TITRE ARTICLE : Civic engagement and democratic participation of women in the DRC

DATE DE PUBLICATION : 2022-11-14

After decades of exclusion of women from effective participation in the life of nations, after decades of building a culture of inferiorization of women and infringement of their freedoms, the need to commit to women’s rights and education is becoming more and more a necessity for this generation. The creation of an equitable world and a better future for humanity will not be built without the true participation of women. In regions such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Central African Republic, Somalia, women have suffered heavy tributes with civil wars, bloody conflicts, warlike deprivation of their freedom, etc. And as is customary, the rights of women and girls are always the first to be affected in times of conflict and crisis. In some of these countries, such as the DRC, sexual violence during conflicts has been used as a weapon of war, which has contributed to increasing women’s vulnerability and making their economic autonomy precarious. From one refugee camp to another, she would have to move with her family, making access to education, housing, security and food difficult.

While some women have managed to rise above and stand out, many have seen these events contribute greatly to their level of vulnerability, making them powerless to make courageous decisions about their own lives, or to take on leadership roles in their communities. Most look innocently and passively at society without having the audacity to engage with it to drive decisive changes that take their rights into account. It is in response to this that the JAMAA Grands Lacs organization, through its Citizen’s University program, proposes to work on resilience and the rehabilitation of the inner strength of these women through its famous curative pedagogy and its developed method known as the 6 Powers; whose aim is to contribute to the construction of strong personalities who participate effectively in creating another future for their communities. A future that is more egalitarian and more inclusive. These powers include:

Communicative power: This is about building an opinion that one embodies as an identity that one must communicate to others. It is no longer a question of presenting women only according to their distinctive biological traits (sex-specific indices), but according to the causes that they carry and defend in society. This dimension of communicative power also refers to a strength of conviction and speech with which one spreads one’s mobilizing ideas within the community. Basically, it is a useful and precious word that favors the weaving of human links with one’s fellow human beings, that raises and lifts up, that gives faith in life and in the future.

The power of dreams: This is a call to young women to dare to dream, to dare to project themselves into the future by seeing the role they can play. This breaks the logic of simple personal ambitions to open up to the immensity of great dreams, visions and utopias of grandeur in which societies, communities and peoples have a place. This great vision is, in essence, the power to make a society happy by assuming, in human relations, the power of sentinel, watchman, watcher and impetus so to speak, of the energies of good against the powers of evil (Jean-Blaise Kenmogne, 2014). The new Congolese civilization of women of stature, it is especially that of women with big dreams, big ambitions, big utopias that reason in the collective imagination as a force for mobilizing all social strata to break with the songs of misery, in order to build a new common destiny, prosperous and happy. For as the Congolese thinker Kä Mana makes known, in the search for solutions to the great problems of human existence, everything begins with this capacity to dream big, to dream high, to dream far, to see far and to aim for all the possible and even the impossible to change reality in depth (Kä Mana, 2013). Thus, the acquisition of the power of dreaming is essential today for Congolese women in their struggle to remake the future; a future where they will no longer be the periphery, but the beating heart of all the great societal dynamics.

The power of action: It is a question at this level of taming the creative genius of the woman, and her integration in initiatives which allow her to think with others while being herself, to give her point of view, and to fertilize an action which carries in it the promise of the change of the order of things in the society. In this perspective, we leave the logic of wait-and-see and lament towards a perspective of creative power which makes women impose themselves by their strength of organizationand initiative. Several spaces are thus offered to young women. Spaces that they must learn to invest deeply with their ideas of action. The field of civil society remains fertile; women’s collectives and networks, non-governmental organizations, associations, citizen movements, churches, positive action groups, political parties, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), etc. The conquest also of the political space with another idea of power, not as a place of expression of the warlike logic of men with the impulses of a dominating masculinity, but with the maternal logic, that of protection of life and preservation of the humanity of each other at all times.

Relational power: The art of building quality relationships with others, in order to build a vast network of human relationships with which to transform society. As the Hunde proverb says: «Amwami, bandu», in other words «the king is the people», as if to say that one is a true leader when one thinks and acts with others and for others; when one is in an approach of openness and not of enclosure, of building a bridge to go towards the other and the others and not to cut them off. A man of openness adds in this regard the Cameroonian thinker, Jean-Blaise Kenmogne, knows what human relationships are worth as a capacity of enrichment and treasure of life. He knows that the being of the human person is these links in their fecundity (JeanBlaise Kenmogne, 2014).

The power of intelligence: this dimension is related to the construction of a critical mass of women of reflection whose strategic and organizational intelligence contributes to imagine and build the future. As the Hunde queen Bernadette Muongo reminds us, not without reason, in a traditional account of the fate of one of their kings who was beheaded by rebels on the border of his kingdom, whose fertility and influence he wanted to recover, «it is essential to invest in the energy of our heads to regain the power to build the future» (Bernadette Muongo, 2016). It is a matter of always thinking...thinking...thinking before acting so that the action we impulse really contributes to change the society in a new order of peace, common prosperity and sustainable development.

The power of the heart: this dimension is about the strength to look after the good of others, the willingness to carry the sufferings and joys of other human beings with you when it comes to action, an altruistic strength in short. The American philosopher Thomas Nagel says it best when he states that altruism is an «inclination to act with the interests of others in mind and without ulterior motives.» (Thomas Nagel quoted by Mathieu Ricard, 2013). It is about moving beyond selfishness and individualism to carry within oneself the humanity of others. Dr. Denis Mukwege says it with luminescence when he affirms that «one ceases to be a man when one no longer suffers from the suffering of the other». The feminine leadership of the renewal is that of the heart, where every action precedes a prior reflection on the part of others and the other, as well as the preservation of their own humanity.

The work focused in its first phase on the issue of social and political participation of women. The results are already attractive, as you will see in the testimonies of the targeted young women. In its second phase, it focuses on the issue of economic participation, with the objective of contributing to a real economic empowerment of women in the DRC and more particularly in the North Kivu province, a province that has experienced years of tensions that have significantly affected the being and the overall living conditions of women.