Monday, March 9th
8 to 10 PM
Lecture Theatre (just above the Social Science Library), Manor Road Building

To mark International Women’s Day, International Rescue Committee UK, in partnership with the Oxford Hub, are presenting a film-screening and discussion highlighting the use of rape as a weapon of war against women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

**Film Screening** The Greatest Silence, Lisa F. Jackson **

Emmy Award winning producer/director Lisa F. Jackson spent 2006 in the war zones of eastern DRC documenting the tragic plight of women and girls in that country’s intractable conflict. Jackson was herself gang raped in 1976 and shared her experience with the survivors she interviewed. She was afforded privileged access to not only the grotesque realities of life in Congo (including interviews with self-confessed rapists) but also to examples of resiliency, resistance, courage and grace.

www.thegreatestsilence.org

Around the world, the International Rescue Committee helps survivors of rape heal and works with communities and institutions to break the cycle of violence. We invite you to join us for a screening of ‘The Greatest Silence,’ followed by a discussion featuring:

Leah Chigushi
Leah Chigushi is a Congolese activist whose campaigning work on behalf of women in the DRC has caught the attention of the Guardian, BBC and international media.

Leah grew up in eastern Congo and moved to Rwanda when she was 16, where she narrowly survived the genocide. After fleeing to Uganda, and later South Africa, she moved to the UK in 1997 where she was granted asylum. She has since returned to remote villages in eastern DRC where women continue to suffer the consequences of the ongoing conflict, and is now training as a nurse in north London. She has setting up a charity called Everything is a Benefit to distribute food and medical aid to the women of eastern Congo.

Sarah Spencer
Sarah Spencer works for the International Rescue Committee as their Emergency Gender-Based Violence Coordinator. As a member of IRC’s team of first-responders, she has traveled to DRC, Côte D’Ivoire , Iraq, Jordan, Sudan and Syria over the past year to help respond to the needs of women and girls there. In DRC, she helped design and implement programmes to support survivors of sexual violence and other women and girls in eastern Congo.

Chair:
Zoe Marks
Zo is a DPhil candidate in the Department of Politics and holds an MSc in African Studies. She researches conflict in Africa, rebel groups, and female combatants and participants in war. Her fieldwork is with ex-combatant men and women in Sierra Leone.

www.ircuk.org