06:45

After a decade of being shortlisted for the Nobel peace prize, Denis Mukwege, a Congolese doctor who has saved the lives of tens of thousands of women and girls in war-torn eastern DRC, has finally been awarded it.



Nowhere in the world are women’s lives harder than in the DRC, where Mukwege grew up the son of a pastor. When he came back from training as an obstetrician in France, the first patient treated in the maternity clinic he founded was a rape survivor. As dozens more poured through his doors, he realised that rape was being used as a weapon of war. Over two decades later, Panzi Hospital has treated more than 50,000 survivors of sexual violence.



As well as physical treatment, Mukwege created an approach that focused on providing psychological and socioeconomic support to the survivors, as well as founding a legal programme to help them obtain justice.



Beginning in 2013, he and his team had to care for dozens of young girls from the town of Kavumu who were taken from their beds and raped by a militia led by a provincial member of parliament who believed raping children would protect them from their enemies.



For speaking out, Mukwege received death threats and in 2012, he and his family survived an attempted kidnapping. They fled the country but he returned to continue his work three months later.

