I will survive! – the hit by disco-queen Gloria Gaynor booms from the loudspeakers of the conference hotel in Bad Honnef, about 50 women of all colours take to the floor, laughing and bursting with energy, moving their bodies to dance away the incredible pent-up stress. Activists from two dozen crisis-ridden countries are meeting here to exchange their experiences. They are involved in supporting survivors of sexual violence as a tool of war, because they themselves are survivors. The song could well be the hymn of Medica Mondiale, the international organization that Monika Hauser founded in 1993 to help war-traumatized women. Now the 50-year-old gynaecologist is dancing in the throng and beaming all over her face. “The Search for Justice” is the title of the event, and Monika Hauser is celebrating its end with all she can give. The search is strenuous and only a fraction of the survivors finally gain a morsel of justice, such as the sentencing of the perpetrator, benefitting from medical-psychological therapy or receiving financial compensation. In the words of one participant, “Rape is the only crime for which the victim is punished.” In many places women who are raped by soldiers, rebels or their own uncle are regarded as “a shame” on their community and are marginalized or even killed by their own family. Criminal proceedings are rare, and even then the victims often feel as if they are being raped yet again. Most of the Bosnian women who gave evidence at the United Nations Tribunal in The Hague say they would never do it again.
Bosnia is where everything began for Monika Hauser as well, and in a way she too is a war survivor. At the turn of the year 1992/93 the budding gynaecologist read newspaper reports about mass rape in Bosnia. She was utterly shocked by the reports and decided to travel to the war zone on her own initiative. Maybe her origins played a role in her decision to become involved in Bosnia with its ethnic diversity, since she comes from South Tyrol. Her mother tongue is German, her passport is Italian, and she was born and grew up in Switzerland. She did her specialist training at a clinic in Essen in western Germany. And now her home is in Cologne.
THE BATTLE AGAINST FEAR
In Zenica, Monika Hauser came across a traumatized city. While female friends and acquaintances in Germany collected donations, she assembled a female medical team for the survivors. They included psychologists, a psychiatrist, nurses and an Islamic theologian to take care of spiritual needs. This concept of integrated medical and psychosocial care, the effort to achieve comprehensive recovery, is the outstanding feature of Medica Mondiale. In April 1993, when the first shells exploded in the besieged city, Monika Hauser opened the Medica Zenica therapy centre for women. The UN troops evacuated all of the foreigners and also requested the doctor to leave the country. “I didn’t come here just to leave when things get tough,” she replied angrily. To this day the women of Medica Zenica admire her greatly for her moral courage.
The women’s therapy centre in Zenica began working autonomously long ago. One reason is that the Medica Mondiale charter states that local women experts should continue the project independently as soon as possible. The largest project run by Medica Mondiale in Afghanistan also employs 80 local female staff. Their work in hospitals, courts or with the authorities is dangerous and the list of murdered women activists is constantly growing. Monika Hauser will never forget her 2002 visit to the clinics in Kabul: “It was the worst thing I have ever seen.” Both the patients and the personnel had been traumatized by the war and were completely apathetic. When she returned to the Cologne headquarters of Medica Mondiale, she contacted Afghan female physicians in exile and founded the Doctorane Omid project. The “Doctors of Hope” gradually returned to their home country within a matter of weeks or months in order to work there. A doctor of hope, Monika Hauser is certainly one herself, and she has received numerous awards in recognition of her work, including the Alternative Nobel Prize at the end of 2008.
Her concern, she says, is justice and dignity for women. But how does she manage not to break under the huge burden of her mission? “It’s not easy,” she says, “the poison of violence eventually seeps into the depths of one’s psyche.” After her mission in Bosnia she suffered a real collapse and had to take a break to reorganize her life. Since then Medica Mondiale has included supervision and bodywork for the professionals involved in trauma therapy as part of its standard repertoire. Monika Hauser also gains great strength from her husband and 13-year-old son.
A MODEL FOR THE WORLD
Monika Hauser tells the story about when she opened the first centre for women and girls in Liberia at the end of 2007. The country on the west coast of Africa experienced a brutal war similar to that in Afghanistan. As a result, the Liberian women were ranked as the “most raped women in the world”. She says that about one third of the country’s women and girls were victims of the rival rebel groups. But despite these terrible experiences, she sensed a great atmosphere of hope dawning in Fishtown. The difference can be attributed to the political determination of the country’s leadership, which is headed by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. She is a source of hope and is taking the struggle for women’s rights very seriously. She has pushed through a strict law against rape and has since supported women’s initiatives, such as the one in Fishtown. The president believes in implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1325 that requires all UN member states to include women at all levels of peace processes. The new European Commission-funded Medica project, Women’s Participation in Peace and Security Policy, is also based on this resolution. Over the next three years Liberian, Afghan and Congolese women will be able to learn from each other how to influence politics, and their interchange will be helped by an international networking project. Meanwhile Chipo, head of Medica Mondiale in Liberia, is demonstrating her agile skills on the dance floor in Bad Honnef. Yes, we will survive!
