Gearing Up For V-Day!

February 14th means a lot to many people around the world, but it most it means a day of love.  However in 1998 V-Day began to take on a new meaning, and what was synonymous with love, soon began to symbolize power, femininity, and most importantly a stand against gender based violence.

This year V-Day Founder and Playwright Eve Ensler and Congolese Gynecologist and Activist, Dr. Denis Mukwege, are using the power of the “V” to raise  much need awareness on ongoing war against the women of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, spoke with playwright and V-Day founder Eve Ensler and Congolese gynecologist Dr. Denis Mukwege, who are on a five city tour to bring awareness to the brutal sexual violence that plagues the women and girls of the DRC. Dr. Mukwege is the founder of Panzi Hospiotal, one of the only hospitals, which treats victims of rape and mutilation, which has become an endless feat that Dr. Mukwege fights tirelessly. Dr. Mukwege has helped more than 21,000 women in over the last decade and was named “African of the Year” by a Nigerian newspaper last month, and now he seeks to see that the voices of women and girls in the DRC are heard and their plight is not ignored.

The DRC is considered to be the worst place in the world to be a woman, tens of thousands of women have been brutally raped as part of an ongoing internal conflict in the country.  For more on the situation in the DRC, please see my previous posts, such as The Continual Rape of the Congo, on the use of rape as a weapon of war and the DRC, as well as last years V-Day post.

One film which have brought much needed to the severity of the use of rape as a weapon of war are; The Greatest Silence is a documentary by Lisa Jackson that not only shows the suffering and struggles of the women and girls victimized by such brutality, but Jackson also dares to go face to face with the combatants who use rape and sexual violence as a weapon.

Using the arts as a platform for awareness playwright Lynn Nottage’s new play Ruined, which opened today at the off-Broadway Manhattan Theater Club, looks directly into the face of rape in the DRC. The play, which looks at the stories of women who’ve suffered sexual violence in the ongoing civil war in the DRC, shows the strength that comes from the trauma that the women have endured (NPR ).

If you want to do more to help end the rapes in the DRC and across the globe, you can also sign Amnesty Internationals petition to petition to protect women of the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Amnesty International and the Enough Project’s plan looks to make a move forward to begin ending gender-based violence in the DRC by March 8, 2009 in honor of International Woman’s Day.

Stay tuned for more on V-Day 2009!