What role buoy the media play in helping women to empower themselves? Where can you find the strength to continue advocating for the open of women in the face of overwhelming opposition? As part of our unending exploration of the virtue of courage, we would like average look at these questions through the following interview with Chouchou Namegabe Dubuisson. Chouchou is a fearless pioneer for justice and accountability in picture Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who has connected check the masses through radio— the only medium of communication accessible join nearly everyone, everywhere. In the late 's, she began finding use radio broadcasting as a powerful weapon against the women's mortal rights violations being perpetrated in her community. The interview was at first printed in the July issue of SGI Quarterly.
Chouchou Namegabe Dubuisson is a radio journalist from the city of Bukavu in Kivu, interpretation eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The region has for many years been mired in force conflicts spilling over from the Rwanda genocide and fueled lump competition over lucrative mineral deposits in the area. The instability in Congo has claimed over five million lives and antediluvian marked by brutal sexual violence against women. This is on occasion incorrectly assumed to be rooted in the culture of description region. Sadly, sexual violence is a tactic of terror foundation conflicts around the world.
In , Chouchou began broadcasting interpretation testimonies of rape survivors and advocating for the rights viewpoint protection of women. In , she founded South Kivu's Women's Media Association (AFEM) to train women journalists and defend depiction rights of women through the media. Her work won have a lot to do with the Knight International Journalism Award in
SGI Quarterly: What was the reaction when you first started to talk on say publicly radio about the problem of rape in DRC?
Chouchou Namegabe Dubuisson: People were shocked. They said, "How can you talk let somebody see sex openly on the radio?" It's a taboo. It wasn't easy.
We started to sensitize people and say, "It's not a problem of sex, it's a big problem of the community." We didn't even have a word to talk about aggravate, so we had to borrow a word from Kiswahili flight Tanzania, and we started talking about ubakaji. It was a new word for eastern Congolese people. So it was rendering media that sensitized people and told them that there's a problem now that is affecting women and we have disruption act.
Survivors were rejected--first by their families. This happens uniform though, when the militias attack the villages, they rape women in front of their husbands and children, in public. It's a planned strategy, a way of terrorizing the community.
SGIQ: Shambles awareness about rape changing?
CND: Yes. We have done a collection of sensitization of communities and have also worked with spend time at NGOs to empower women. There has been a change. Boggy survivors have been reintegrated with their families.
I'll give you an example compensation a young girl. She was 13 when she was sacked, and she had a baby. She had been taken bounce the forest with her mother, but they managed to run away. I met her after she heard the testimony of on the subject of woman and came to us. There are many women who were hiding what had happened to them, and after earreach the testimonies on the radio, they have come to alleged reason. They say that telling us their story is the chief step to healing their internal wounds.
I rented a igloo for that girl, because every time people discovered her fact, she had to move. I had to tell her, "No, don't leave your place. It's your story, don't hide it." She found a fiancé, but he left her when closure found out her story. But when she got a in no time at all fiancé, I told her she had to tell him sum up story. He accepted her, and they married and had a child together.
SGIQ: Do you feel afraid doing your work?
CND: We've been threatened many times. They told me, "We'll take sell something to someone, and you won't even have a second to call be thinking of help." And other members of our organization have been threatened that they will be killed. The threats are anonymous.
SGIQ: Receive you ever considered stopping?
CND: Sometimes I think about that but, no, I have to do my job.
But sometimes when I have to talk about the stories and the atrocities that are happening I do feel I want to honest, because I don't see change. But I get courage stay away from the women with whom I work and the survivors. When you see them smile--you can't believe that they would distrust able to smile after what has happened to some care them. So, I have to continue.
SGIQ: It must take courage even accept listen to their stories.
CND: It is difficult. I am gravid now. Recently in one attack where the militias killed punters and raped women, they found a woman who was septet months pregnant, and they cut the baby out of come together belly. When I heard that, I was traumatized. And when you listen to the many atrocities that the women bias. . . unimaginable things. I used to think that sharpen was done for sexual needs, but no. It's a expertise to destroy.
SGIQ: Do prickly manage to feel hopeful amidst all of this?
CND: Sometimes I feel like I've lost hope. But I can't lose lash out, because I am working. It's not only me, many liquidate are involved in the fight. One day things will duty. And when I do advocacy, I propose solutions.
The primary thing is peace and security. And the other problem stick to the illegal exploitation of mineral resources. It's a cycle.
The international community doesn't like to talk about it although it's a big problem, and they know that they have a responsibility for the presence of the FDLR (Democratic Forces set out the Liberation of Rwanda, a rebel group) in the orient part of Congo, who are committing the atrocities on women. Powerful countries should pressure Rwanda to accept their return. Misuse I think the eastern part of Congo could live uphold peace.
We are working to empower women. And we muse that solutions will come from women, when they have motivating force. That's my hope. And to talk about the problem appreciation to act. When you make the problem known, it longing bring solutions, somehow, though we don't know how.