DENIS MUKWEGE

 DENIS MUKWEGE

Denis Mukwege (born 1 March 1955) is a Congolese gynecologist and Pentecostal pastor. He founded and works in Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where he specializes in the treatment of women who have been raped by armed rebels. 

In 2018, Mukwege and Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict". 

Denis Mukwege was born in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His father was a Pentecostal minister. Mukwege decided to study medicine after seeing the complications that women in the Congo experienced during childbirth who had no access to specialist healthcare, and he wanted to heal the sick people for whom his father prayed.

Mukwege received the opportunity to study medicine in Bujumbura at the University of Burundi and graduated with a medical degree in 1983. After graduating with a medical degree , Mukwege worked as a pediatrician in the rural Lemera Hospital near Bukavu. However, after seeing female patients who often suffered from pain, genital lesions, and obstetric fistulas after giving birth due to an absence of proper care, he decided to study gynaecology and obstetrics at the University of Angers, France, obtaining his master's and completing his medical residency in 1989. In 1999 he founded Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where thousands of victims of sexual violence during armed conflicts have been treated. Dr. Mukwege has been fearless in his efforts to increase protections for women and to advocate that those responsible for sexual violence be brought to justice, including the Congolese government and militia groups laying siege to eastern DRC. As the number of rape victims arriving at the gate of Panzi Hospital increased, Denis Mukwege realised that medical services alone will not solve the problem. In his efforts to bring the topic to the attention of the UN and other international organisations, to increase protection for women and to advocate that those responsible for sexual violence be brought to justice, he has become a leading activist for human rights and gender equality. 

In October 2012, a few weeks after he had given a speech at the United Nations in which he denounced the decade-long conflict in Congo, Dr. Mukwege was violently attacked and his family was held at gunpoint at his home in an assassination attempt. Joseph Bizimana, his trusted friend and security guard, was killed. Dr. Mukwege survived the assassination but he and his family went into exile abroad for three months. His many Congolese patients and colleagues urged him to resume his life-saving work at Panzi Hospital. Despite continuous threats against him, he returned to Bukavu in January 2013 and resumed his work at the hospital.

Although he has been a target of attempted murder, he is still active there. 

Dr Mukwege received numerous awards for his work, including the UN Human Rights Prize (2008), the Right Livelihood Award (2013) and the Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament (2014). TIME magazine listed him among the world’s 100 most influential persons and the Carter Foundation named him a ‘citizen of the world.’

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2018/mukwege/biographical/

https://panzifoundation.org/dr-denis-mukwege/