ems’s Reviews > The Power of Women: A doctor's journey of hope and healing > Status Update

„Foreign leaders must support efforts for justice and accountability in Congo. The anarchy and more than five million dead and missing constitute one of the most overlooked, underreported, and neglected conflicts of the modern era.{…} Each passing year of violence in eastern Congo, each ransacked village, each new admission of a shattered body in my hospital, adds to the ongoing tragedy of my country.”

„In the thirty-seven leading democracies that are members of the OECD, women on average perform more than double the amount of unpaid work as men. And in every country, men have more time off.”

„Above all, I wanted to remind everyone of our collective responsibility for the disaster in Congo, not just as consumers of products that depend on minerals minded there but as fellow humans{…}. „I reminded everyone of the millions of death and hundreds of thousands of rapes over twenty years. I stressed how the phones in everyone’s pockets and the dazzling jewelry on display were part of the problem.”

„Of the exposed parts of the ground, I could see men and boys working below, tiny, almost naked figures entering rathole mines or hacking away at the surface, shovels and plastic bowls in hand as they hunted for coltan, gold, or tin buried beneath.”

“In chapter 3, I told you about the case of a young male patient in 2008 whose penis had been cut off. The extraordinary press interest in his case, even though my wards were full of injured women, could not been a clearer demonstration of the gender biases in media coverage.”