Mission to the DRC

My colleague Rissi (Francophone Programme Officer) and I arrived in the DRC on the 22nd of September for our scheduled mission in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for South Africa (OSISA). I have to admit that the DRC is not a country that has ever been on my list of ‘countries to visit before I die’ but here we were and what a welcome we got. Even before you leave the airport tarmac and enter the airport building you are asked for your yellow fever certificate. Fortunately I had mine (although no official has asked to see this document in so many years) although my colleague had accidentally left her certificate in her suitcase…Obstacle number 1.

Although our host had assured us that arrangements were going to be made for us to be issued with visas on arrival, immigration said they had no knowledge of this and all the evidence was pointing to us being put on a return flight to wherever we had arrived from. To be honest I was going to have had no issue with this. I was tired, hadn’t slept for more than 5 hours a night for a week and was feeling rather intimidated by the armed men and the harsh immigration officers who were barking questions at us in French (a language I don’t speak very well). Just as it seemed we were homebound for Ghana, a lady arrived with our names written on a sheet of paper and presented immigration with the official papers that said we could be issued with visa papers, but that was not the end of obstacle number 2. We still had to pay ‘facilitation fees’ to the customs officer, retrieve our baggage and resolutely ignore all the men who ‘tried to help us with our luggage’ and were hounding us for money when we left the airport. I have never in my life seen such a chaotic airport; Kotoka International seems heavenly in comparison. You would think Obstacle number 2 would be over by now but no, our transportation was a pick up and our guide said it would be unsafe to put our suitcases in the back (which was open) yet there was no way Rissi and I were going to be able to fit in the back with our two huge suitcases so we had to spend the journey to our hotel watching the back of the pick up in case anyone tried to lift the suitcases. Leaving your suitcases in the back of an unsecured pick up is obviously not the thing to do in the DRC as passengers in a trotro which was driving parallel to us all turned to look at us and point at our pickup. By now I was getting more and more nervous.

Eventually we get to Hotel Memling only for the receptionist to tell us that our reservation had been cancelled (they were expecting us earlier) and that there were no vacancies so we lug our suitcases back into the open back of the pickup and our guide takes us to where the rest of our delegation is meeting. After an urgent phone call by one of the organizers to the hotel, a room mysteriously becomes available which my colleague and I share. Obstacle number 3 has now been overcome.

We are in the DRC not only to show solidarity with Congolese women’s rights organizations but also to get a clearer understanding of the challenges that women face in the country and to understand how best we can support women’s rights work in the country. Today, the 23rd of September, we met with the Network for Gender and Equality which is a mixed network of male and female parliamentarians. Interestingly all MPs are members of this group although according to the President of the Network 50% of members (300) are active. In the light of discussions at the AFF about whether men can be feminists and part of the African women’s movement it was very interesting to be handed a card by a man which described him as an ‘expert’ on gender. Hmm…

We followed this meeting with a separate meeting with the Women’s Caucus of parliament where women MPs outlined some challenges they faced which were similar to some of the issues raised by the women in the Gender and Equality network. Some of the issues in common were the challenges of resources needed for running for office, women’s lack of confidence which was shown in a reluctance to speak up in discussions or sometimes being uncomfortable about expressing themselves in French which is the language used in parliament. Both sessions were very informative and personally it was good to hear from the women’s caucus that there were particular issues which united women MPs across party lines. This included issues of sexual violence, HIV/AIDS and women’s political participation. As someone who argues passionately for gender parity in politics this was welcome news.

The day ended with a visit to the office of UNIFEM to learn more about the work that UNIFEM is doing in the DRC. The Officer in charge of UNIFEM DRC is a man and to date I have never met a man who is as knowledgeable and passionate about gender issues as he was. What was also very refreshing was his candour and willingness to share information even when we were asking questions which could be perceived as critical of his organization. It was also useful to find out that some of the challenges AWDF faces in regards to impact measurement is also shared by agencies such as UNIFEM. As our colleague at UNIFEM pointed out it is very hard to compile quantitative impact indicators for Sexual Violence. Before starting a project you will not have access to baseline figures about numbers of rape victims for example and after the project you may find that the numbers rise as more women then are more likely to report rape. In his words, the high sexual violence figures are on its own an impact indicator of the consequence of doing nothing.

Nana Sekyiamah
Programme Officer
Fundraising & Communications