come from mines armed by the groups who carry out these attacks, play an enormous role in the destabilisation of the country.
The violence in the DRC is one of the greatest modern tragedies that gets little attention and little compassion. At the heart of it is greed. What causes the conflict? Largely, it is the war for cobalt, the mineral used to power our tech devices.
“When you drive your electric car; when you use your smart phone or admire your jewellery, take a minute to reflect on the human cost of manufacturing these objects…” Dr Mukwege said in the New York meeting. “As consumers, let us at least insist that these products are manufactured with respect for human dignity. Turning a blind eye to this tragedy is being complicit. It’s not just perpetrators of violence who are responsible for their crimes. It is also those who choose to look the other way.”
Dr Mukwege has not been quiet about the mineral trade, about regional politics and about the DRC’s armed groups. In 2012, he survived an assassination attempt when five armed men attacked his hospital.
“My country is being systematically looted with the complicity of people claiming to be our leaders,” Dr Mukwege said. “Looted for their power, their wealth and their glory. Looted at the expense of millions of innocent men, women and children abandoned in extreme poverty. While the profits from our minerals end up in the pockets of a predatory oligarchy.”
When I left that early summer evening, deeply touched by Dr Mukwege’s words and his humility – and his insistence on working despite being a walking target – I walked home thinking that if more doctors, humanitarians and activists were in charge, what a different state Africa – and the rest of the world – would be in.
Imagine a world where more leaders understood from a grass roots level what people need to grow and thrive. The possibilities for change would be endless.
“Change must come from the Congolese themselves,” Dr Mukwege said. But if the DRC had more help, and more opportunities for its humanitarian voices to lead, then change would come faster, with real hope for post-conflict healing.
