Doctor Denis Mukwege received this Tuesday, January 11 the title of Honoris Causa member of the French Academy of Medicine. The opportunity for the Nobel Peace Prize to make a speech and recall his fight.
It was on Tuesday that the doctor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege received in Paris the title of Honoris Causa member of the French Academy of Medicine. A mark of esteem and respect for the work and commitment of the Congolese doctor in the fight against sexual violence. This is one of the most prestigious distinctions awarded by French universities to honor ” personalities of foreign nationality by virtue of eminent services rendered to the sciences, letters or the arts, to France or to the university “
During the presentation of the title, Dr Mukwege gave a speech lasting nearly an hour during which he notably returned to the attack on the Lemera hospital in 1996 in South Kivu, DRC. ” In defiance of the most basic rule of international humanitarian law, the hospital in Lemera was attacked. The patients and some of our staff were brutally murdered. Tapped into by this tragedy, I spent two years without exercising. Ordinary gestures of our medical practice became torment, so much did they remind me of the unspeakable », Recalled the doctor.
Faced with members of the French Academy of Medicine, he detailed how rape is used as a weapon of war in eastern DRC and describes the atrocities suffered by the victims, overwhelmingly women of all ages.
As a committed doctor, he challenged his peers, recalling that the doctor’s role should not always be limited to treating the consequences of violence. He was sorry that the nursing staff have now become ” a target “.
” Today, with our humanitarian law partners, an organization that documents violations of humanitarian law committed against healthcare workers, we are at a loss to recognize the vulnerability of healthcare workers who, instead of being protected, have become the target of belligerents on different front lines around the world », He declared in front of his peers.