What They Bear. Why They Run.

This week, millions of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a war-ravaged African country, voted in their second ever presidential and parliamentary election.

With a population of over 70 million and one of the highest occurrences of rape in the world, the New York Times reported fear of violent outbreaks due to Congo’s elections because of fraudulent politics and, essentially, DRC's reverse development. “This year the United Nations ranked it dead last of the 187 countries on the Human Development Index.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo is also known to be one of the worst places on earth to be a woman.

In mid-May, a study in the American Journal of Public Health, found that 400,000 females aged 15-49 were raped over a 12-month period in 2006 and 2007. The greatest numbers of rapes were found in DRC's North Kivu. There an average of 67 women out of 1,000 have been raped. At least once. That’s 48 women an hour.

Imagine. Having to go into a forest. The only place. To find food. For your children.
Imagine. Emerging raped. Not once. Not twice. Every time. Any time. Whenever.
Imagine. Returning home. And being raped. By your partner.

According to the Christan Science Monitor, this is daily life for Congolese women. “Rape is becoming part of the culture,” said Michael Van Rooyen, the director of Harvard’s Humanitarian Initiative and an expert on rape in the Congo.

One Man’s Journey for Congolese Women
For two years, Londoner Chris Jackson has lived in absolute dedication to sport, not just as a human rights advocate but also as an athlete and spokesperson for Congolese rape victims. He’s completed myriad heroic athletic acts to raise awareness of the horror women in Congo live every single day of their lives. Rampant and repeated sexual violence. Rape as a weapon of war.

On Endurance, Congo, and Sexual Violence

On Sunday, May 29, a day after International Day of Action for Women’s Health, I raced and completed once again Comrades Marathon, known to be one of the most competitive ultra-marathon's in the world. I ran 56 miles uphill in an act of solidarity for the resilient Congolese women and children whose lives continue to be ravaged by rape as a weapon of war.

I ran for Run for Congo Women in support of Women for Women International (WfWI), two organizations that help women in conflict find their footing. WfWI works with socially excluded women in eight countries where war and conflict have devastated lives and communities. They create places of safety so that women can develop life and professional skills after harm. I ran for hope and for shared sisterhood as someone once victimized by sexual assault. I ran for Aimerance Byamungu's story of hope.

In the region of Congo where WfWI works, levels of poverty are high and there are many street children. Aimerance Byamungu, a married mother of a 4-year-old boy, was selling fresh milk and was only surviving on £8 per week. Before Women for Women International's programme, she ran her business using basic numeracy. After studying our business skills topics, Aimerance is now equipped with the knowledge she needs to make her business a success and support herself and her young son. Thanks to her new knowledge of profit and loss and accountancy, her income has increased to £25 per week.

Racing Toward Human Rights for Women

Stark truths open Women for Women International's Stronger Women, Stronger Nations Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) report, Amplifying Voices of Women in Eastern Congo. "Despite the signing of international peace agreements, a deadly 15 year war continues in DRC. International organizations estimate that between 3.5 and 5.4 million of excess deaths have occurred. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the DRC is 'the worst example of man's inhumanity to women.'"

This past Saturday morning my 2010 racing season ended in a race with the Women for Women International's Run for Congo Women UK team in Greenwich Park, London. Pictured here together we ran in support of acknowledging these harrowing facts, but also to motivate change for Congolese women. Since 1993, Women for Women International has globally supported over 275,000 women with training, over $21 million in direct aid, and over $67 million in micro-credit loans. In June 2010, the organization gained my attention while in South Africa post-Comrades while researching and writing about the public health of women and girls during the 2010 World Cup. Then, I kept thinking to myself, "If this is the continent's best for women, what is the worst?"

The Democratic Republic of Congo. In July, upon arrival back from South Africa to Paris, I pledged to Kate Hughes, Policy and Campaigns Officer for Women for Women International, that I would build Team Congo Paris in support of Run for Congo Women.

A Paris Team's Run for Congo Women

Racing together in the Paris Versailles, 20K de Paris, and finally the 6ème Foulées Villenogarennoises in Parc des Chanteraines, Team Congo Paris surpassed our fundraising goal of 1,000 GBP. This was due to the exceptional work of our top fundraisers and runners Alice Phan and Colleen Obrist along with supporters like the AMPE and the FCA and myriad other amazing male and female runners.

Alice Phan came to Team Congo Paris early on and ran almost every race and supported every endeavor. In fact, she raced beside me on November 7 with Colleen Obrist in the 5K at Parc des Chanteraines asking questions about Colleen's journey to run for Team Congo Paris. Diagnosed with MS in 2008, Colleen's sheer willpower is a testament to overcoming life challenges. In a recent interview, she shared, "People often say that it is too bad what happened to me, what a pity, etc., and yes, having MS is hard, but my problems seem trivial when compared to what some people have to live through in this world on a daily basis. My health situation and my future may be unpredictable, but at least I am not living in abject poverty, or fear that someone in my family is going to die, be raped, tortured, humiliated, or terrorized. There is not much I can do for my disease, but I will help others while I am still able."

On November 7, Alice then also raced beside me and Jennifer Hart in the 10K through pouring rain. With a degree in Women's Studies and a Master's in Sociology and also one in Personal Training, Jennifer, a personal trainer and owner of Hart Total Fitness, was triumphantly running five months after the birth of her second child. Yet, she had resumed running only four weeks after delivery and she completed La Parisienne at 3.5 months post-birth in just 44 minutes.

Years ago, Jennifer first heard stories about Congo while overseeing a series of workshops on gender and war at the University of Toronto. Recently, she shared how they affected her. "Some of the stories would make me cry, make me angry, and make me down-right fed up with the world. When I left school and began working, my charity work dropped and I missed it but didn’t know where to turn to help out in Paris. Then I had a daughter and I remembered some of the horror stories of women and children being raped and killed, and my life changed. I saw a posting by Kate Stence about Run for Congo Women and it took me less than 3 seconds to say, 'I want to be a part of that.'"

A London Team's Run for Congo Women

In Greenwich Park last Sunday, as I walked over to claim my race number in the UK Run for Congo Women's final race of the season, I began looking around for other women and men runners who were also racing with the UK team. Their team had raised over 8,000 GBP. I introduced myself to runners and then met devoted runner Chris Jackson, who has completed 11 marathons for Women for Women for International this year alone. As I stood before him, I took in again how profound I find his efforts.

On November 7, the same day Team Congo Paris raced our final race of the season together, Chris completed the New York City Marathon in 2 hours and 55 minutes. But, he shared how he felt so much support. "Loads of people I didn’t know seemed to know who I was?!? But there was also so many people along the course just telling you to keep going and that you were doing great. This gives you such a boost. I think the best moments were enjoying the views and how quiet, it was on the bridges, because all you could hear was foot-fall, but as you started to get to the other side of the bridge, you’d slowly get hit by this roar from the crowd. I really couldn’t believe how many people were out watching... Absolutely stunning."

That's exactly how I had felt watching the female elites cross the finish line at the Athens Classic Marathon on October 31 while in Greece.

As the first women crossed the finish line, the BBC reporter next to me was taping my ecstatic cheers. Yet, I wanted to share with him that he had to understand that Greece was the marathon's point of origin 2500 years ago. So many of us as athletes run marathons knowing the mythic story of the Greek soldier-runner who was a messenger running from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek's victory, then died from exhaustion upon arrival. However, what many of us may not know is that every year for the past 28 the Athens Classic Marathon is run in memory of Grigoris Lambrakis, a brilliant athlete, scientist, politician, and pacifist who in April 1963 helped organize the Greece Pacifist Movement. As an advocate of social justice, Lambrikis had participated in myriad international meetings on peace yet his life ended shortly after a march in May 1963 due to deadly beatings.

"Peace and development go hand in hand," according to a campaign message sheet given to me today by Natasha Baranowski, Global Campaign Officer for Women for Women International's Join Me on the Bridge Campaign which advocates that stronger women build bridges of peace. Held on International Women's Day, last year the Join Me on the Bridge Campaign inspired 108 events and attracted around 20,000 participants in about 20 different countries. Next March 8, 2011, marks the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day.

Overall, what can a runner -- or any individual -- do to help inspire change and help "race" toward human rights for Congolese women? Kate Hughes, coordinator of the London Run for Congo Women events, recently shared her thoughts. "I would ask the runners to keep talking about the conflict in DRC. Just because you have stopped fundraising doesn't mean that you have to stop raising awareness. Make sure that everyone you know, knows that you ran for Run for Congo Women and why it was that you felt so motivated to do that. Tell your friends and family, tell your local radio station or local press, just keep speaking about Congo until the violence and exploitation stops."

On December 5, Chris Jackson races the Luton Marathon, marathon 12, to support Congolese women. You can read about his last race of the 2010 season on his blog. At Gender Across Borders, you can read my article Traversing Truth: Running and Writing Female Rights.

Photo credit: Women for Women International

Team Congo Races the 20 Kilometers of Paris

Paris is known for its incredible light. When I was training for the 2009 Paris Marathon to race for Girls on the Run International, one of my last training runs found me at Place de la Concorde. Just as my running shoe hit the center, the Eiffel Tower lit up as did all the surrounding street lamps. The natural light here can be just as profound.

This past Sunday Alice Phan, pictured here triumphant at the 20K de Paris finish line, took to the city streets along with Run for Congo Women's Team Congo Paris in sunlight that marked beauty to the highest degree. Autumn. 20,000 runners. Unite.

In early September, I met Alice in person as we ran Parc des Buttes Chaumont together in training for the 20K de Paris. At the time, she was running about five miles. Later that month, we chatted excitedly at the start line of La Parisienne, a 6K for women's health, which also marked the ninth anniversary weekend of September 11.

When Alice initially emailed me about joining Team Congo Paris, she shared how she had always wanted to work with Girls on the Run Manhattan while living in New York, but that her work hours had always been an obstacle. Phan, an optometrist, is now living in Paris due to her husband's job transfer, and while acquiring her work visa, she volunteers at a hospital and has also become an invaluable asset to Team Congo Paris. To explain Alice's energy is like harnessing a surge of fresh air, a full deep-belly laugh; she is the kind of person who congratulates herself out loud on a fantastic idea and keeps on in the face of adversity with determination and a smile.

For the first ten minutes of the 20K de Paris race, I ran alongside Alice before I launched onward. On Sunday night post-run, I checked in with her and she shared that the first eight miles she was at a consistent 10 minute mile pace, but then a major cramp kicked in. "I probably could have walked faster than what I was running, because I was pretty much crawling," she told me, "but then when I saw the 19 km sign, I was so excited and was ecstatic to finish!"

She finished in under 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Born to first-generation parents who came to the United States from Vietnam then settled in Southern California, Alice often embraces Run for Congo Women's shared reason for being. She gets it. We are out there running together raising awareness, pushing our own bodies as a metaphor for Congolese women and children whose bodies and beings have been pushed far past any fathomable sense of resiliency. We keep on as a testament to their profound hardship. Around the time I met Alice, I wrote Resiliency, Congo, and Rape As a Weapon of War, which highlighted the July 30 attack of 300 women and children in Eastern Congo, only ten to twenty miles from a UN compound.

According to the Guardian's October 6 article, Militia Commander Mayele Arrested After Mass Rape of Congo Villagers, "Over four days, at least 303 people were raped – 235 women, 52 girls, 13 men and 3 boys – according to a preliminary UN investigation published last month. Many of the victims were raped repeatedly."

In a statement from Congo, Lisa Wallström, the UN's representative for sexual violence in conflict, says the arrest of Mayele is a victory for justice. "The numerous criminal acts committed under 'Lt Col' Mayele's command cannot be undone, but let his apprehension be a signal to all perpetrators of sexual violence that impunity for these types of crimes is not accepted and that justice will prevail," she said.

Although human rights activists have commended the arrest, they have also highlighted that Mayele was not a major player or the only assailant, and this act of small justice is only one step toward a more comprehensive and effective resolution. How that resolution takes shape – or if it will – ultimately depends on a variety of upcoming actions, reports, and initiatives.

In the meantime, Team Congo Paris will continue to race in support of the women and children in Congo. For their deserved safety and well-being, at least.

You can still join Team Congo Paris and race on November 7, 2010 or you can support us via donation.

Running for Congolese Women to End Violence

Chris Jackson is running 12 marathons this year for Run for Congo Women to raise awareness about violence against women and children in the Congo. Here he is running the Congo marathon with Congolese children beside him.

Last Sunday morning, Team Congo Paris raced from Paris to Versailles for Run for Congo Women. It was a 15K journey heavy with French history, because King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were brought from Palace Versailles to Palace Tuileres at the start of the French Revolution. Around two miles into the race, came Île des Cygnes along river Seine housing a small version of the Statue of Liberty erected by Americans living here in France. It is a replica of the original standing in New York Harbor given by the French to America as a sign of international friendship in 1886.

The race had authentic historical depth to say the least. Yet, I spent it thinking how all last week while reporting on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), I noted that media did not acknowledge that violence against women and girl’s (VAW/G) is not one of the eight goals specified by the MDGs. In the World's Women at the Center of Achieving the MDGs conference during the UN Summit, one of the first points addressed was that very issue.

In August, Post-AIDS 2010 Conference Her Blueprint highlighted how tied the issue of violence against women and girls to the violation of a plethora of human rights in Health Versus Harm: Zero Tolerance on Violence Against Women and Girls. Yesterday, the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) was up for a critical vote in the United States Senate but was postponed until November. However, Ritu Sharma, co-Founder and President of Women Thrive World Wide published her thoughts about her own grandmother's death in East India in hopes of sharing why the bill should pass when voted on.

“I never met my grandmother. She was burned alive with kerosene doused on her sari and lit on fire. Some think it was suicide, some think it was a dowry murder since her mother-in-law was not pleased with what my grandmother brought into her new husband’s family. She had four children; one of them my mother, the other my uncle, who was just a few months old when she was killed. I cannot imagine her shock, grief and pain in the moments before she died…Regrettably, her story is not uncommon.”

In the United Nation's special meeting World's Women at the Center of Achieving the MDGs, Denmark's Minister of Health noted that women of the Democratic Republic of Congo have to ask their husbands before they can sign a contract or start a business. After citing this statistic, he asked, "Can you imagine?"

To be honest, I cannot imagine any of the previous scenarios. Yet, I know they are happening daily and consistently and have been for a very long time. On Sunday while racing Paris to Versailles, I began reciting statistics in my head about Congolese Women that I know by heart because right now they are who I run for.

“Congo presents one of the world's deadliest emergencies to date. More than 5.4 million people have died since 1998. Gang rape and brutal torture are a daily reality for the women and children of Congo. Women as old as 80 and as young as five have been victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence. 38,000 continue to die every month, 1200 a day. Half of these deaths are children under the age of 5 years.”

At moments I was not sure what to do with all the emotion.

One Man’s Admirable Effort of Support

Chris Jackson, a London lobbyist pictured here running the August 18th marathon in Congo for Run for Congo Women and Women for Women International, is well acquainted with the intensity of emotion and action Congo can provoke because he has devoted himself, utterly, to raising awareness about violence against Congolese women and children as part of his year-long endeavor to run 12 marathons for Run for Congo Women. Already successfully completing nine marathons, including an Ironman as well as an Olympic Triathlon along with a smattering of 10Ks, Chris is someone who is exceptional and sincere in his endeavor -- so much so he will actually be running 13 marathons just to make sure he completes one every month in 2010.

Chris can also voice what most of us can only imagine because he has run Congo. He went. He ran. He returned. And, now he shares why the Congo race was the hardest one so far for him.

Resiliency, Congo, and Rape As a Weapon of War

Last week in London’s Tate Modern, I was just as enthralled with their collection as always, but it was Magda Cordell’s Figure (Woman) pictured here, that I kept returning to because the plaque beside the painting shared that although her work was originally seen as a “break with traditional representations of women,” more recently, it has been regarded by critics as “images of heroic femininity with the distortions signifying the resilience of the human body against injury and change.”

Those last words have run through my head many times this week as I heard radio reports and read CNN and BBC articles reporting “allegations of rape as a weapon of war” in the Congo and the UN’s and major politicians, hopefully, mounting response. These women and children are resiliency. Their bodies and beings have been pushed far past that word’s very definition.

According to Feminist News, on August 13, Margot Wallstrom the UN’s Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, stressed in an interview with reporters that sexual violence during war is, “one of the greatest security risks of our time,” and she cited it “no more acceptable nor inevitable than committing mass murder.”

That same day Wartime Rape No More Inevitable, Acceptable than Mass Murder, appeared on CNN.com, and the article quotes Letitia Anderson, women’s rights specialist with the UN’s Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict initiative as sharing, “Rape is being used by armed groups to reignite flames of conflict and to terrorize and humiliate communities in Africa.”