Late last month a new parliamentary report titled ‘Justice, Impunity, and Sexual Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’ was launched in London. A few of my gapper colleagues attended the launch, and Kevin kindly wrote a little Ctrl.Alt.Shift-esque report for us. The facts can seem a little overwhelming at times, yet it will hopefully give us more of a grasp of what is happening in this beautiful country, and give us some mechanisms to engage with the issues…
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If you have hours:
Read the report into ‘Justice, Impunity, and Sexual Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’:
*Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo who have been raped during war are being imprisoned for aborting their resulting pregnancies, and then being left to starve in overcrowded cells.*
*The budget for each prisoner currently being held by the DRC government is $6 per year. Starvation is common, so naturally so is bribing or breaking your way out of jail*
*Although damage awards for military crimes totalling $1.5 million have been awarded, not a single penny has ever been paid. The entire budget for damage awards is just $5,000.*
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You can always check out our blog, Congolese Dawn, to read about some of our experiences while were in the DRC.
Some of my fellow gapper colleagues are busy working hard editing the video footage we shot while in the DRC last month. Jim & Steph did the filming work, and are now editing along with Chris & JP. Here’s a first glimpse of their work…
Just over 2 weeks ago I was in the DR Congo with the rest of the Christian Aid gap year volunteers, visiting some of our partners there. We got to meet a lot of incredibly inspiring people, people who do an awful lot of good with limited resources. One of those partners we meet was Vorsi Congo, a community organization that works through the church to combat AIDS.
They travel across the whole country, training religious leaders, who in turn get their religious communities talking about the issues, often for the first time. Rodger, the technical director, estimated that across the 11 provinces of the DRC, their message has reached about 8million people. They try to break down the stigma surrounding HIV using mediums such as song & drama.
“Before, if you were HIV positive, no-one wanted to sit in the same pew as you at church. Now people are more happy to sit with them & even take communion with them.”
[Rodger]
I meet Nadine when we visited Vorsi Congo. She is the pastor of a church, and also is a woman living with HIV.
At one point as she shared her story with us, she said, “If I hadn’t have worked with Vorsi Congo, I’d be buried.” It really is a matter of life and death for people. The level of stigma surrounding HIV is still massive, and though Nadine is doing well, there are many people who have been shunned by their families and their churches when they find out they are HIV+.
We use this phrase a lot at Christian Aid, about ‘living positively with HIV’, and it’s only after meeting Nadine that I’m starting to understand what that really means. Nadine doesn’t sit around feeling sorry for herself, but instead she’s throwing herself into being a part of the solution. She’s using her story and her position in the church to help educate people.
To find out more about the issues surrounding HIV/AIDS, visit our website here.
To support our DR Congo crisis appeal , click here.
On Saturday morning I’m flying out to Kinshasa, DR Congo, with the rest of the Christian Aid gap year staff. We’re going to visit some of the partners we work with in DRC to witness first-hand the difference our actions, campaigning and money makes on the ground. We’ve got an exciting itinerary lined up for us, including some cultural highlights such as a Congolese meal.
For some of the group, it will be their first experience of a developing country, for some of us it will be a returning to a continent we already love. Thats the beauty of a trip like this, and to a gap year program like this – there is such diversity.
I’m excited about it; and yet I’m nervous about how much my heart can hold.
While we’re away, we’ll be blogging (as and when possible) at our trip blog here:
Aside from that, I’m taking a bit of a social media sabbatical – no twitter, no facebook, no blogging here. I’ll be back in a few weeks, have a good two weeks folks!
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