Running for Congo Women

I just committed myself to run the Paris Half-Marathon on March 8th, and I am doing it for this cause.

If you have the money (I certainly don't, which is why I'm putting my knees through hell instead), sponsor a woman!

If you go to the website, they have a nice video about the program. I'm a sucker for a video.

But for a more "speaking" video, this is from a 60-minutes story called "War Against Women" in which they visited the Women for Women center:

Accompanying article here.

There is also a blog here from International Rescue Committee describing the situation:

"In the Democratic Republic of Congo there is a war raging against women. Here, women and girls are victims of rape on a scale never seen before. Whenever violent conflict escalates in Congo, so do incidents of rape. It’s happening right now in the volatile province of North Kivu. Gunmen are entering homes and raping and torturing women in front of their families. Others are being snatched from their villages or farms during raids or attacked while collecting water or firewood. They are sometimes kept for days, weeks or even months at a time and subjected to repeated gang rapes, beatings, and mutilation.

“Rape is used as a tactic by all the armed groups in Congo to terrorize communities and to control and humiliate families,” says Sarah Mosely, who oversees International Rescue Committee programs to aid rape survivors in Congo.

“It’s sometimes hard to describe just how horrific these assaults are, but I can tell you that it’s not uncommon for women to be raped with sticks and bayonets that rip them apart or for men and boys to be forced at gunpoint to rape, stab and shoot their mothers, sisters and daughters.

Before I came to Congo, I worked in Darfur aiding rape survivors. The situation is horrible there, but in terms of the frequency and the brutality of attacks, nothing compares to what’s happening to women and girls in Congo....

Tens of thousands of women and girls have suffered such attacks, leaving women and girls physically damaged and emotionally terrorized. Many victims are no longer able to bear children. Others end up suffering from fistula, a condition in which internal organs are so destroyed that the victims lose bowel and bladder control. Unfortunately, Congo’s war and ongoing conflict destroyed the health system in eastern regions, so there is a shortage of hospitals and clinics capable of treating rape survivors. And few can afford the medical help anyway.

A number of aid groups, including the International Rescue Committee, are working to change that and ensure that women and girls have access to critical medical and other needed support services."