Take Action: Congolese Women, Raped and Refugees

I am not ashamed to say that when I watched Hotel Rhwanda a few years ago I was mortified and bawled more than halfway through the movie. I am ashamed to say that, I had NO clue of the highly disturbing conflict that took place a decade ago. For as much as I adore the Clintons, why did the U.S. turn a blind eye to that disaster?

As I speak, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, more than 5.4 million people have died in the last ten years in two civil wars. Genocide is happening in Darfur. More horrifying is that women (children and the elderly) have been brutally raped with bayonnets and guns...repeatedly and sometimes fatally. It's escalated from war crimes to regular street crime. It can happen to any woman, anywhere at anytime. Often the outcome of rape is pregnancy and with the stain of rape and illegitimacy, women are shunned by their own family, villagers and even husbands, asked to leave and left with nothing.

UNICEF ambassador Dayle Haddon posed the question "How do you destroy a community...by destroying its women. But the Congolese women are fighting back. They have created a women's tribunal to report to the government and the world what has happened: they're building communities where women can protect themselves and teach each other skills and literacy."

Visit http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/ where you can register for updates and/or sign a petition demanding President Obama pressure Congo's leaders into stopping the violence.

Source: Marie Claire, March 2009