The Foreign Service Journal, April 2011

F OCUS ON W OMEN IN S ECUR I TY AND D EVELOPMENT C ONGO ’ S R EAL C URSE Ben Fishman 22 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 1 1 inding along a thin, muddy road, four of us sat tightly packed in the back seat of a sports utility vehicle as we arrived at our second stop of the day, the health clinic in the small village of Burungé in the Demo- cratic Republic of the Congo. It was May 2005, and I was a graduate student observing how local organizations worked with women and children who had been raped due to the war in eastern Congo and then helped reintegrate them into their communities. A S IN MANY SOCIETIES , WOMEN ARE THE CORE AND FABRIC OF C ONGOLESE SOCIETY . D AMAGE THAT FABRIC AND THE FOUNDATION STARTS TO FALL APART . B Y M AGGIE K. F LEMING W