On a visit to Charleroi on Friday, Congolese doctor, ULB lecturer and Nobel Prize winner Denis Mukwege has called on the Congolese population to mobilise in the run-up to next year’s elections.
Dr Mukwege, co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end sexual violence as a weapon of war in 2018, was a guest at an international conference for peace in Charleroi. The conference, which calls for peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was held on the site of the Bois du Cazier in Charleroi in front of an audience of Belgian and Congolese experts, as well as members of the diaspora.
Mukwege called for the Congolese population to mobilise in the run-up to general elections scheduled for 2023.
Need for change
Mukwege stated that change must come from the Congolese themselves: “Today I am treating the grandchildren of the women I treated in 1999... It is no longer a matter of continuing to deal with the consequences, but of seeking the root causes of the conflict that continues to this day.”
He explained that Congo has been at war for thirty years which has "led to a major humanitarian crisis, with the number of deaths, abused women and refugees in the millions.”
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Nicknamed "the Man who Mends Women" – the title of the film made about him by Belgian filmmaker Thierry Michel – Mukwege is the founder of the Panzi hospital in Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, which treats women who have been victims of sexual violence in eastern DRC.
