Nobel Peace Prize winner is an inspiration to us all
Here in Silicon Valley, we are surrounded by brilliant minds and a collective drive to change the world. But few of us have put our own lives on the line for what we know is right.
On Monday, Dr. Denis Mukwege, a hero for brutalized women in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo, will receive the Nobel Peace Prize, along with an extraordinarily courageous young activist, Nadia Murad, herself a victim of profound sexual violence. There is no one I can think of more deserving of the prize than Mukwege, whom I’ve had the honor to know for nearly a decade.
Mukwege is not a household name. But it should be. And, I dearly hope the Nobel Peace Prize will give Mukwege the platform he deserves. He founded Panzi Hospital in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. The hospital treats women and girls who have been victims of exceptional violence, including gang rape and vaginal assault with weapons, not just male organs. He’s the son of a Pentecostal minister and told me he wanted to do with his hands what his father did with his words: make the world a better place. But, he does far more than use his surgical skills to heal women. He is their champion — a courageous voice demanding the world’s leaders pay attention and help end the needless violence and tremendous suffering, as he did at the United Nations General Assembly in 2012.
When I first met Mukwege he was in the United States with playwright Eve Ensler. I run the Fistula Foundation, based in Silicon Valley, which funds vaginal surgeries for women left incontinent by unrelieved obstructed labor or violence.
I wanted to find out if he needed help. It turns out he did. In late 2008, the economic The Nobel Peace Prize will be formally awarded Monday in Oslo to Dr. Denis Mukwege, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to Nadia Murad of Iraq.
tsunami hit the global financial system and a key donor unexpectedly pulled its funding from Panzi Hospital. Mukwege said he’d had to cut his staff practically overnight. Fistula Foundation is small, but nimble. I asked for a proposal, audited financials, references, and all came back within a few days from his team operating in a war zone. We sent funds, doctors were hired back and more women got treated.
That meeting led to a longterm partnership; our foundation is honored to have provided a little over $2.3 million in support of Mukwege’s pioneering work to heal women broken by violence and childbirth. In the last two months, our donors have even stepped forward to establish the Denis Mukwege Fistula Fund, raising nearly $200,000 for his future efforts. But Mukwege’s Panzi Hospital is more than simply a place to repair bodies. It is an indispensable island of peace and love; what human rights champion Stephen Lewis calls “the epicenter of resistance.”
Every day, Mukwege serves as my North Star. His portrait hangs on the wall next to my desk as it has for nearly as long as I’ve known him. In a white doctor’s coat and a lapel pin that says “DO NOT STAND IDLY BY” he reminds me of the sacrifices he’s made to give the voiceless a voice and to return their health and their hope.
According to the World Health Organization, violence against women is a violation of human rights and stems from “prevailing attitudes that serve to justify, tolerate or condone violence against women, often blaming women for the violence they experience.” Sound familiar? In a developed country like ours, that abuse, unlike in Democratic Republic of the Congo, is not inflicted by marauding soldiers as a tool of war, but usually by family members, intimate partners and acquaintances.
The world needs champions for women. While Mukwege confronts violence in women a continent away, all of us in the United States can take inspiration from his indefatigable commitment to the welfare of women. He shows by example that we must not just stand idly by.