The Democratic Republic of Congo is, as you hear this, engaged in a war that has raged on and off since 1998.
5.4 million people have been killed in the deadliest conflict since World War II.
Millions have been displaced. Congolese women and girls have born the brunt of this vicious war with over 300 thousand raped, tortured and destroyed.
The current state of crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is intricately linked to the unfettered greed of colonialists a century ago. King
Leopold II of Belgium, who in the 1880s exploited the country’s natural resources
(mainly rubber) through cruel forced labor and murders, set a precedent for the pillaging of the Congo’s vast natural resources and exploitation of the Congolese people.
A hundred years later the link between the plundering of resources and the violence is evident. Congo is the richest country in Africa. The struggle for tin and coltan, a material used in our cell phones and play stations is driving the war.
You might ask why should we here in [your city] care about a 16-year-old girl in
Goma, DRC being raped by 50 men? Why should we care about the Arctic melting when we live in Paris or middle America?
Femicide is the global warming of women.
Like the Arctic, the Congo is the place where the catastrophe has been made evident and where it is in its most extreme. But Femicide is raging throughout the planet - acid burnings, sex slavery, female genital mutilation, mass rapes, date rapes, honor killings, women buried alive.
The Congo is the heart of Africa and Africa is the heart of the world. Women live at the core of the heart. They hold the future in their bodies. If their bodies are destroyed, deadened, muted and traumatized, so is our future. If we focus now and give our attention and resources to this deadly war on women in the DRC. If we, as humanity support women and men of the DRC, on the ground who are breaking the silence and building a peace and justice movement. If we make this our priority and help support, cherish and empower the women there, the heart of the world will continue beating.