The Foreign Service Journal, September 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2013 51 Diana Putman William R. Rivkin Award, 2010 RegardingWomen’s Health in Africa Briefly describe the dissent that your AFSA award recognized. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton indicated that sexual and gender-based violence (known by the acronym SGBV) was a foreign policy issue in the Democratic Republic of the Congo early in her tenure, and requested that both the U.S. Agency for International Develop- ment and the Department of Defense consider how they could work with State on prevention and response activities for survivors of SGBV. The four-star commander of the U.S. Africa Command agreed to assist when the assistant sec- retary of State for Africa asked him to. His military planners proposed two options: 1) send teams of military medi- cal personnel to undertake fistula repair surgeries for women who had been violently raped; or 2) send teams out for one or two weeks to do psychosocial counseling. I was an FS-1 USAID FSO embedded in AFRICOM, where I managed all their health and humanitarian programs. With much of the SGBV in eastern DRC perpetrated by uniformed people—local armed groups, the army or the police—I felt that neither of these options would be well-received by the survi- vors, who were traumatized and would not welcome uniformed foreigners assisting them. We ascertained that the U.S. military had no capability to undertake fistula repair and that psychosocial counseling of short duration across cultural and linguistic barriers would be of dubious value. But the military planners were convinced that the principals had insisted on a medical interven- tion. The planners were not easily dissuaded, and no one was willing to challenge the commander, including his two-star chief of staff. Even when the commander asked for an update at a senior staff meeting, the command surgeon and chief of staff remained mute. I then stood up and proposed an alterna- tive plan. I had already determined that we had funding that could be allocated for construction or rehabilitation of buildings that could be used by local organizations already providing services to SGBV survivors in the region. The commander thought for a few minutes, then approved my plan and my offer to go to DRC to establish the program. Diana Putman, left, at a women’s cooperative in Katanga, DRC, August 2012. Diana Putman with participants in a USAID agriculture project in Bandundu Province, DRC, September 2012.