“Rape is used as a tactic by all the armed groups in Congo to terrorize communities and to control and humiliate families,” says Sarah Mosely (center), who oversees International Rescue Committee programs to aid rape survivors in Congo. 

“It’s sometimes hard to describe just how horrific these assaults are, but I can tell you that it’s not uncommon for women to be raped with sticks and bayonets that rip them apart or for men and boys to be forced at gunpoint to rape, stab  and shoot their mothers, sisters and daughters.
 
Before I came to Congo, I worked in Darfur aiding rape survivors.  The situation is horrible there, but in terms of the frequency and the brutality of attacks, nothing compares to what’s happening to women and girls in Congo.” Photo: Bob Kitchen/The IRC

“We were walking to the market when suddenly a truck stopped and a group of men started chasing us,” says Josephine (left, not her real name) recalling the day when she and her friends were attacked and raped by one of the militias that terrorize villages in eastern Congo.

“We ran in all directions.  I tried to hide in the forest, but three men caught up with me.  I don’t know how long it lasted but when it was over, I wasn’t sure whether I would live or die.”  Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC

Tens of thousands of women and girls have suffered such attacks, leaving women and girls physically damaged and emotionally terrorized.  Many victims are no longer able to bear children.  Others end up suffering from fistula, a condition in which internal organs are so destroyed that the victims lose bowel and bladder control.  Unfortunately, Congo’s war and ongoing conflict destroyed the health system in eastern regions, so there is a shortage of hospitals and clinics capable of treating rape survivors.  And few can afford the medical help anyway. Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC

A number of aid groups, including the International Rescue Committee, are working to change that and ensure that women and girls have access to critical medical and other needed support services.

“Our approach is to bring the services to them so that they don’t have to trek for miles to get assistance,” says the IRC’s Sarah Mosely. “We make sure they can get fast quality care nearby, confidentially and in a dignified manner.”

To do that, the IRC is rehabilitating health clinics in towns and villages and supplying them with the medicines and equipment they need to give urgent treatment to rape survivors. Health workers are trained to dispense antibiotics to prevent debilitating sexually transmitted infections, suture and bandage wounds, reset broken bones and give tetanus shots and emergency contraception. Photo: Melissa Winkler/The IRC

For more serious cases, the IRC also works to improve services at regional hospitals and funds two medical facilities in the cities of Goma and Bukavu that specialize in fistula repair. Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC

But getting proper medical care is only a first step toward recovery.  There is tremendous stigma associated with rape in Congo. Victims are frequently shunned by family, husbands and community.  Without a social network, women and girls become marginalized and isolated, which impacts their family life and their ability to work.  IRC programs bring survivors together to share experiences and engage in educational activities that help them to recover and get back on their feet again. Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC

Trained IRC counselors (right) provide individual emotional support and family mediation.  They also work with communities to change attitudes – in particular – placing blame where it is deserved, rather than on victims. Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC

After months of medical treatment and psychological assistance, Josephine is on the mend.  With help from the IRC, she and her friends, also rape survivors, pooled their resources to buy a plot of land to harvest cassava, one of the staples in eastern Congo. 

“I get mad some times that these men go unpunished. I hope some day that will change,” says Josephine, as she peels a ripe cassava.   “But for me, I am working on more important things. My house is broken and I am repairing it. I am growing food and feeding my children.  I am getting on with my life.”  Photo: Melissa Winkler/The IRC

The Congo crisis is a forsaken one. A recent IRC mortality survey found that 5.4 million people had died within the last decade, making it the deadliest documented conflict since World War II. Yet few pay attention.  People die quietly in remote villages and fields, out of world view. Women are raped by the tens of thousands but their cries go unheard.  Funding for programs that aid survivors and work with communities to protect the most vulnerable are negligible in proportion to need.  For information on ways to help, visit www.theIRC.org.  Photo: Melissa Winkler/The IRC

It’s a small center that was launched several years ago by two former school administrators who wanted to create a warm and welcoming place for at-risk Jordanian youth.  With help from the International Rescue Committee and one of our partners, QuestScope, the center’s doors are now open to Iraqi refugee children too.

Today the place is packed and bustling. There is an energetic game of foosball underway in one room, while in another, some 30 wide-eyed boys are transfixed to a video. In a corner, a group of kids are learning how to use a dozen new computers donated by the IRC. I sneak into the third room, where animated girls had formed huddles, competing to be the first to solve a puzzle presented by their cheery instructor. 

I strike up a conversation with Ayat, a 15-year-old Jordanian girl who seems to have the run of the place.  She’s tall, lanky and sports a bright blue hijab.   She tells me that the Iraqi kids have funny names and accents but that she is happy to be making new friends. “We try to make them feel like they are our brothers and sisters,” says Ayat, who has 10 siblings of her own and a father who has cancer and can no longer work. 

Her side kick, Hiam, 14, has taken a liking to me. She follows me around repeating my name and the one phrase she knows in English, “I love you.”  I tell her that I love her too, at least three times.

At the end of the day, the children excitedly stuff into one of the rooms to celebrate the birthdays of three Iraqi girls.  Platters of Iraqi and Jordanian food are brought out, along with a beautifully decorated chocolate cake.  One of the Iraqi girls tells me that it’s her first birthday party in years.  I didn’t want to spoil the happy occasion by asking her why.

My colleague Michael volunteers to the group that it is also my birthday, which naturally leads to a new round of multi-lingual birthday songs in my honor and several teachers feeding me spoonfuls of food –a sign of respect.

Everyone in the room is asked to make a birthday wish about what they want to be when they grow up.  “A poet”, shouts out one girl.  “A doctor,” say at least three others. A little boy wishes to become an astronaut. I wish for all of them that their dreams come true.

You can learn more about how the IRC is assisting Iraqi refugees here

Adra, Ibrahim’s wife, looks on laughing from the small adjacent room where we are sitting. “This has become Raim’s little ritual,” she tells me.  Ibrahim tries to concentrate, eventually breaking into a smile at the squirming giggling girl at his feet.

Raim was a year old when her family fled to Jordan.  Her little brother, Salim, was born in a poor neighborhood in Amman that has become home to tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees.  They are beautiful and affectionate children, and thankfully, unaware of their parents’ suffering.

Ibrahim and Adra were still newlyweds when the bitter and bloody sectarian violence in Iraq began turning their lives upside down.  Ibrahim became a Sunni when he married Adra.  Such conversions were very common at the time.  Suddenly the practice had become a death sentence.

To make matters worse, Ibrahim started receiving threats from a local militia because of his political views. “I told a few too many people that confrontation isn’t the answer and that we must be willing to talk to and learn from our enemies,” Ibrahim explains, adding that several of his close friends had been killed for promoting negotiation.

When he discovered that his family was on a hit list, he made a fast and painful decision to leave.  The couple quickly said good-bye to their families and headed to Jordan.

Since then, Adra’s father and younger brother have been murdered.  The rest of her family fled to a Sunni neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdad.  They can no longer visit Ibrahim’s family, who remain in a Shia district.

“I hate these words Shia and Sunni. They mean nothing to me other than the reason why innocent people are killed,” Adra says.  “My brother, he had a job selling ice-cream to children from his bicycle.  They gunned him down while he was selling ice-cream.”

Salim crawls into his mother’s lap–a welcome but fleeting distraction from this terrible story.  “It hurts my heart so much, the death of my little brother,” she continues after Salim scurries away. “I have lost the one I loved the most.”

Ibrahim says he and Adra feel alone in Amman, with few friends, no family and no rights.   Ibrahim suffers from asthma, but because he cannot get a viable job, he cannot afford medical treatment.  In fact, he says any money he manages to make with odd jobs goes to rent and diapers. They can barely afford food.

“We want to start a new life somewhere else – some place where my children can grow up in peace,” Ibrahim tells me. “We can’t go home.  And there is no future for us here.”

Learn how the International Rescue Committee is assisting Iraqi refugees here 

November 9, 2007, Zarqa, Jordan

The first time Isara and her three boys fled was after her husband was shot dead in his car while driving home from work in Baghdad. They packed up a few belongings and moved to the house of a relative in a Sunni district on the outskirts of the city.  She thought it would be safer there.

But in the coming months, the area near her boys’ new school became a battleground between U.S. troops and suspected insurgents.  The intense bouts of fighting would force the closure of the school and litter the neighborhood with unexploded ordnances. During periods of calm, the school would reopen and her children would return to class.

“The bombs they throw look like toys to our children,” Isara told me, shaking her head.  She almost didn’t need to continue the story. I knew what was coming.

“One afternoon,” she went on to say, “my sons and group of their friends were playing in the school yard.”

She said they noticed something colorful in a garbage container and ran over to see what it was. One of the boys picked up the object and then there was a loud explosion.
“My sons watched as the legs of six classmates were blown to bits,” she told me, her eyes welling up with tears.  “One of the boys died.  He was a friend of my sons. I can’t tell you how my boys suffered after this.”

At that point, Isara said she knew it was time to leave.

“I don’t want my children to grow up in a place where they are surrounded by all this darkness.  I don’t want these pictures to remain in their heads forever.  I came here to Jordan to replace those terrible memories with better things,” she told me.

In October of 2005, her family settled in Zarqa, a small Jordanian city about 40 minutes away from Amman, where thousands of Iraqi refugees were fleeing.  A Jordanian neighbor found Isara a part-time job as a cleaner in a salon, which helps pay the rent for her small apartment.  She finds other random cleaning jobs to afford school fees, food, and other necessities.  She ekes by, but barely.

Her biggest concern is being found out. When she works, she does so illegally and she and her children, now 7, 8 and 10 have all overstayed their visas.

“When my boys go out I tell them to be very quiet so that no one hears their Iraqi accents,” she told me.  “We must be very careful so that we are not sent back.”

November 7, 2007, Amman, Jordan

They live in the shadows—tens of thousands of Iraqi families, clustered together in dark and dingy apartments and crumbling hotels.  They work hard to conceal themselves behind closed doors and curtained windows, in crowded and poor urban neighborhoods or quiet winding alleyways.  But we’re slowly finding them and offering help, through a network of committed Iraqivolunteers. 

The refugees are ordinary people–Samar, Ahmed, Shahd, Mahmoud, Isara—shopkeepers, teachers, barbers, students, mothers, grandfathers, children. 

They all escaped a nightmare in Iraq and now find themselves struggling to get by in their countries of exile.  Most have run out of money, are not permitted to work and can’t afford many basic things.  They are full of uncertainty about their status and are worried about the future of their children.  They ache with concern for loved ones they left behind.