The Nobel Peace Prize 2018 winners brought attention to sexual abuse in conflicts

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to two people who have brought attention to ending sexual violence against women in armed conflict.

Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist treating victims of gang rape, and Nadia Murad, an Iraqi Yazidi who has spoken about her own suffering at the hands of the Islamic State, are both witnesses to the way in which the abuse of women can be intertwined with violent conflict.

Mukwege has treated thousands of rape victims at his hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Murad has become an outspoken activist about sexual slavery and human trafficking. What they have in common is that they both have lived in parts of the world where it is particularly dangerous to be a woman.

“We want to send out a message of awareness that women, who constitute half of the population in most communities, actually are used as a weapon of war — and that they need protection,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Protecting women and holding perpetrators accountable is a “prerequisite for lasting peace,” she added.

The 2018 award also nods at a broader global theme about the treatment of women and their willingness to confront injustices.

The new attention to sexual harassment and sexual assault has upended the entertainment and political world, and earlier this year the Nobel Prize in literature was postponed because of a sexual abuse scandal touching on the Nobel organization.

Reiss-Andersen said that war crimes and the #MeToo Movement are “not the same thing,” but it is important that “women leave the concept of shame and speak up.”

The Nobel decision this year points to a widening — and some say, belated — awareness about how soldiers use violence against women as a weapon of war, sometimes to instill fear or keep control, sometimes for reasons of pure brutality.

In 2008, the United Nations formally recognized gang rape during conflicts as a war crime. Researchers say sexual violence has followed in the wake of conflagrations across the world, most recently in Myanmar, where Human Rights Watch has documented gang rapes carried out by the military against the Rohingya ethnic minority.

“A more peaceful world can only be achieved if women and their fundamental rights and security are recognized and protected in war,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its citation.

[Why it took the world so long to call rape during conflicts a war crime]

Murad was living in northern Iraq when in 2014 Islamic State fighters set on her village, killing several hundred — burying them in mass graves — and abducting many of the young women. While held captive by ISIS, Murad was handed off among militants and repeatedly raped. She escaped after three months with the help of a Sunni family. In 2016, she was named as a United Nations “goodwill ambassador” on the issue of survivors of human trafficking.

Murad, 25, is the second-youngest person to win a Nobel Peace Prize, after Malala Yousafzai, who in 2014 won the prize at age 17.

In a book she wrote about her experiences, Murad called her captivity “a slow, painful death — of the body and the soul.”

Murad has since traveled around the world campaigning for the documentation of war crimes and the rescue of Yazidis still held by ISIS fighters. In 2016, then-U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the Islamic State had been responsible for “genocide” against Yazidis and several other groups living under its control.

“This is not something I chose,” Murad told The Washington Post in an interview last year. “Somebody had to tell these stories. It’s not easy.”

Mukwege, 63, is the son of a preacher who traveled around eastern Congo in the years before war convulsed the region, taking millions of lives. But even before the wars, health care at the time was grim. Horrified by the amount of childbirth complications his father’s parishioners asked him to pray over, he became determined to enter the medical field, eventually traveling to France to specialize in gynecology.

He founded Panzi Hospital in 1999, just as eastern Congo was overtaken by a new wave of violence that became infamous for its brutality, particularly toward women. Militias from Congo, Rwanda and Uganda tore across eastern Congo for the better part of a decade, raping and pillaging.

Panzi Hospital was where tens of thousands of rape victims went for treatment, some showing up naked, others having already been to the hospital after previous rapes. Mukwege treated countless victims, often working 18-hour days. He only stopped for a period of two and a half months after he narrowly survived an assassination attempt and sought refuge in France.

Mukwege has been a staunch critic of Congo’s government, which he has called out for impunity and human rights abuses. It has yet to comment on Mukwege’s Nobel Prize.

“We are thrilled to see our dear friend and partner honored for his fearless work helping tens of thousands of Congolese girls and women who have been abused during the conflict in their country,” said Donna McKay, the executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, an advocacy group that works in Panzi Hospital. “Dr. Mukwege is not only an extraordinary physician, but a courageous human rights leader who perfectly embodies the critical role that medical professionals play in witnessing abuse and speaking out against injustice.”

Bearak reported from Nairobi.

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