Denis Mukwege

Dr Denis Mukwege is a gynaecologist and world leading specialist in treating survivors of wartime sexual violence, and a global campaigner against the use of rape as a weapon of war.

Upon graduating with a medical degree from the University of Burundi in 1983, Dr Mukwege worked as a pediatrician in the rural Lemera Hospital near Bukavu. However, after seeing women patients who due to the absence of proper care often suffered pain, genital lesions, and obstetric fistula after giving birth, he studied gynaecology and obstetrics at the University of Angers, France, obtaining his master's and completing his medical residency in 1989. On 24 September 2015, he earned a PhD from Université libre de Bruxelles for his thesis on traumatic fistulas in the Eastern Region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In 1999, Dr Mukwege founded Panzi Hospital. He has become one of the world’s leading specialists on treating survivors of wartime sexual violence. In 2008, he founded Panzi Foundation to provide a holistic care to the survivors and to reach those beyond the national administrative jurisdiction of the Hospital.

He has received numerous awards for his work, including the UN Human Rights Prize (2008), the Right Livelihood Award (2013) and the Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament (2014). Time magazine listed him among the world’s 100 most influential persons and the Carter Foundation named him a ‘citizen of the world. In 2018, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his global efforts to end the use of rape as a weapon of war.