Goma, DRC, Tuesday, April 20, 2010
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
I am here because Congolese women have had the courage to throw off the millstone under which so many of them were suffering in silence.
The ongoing tragedy here in the Great Lakes region can no longer be ignored, of which the first victims are civilians, mainly women and children.
With fear in their hearts, with words that undo us and cut to the quick of our humanity, more and more Congolese women and girls are breaking the silence and telling their stories.
Not to repair the outrages they have suffered, but to rediscover hope and to be reborn. To gather together and to prevent the horror from being perpetuated.
Each story is as awful as the next: repeated gang rapes, mutilations, humiliation, brutalities so terrible that some victims have bled to death from their wounds.
They are stories that make us cry out in horror and indignation.
What is going on here is unacceptable.
The right of women and their children to be protected against massacres and violence is the most fundamental right of all. It is an international human right that is being shamelessly flouted with impunity by these armed gangs, these aggressors and these predators who fall into crime and inhumanity.
We have a duty to respond with solidarity to the suffering of these women and children so brutally left for dead, and also to their extraordinary resilience.
In the midst of the horror, on the ground, you are working, as physicians, nurses and humanitarian workers, alongside the daughters and sons of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to stop the atrocities and restore respect for human dignity.
You are making unprecedented efforts to heal bodies and hearts ravaged and made barren by sexual violence and all other forms of terror.
Thanks to women’s rights organizations here in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and elsewhere in the world, the international community is mobilizing in support of Congolese women's rights.
Canada is one of the countries that support those courageous efforts.
In Canada, women of Congolese origin are making their voices heard in the highest corridors of power, to make the authorities and their fellow citizens aware of what is happening to their sisters.
We women too often underestimate our collective strength and the power we have to change things.
We need to be sisters, allies and sources of inspiration for one another.
Like you, I believe that healing comes through our capacity to recognize and rise above our losses and our suffering. And it also comes through our desire for life to win out.
It is in that spirit that I have come here to you today.
So that problems are forcefully named. And so that the words we share bring about solutions and the promise of hope.
I look forward to hearing your stories.
