ADEKEYE ADEBAJO: Anti-rape activist is the 12th African to be awarded a Nobel prize
On Monday in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) surgeon-activist Denis Mukwege will be awarded the Nobel peace prize along with a Yazidi rape survivor and activist, Nadia Murad. The prize comes a decade after UN Security Council resolution 1820 declared sexual violence to be a war crime. The 63-year old Mukwege is widely admired at home and abroad for his reconstructive surgery on women who have been raped during the DRC's two-decade conflict, in which over 3-million people have died. He becomes the 12th African to be awarded the prize. The Nobel committee described him as “the foremost, most unifying symbol ... of the struggle to end sexual violence in war and armed conflict”. Born in Bukavu in 1955, Mukwege was inspired as a child to become a doctor when he accompanied his priestly father to hospitals and observed the hopelessness of patients. He studied medicine across the border in Burundi, before earning a degree in gynaecology and obstetrics at t...
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