REACH OUT AND TOUCH A WOMAN IN NEED

I support two women in regions that are currently in hellish lives or have lived through hellish lives. One of my sisters is in Iraq. And the other is in Rwanda. I do this through the non-profit organization "Women for Women". Women only can be in the program for one year so that more women can be helped. This is the third sister I have sponsored in Rwanda. And last year I was asked to take a woman as my sister in Iraq. I write to my sisters in Rwanda, but I am not allowed to in Iraq because the women there are too afraid for their lives. The surge hasn't helped them.

I ask you to watch the video of a segment that was on "60 Minutes" tonight. It is about the hell that the women live with continually in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, that we in the USA knew about during the Clinton Presidency, but minced words over the definition of "genocide" versus the "acts of genocide". One definition meant we would have been obligated to act and the other allowed us to do nothing, as one million plus Tutsis were hacked to death by Hutus with ten cent Chinese machetes and garden tools. The Hutus left Rwanda and now are continuing their behavior in the DR Congo. It is now 2008. That is 14 years of this. And we are complicit in the results. We were silent in 1994 and it goes on today.

Every day in the Congo women are being traumatized; their suffering used as weapons of war.

Anderson Cooper and 60 Minutes visited the organization "Women for Women" operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and met the women they serve there. The 60 Minutes piece, “War Against Women”, showed the unspeakable violence these brave women face every day as well as the hope for the future that the Women for Women International program brings.

Check out the website, www.womenforwomen.org/congo, for more information and continued updates on the show, to make a donation, or to learn more about the women of the DR Congo.

Zainab Salbi is the Women for Women International CEO and Founder

60 Minutes

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Dedicated to the Women in DR of Congo
Thanks to Mimi