Empowering Women and Girls in DR Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country devastated by conflict with women at particular risk of being victims of the latest weapon of war: sexual violence. But women such as Yvette Mulongo are working to equip women and girls with the knowledge they need to break the cycle of suffering. By providing medical care, economic and social rehabilitation and legal assistance, Yvette and her colleagues work to empower women.
This is an extract from Reliefweb.int, by UN Population Fund. The views expressed are the author’s own.
As a child growing up in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then, Zaire), Yvette Mulongo regularly watched as neighbours and friends lost their mothers. She noticed the gaping hole left in families by the death of a mother.
“It wasn’t until I became an adult, after I finished my studies, that I understood the connection between the early deaths of these women and our society,” she said, adding, “These connections include: ignorance, illiteracy coupled with the low status of women, poor health due to numerous, pregnancies and pregnancies that were too close together and women getting pregnant when they are too young or too old.”
And in 1998, a brutal civil war added sexual violence and atrocities to the litany of suffering many Congolese women endured.
For the last 16 years, Yvette Mulongo has been working to reverse this cycle of suffering by working toward women’s empowerment, largely through faith-based organizations, including Église du Christ au Congo and IMA World Health. Now, as project manager for the Abbott Maternal Assistance Program and Director of Family Planning within the SANRU Program, she helps brings primary healthcare to the DRC’s rural areas. In DRC, as in many African countries, faith-based organizations deliver a majority the health care, especially in rural areas, and SANRU has helped build on this model and make the health care delivery more effective.
With support from UNFPA, Ms. Mulongo has developed training materials on family planning methods and provides contraceptives to help women plan and space their families, ultimately giving them more control of their lives.