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Nobel Laureate Seeks Backing for New Fund to Aid Women Raped in War

Reuters

   NEW YORK - Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, a Nobel Peace Prize
   laureate, called on world leaders meeting in New York this week to back
   an international fund to help female victims of sexual violence during
   armed conflict.

   Mukwege has devoted the past 20 years to helping women raped by armed
   rebels, treating more than 55,000 women at the Panzi Hospital he set up
   in Bukavu in the east of war-torn Congo.

   But despite winning a list of global accolades for his work, surviving
   an assassination attempt in 2012, and receiving daily threats, Mukwege
   said he had struggled for 10 years to generate enough interest to start
   a fund to recompense victims.

   That changed, however, after he was named joint winner of the 2018
   Nobel Peace Prize with Yazidi activist Nadia Murad for their work to
   end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war - and his ambition
   was finally coming to fruition, he said.

   Mukwege said France, Germany and the European Union had pledged money
   for the fund, which will be officially launched on Oct. 30, and he
   urged government and business leaders at the United Nations General
   Assembly this week to join them.

   "Giving women reparations can help them resume their lives and are a
   way to rebuild the fabric of societies, families and
   communities,"Mukwege, 64, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an
   interview on a sidewalk cafe in New York on Monday.

   "Without justice, you can't build peace, and the example of Congo makes
   that very clear."

   Mukwege said talking to women raped during conflict he realized victims
   wanted different forms of recompense, just as they needed different
   sorts of treatment, ranging from medical and psychological to economic,
   social and legal.

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