Documenting the Women’s Peace Movement in Congo

In 2021 photographer Hugh Kinsella Cunningham and writer Camille Maubert teamed up with local correspondent Sifa Bahati to begin capturing the stories of women mediating on the frontlines.

Over the past two decades, a com­plex web of con­flicts and griev­ances in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go (DRC) has result­ed in the death of 5 mil­lion and dis­place­ment of near­ly 7 mil­lion civilians. 

What began as region­al war­fare fol­low­ing the 1994 Rwan­dan Geno­cide has gone glob­al as a result of for­eign reliance on the DRC’s extra­or­di­nary reserves of nat­ur­al resources, includ­ing cobalt, ura­ni­um, and cop­per. But it’s the inno­cent civil­ians who are pay­ing the price with their lives.

In 2019, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Hugh Kin­sel­la Cun­ning­ham began doc­u­ment­ing the con­flicts in the East­ern DRC, spend­ing time with those forced into dis­place­ment camps. The tes­ti­monies and scenes of these sto­ries are heart-rend­ing,” he says, espe­cial­ly when lis­ten­ing to them speak about what they have wit­nessed or expe­ri­enced at the hands of rebel groups.”

In 2021, writer Camille Maubert arrived in DRC to research vio­lence against women and the strate­gies they employ to pro­tect them­selves and man­age trau­ma. A lot of the work on Con­go tends to focus on vic­tim­hood,” she says, but I also want­ed to explore what women were doing to stop that cycle of vio­lence.”

That same year, Cun­ning­ham and Maubert teamed up with local cor­re­spon­dent Sifa Bahati, who helped them secure access to a loose net­work of activists and organ­i­sa­tions on the ground to cre­ate The Women’s Peace Move­ment in Con­go.”

The on-going project doc­u­ments the sto­ries of women on the front­lines, risk­ing their lives to medi­ate con­flicts, track human rights vio­la­tions, and advo­cate for vic­tims. Their first-per­son accounts pro­vide a vital account of under­re­port­ed sto­ries includ­ing the eth­nic vio­lence of the Ituri con­flict; an Islamist insur­gency waged by the ADF rebel group in Beni Ter­ri­to­ry; and the resur­gence of the M23 con­flict across North Kivu province.

They spoke with activists who arranged a tem­po­rary cease­fire in 2008 so that they could meet with Lau­rent Nkun­da, the com­man­der of the CNDP rebels. But since then, times have changed, and many rebel groups are far too hos­tile to approach and nego­ti­ate with direct­ly,” says Cunningham.

Rebel groups are not the only threat to peace. Gov­ern­ment forces also prey on civil­ians,” says Cun­ning­ham. Many of the grass­roots activists we have met now con­cen­trate on pro­tect­ing their com­mu­ni­ties from the worst excess­es of their own army and police.”

The Women’s Peace Move­ment in Con­go” presents pow­er­ful accounts of the work they are doing to end the con­flict while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly work­ing address pover­ty through polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic empow­er­ment and sup­port vic­tims of vio­lence and sex­u­al assault.

The team has inter­viewed mem­bers of the orig­i­nal move­ment going back to the ear­ly 90s, includ­ing Jus­tine Masi­ka and Louise Nyota, who con­tin­ue to do the work while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly engag­ing younger gen­er­a­tions to join the call for peace.

What moti­vates women to join the move­ment is the belief that if they don’t step in, no one will,” says Maubert. Many explained that, as moth­ers, they want to stop their chil­dren from dying in the con­flicts and they dream of a future where they can live, study and farm in peace.”

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