Panzi Hospital's six surgeons operate on about 60 patients a week, repairing women's reproductive systems that have been mutilated during sexual violence.
Toronto - it could be a strategy of war from among the most reviled of invading armies throughout human history: "If you want to destroy a nation, you do so by destroying its women.''
But these are the words of a surgeon at the Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a conflict-ridden African country where an estimated 200,000 women and girls have been raped or subjected to other forms of sexual violence over the last decade.
"The hospital was born out of suffering," says Dr. Roger Luhiriri, who took part in a Toronto news conference Monday sponsored by the Stephen Lewis Foundation, which called on the United Nations to fulfil its mandate to protect women and girls in Africa from ongoing violence.
Originally opened as a maternity hospital in Bukavu, South Kivu in the Congo, the Panzi now also provides free medical care to victims of war, particularly females subjected to often unspeakable forms of sexual brutality.
The hospital's six surgeons operate on about 60 patients a week, repairing and reconstructing women's reproductive systems that have been mutilated during sexual violence often perpetrated by marauding packs of armed gangs and militias.
"The nature of the raping is so violent,'' said Lewis, who announced his charitable foundation is donating another $300,000 to support the Panzi Hospital.
"There's mutilation and amputation and the use of knives and the use of guns, terrible things done in front of families and families forced to participate in the raping of family members or face death,'' he said in an interview.
"And the violence of the assaults has led to a new medical term in the eastern Congo called 'vaginal destruction,' where the sexual and reproductive organs of the women are so badly damaged that it's almost beyond surgical repair.''
Lewis, former UN envoy for AIDS in Africa, said that what is so incomprehensible about the unchecked violence against women is that "the world knows'' it is happening, but little is being done to stop it.
The Panzi alone has treated about 15,000 survivors of sexual violence since 1999 and about 10 per cent of the women and girls have tested positive for HIV.
The new foundation grant, in addition to $350,000 already given to the Panzi and a safe haven of housing for victims called the "City of Joy'', will allow the hospital to scale up HIV testing, purchase surgical equipment and increase safe blood supplies.
But with only a single trauma counsellor, the Panzi is desperate for trained staff to help heal the emotional scars of the women, Lewis said.
At the end of the month, his foundation will bring together experts from the DRC, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa to draft a plan for increasing trauma counsellors and to prepare people to work in the Congo, he said.
Among those attending will be Betty Makoni, who came to Toronto to talk about the work she has been doing to help school-aged girls in her home country of Zimbabwe through the Girl Child Network she established in 1999.
Makoni, a 36-year-old married mother of three boys, knows only too well about sexual violence and the physical and emotional devastation it leaves in its wake.
She was raped at age six by a shopkeeper, who lured her into his store with the promise to buy tomatoes and candles she was selling to help support her family.
Many of her young friends were also raped, based on a myth that capturing the blood of a virgin would bring riches or cure a man of AIDS.
As a young child, she also lost her mother to domestic violence.
Throughout her life, Makoni said she felt such shame that she was not a virgin and dared tell no one because she would have been deemed a "loose woman.''
"I think I was deprived of my childhood,'' Makoni said in an interview. "And the pain was obvious, pain coming from the genital organs, so much bleeding and even up to now I recall that my life was actually so traumatized.''
"My mind could not concentrate. I had nightmares. Even up to now it became part of my life.''
During her years as a teacher in Zimbabwe, Makoni became an advocate for young girls, helping to raise their self-esteem and teaching them to protect themselves.
She has documented the sexual atrocities experienced by 25,000 Zimbabwean girls, often at the hands of their fathers, uncles or grandfathers.
Since 1999, the Girl Child Network has helped more than 60,000 girls in almost 700 clubs across Zimbabwe, a country marred by violent political upheaval.
"It's a prevention platform, it's a pro-active platform, it's a place for young girls to come, debrief, open up, cry, dance and do whatever they don't do in patriarchal environments,'' she said.
"We tell them about confidence-building, that we must do, and instil a new culture in you, one that asserts your position as equal in everything.''
Yet, Zimbabwe's government under President Robert Mugabe recently banned her organization as part of its crackdown on any perceived political opponents, stopping the organization from reaching the 80 per cent of girls who live in rural areas of the country, she said.
Source: Sault Star, Sault Saint Marie Ontario, Canadian Press, 10 June 2008