Rose Mapendo opened the Northwestern University Conference on Human Rights with a song. Walking up to the podium, she raised her hands to her chest and made the same low, pained sounds that helped her survive a Congolese death camp for 16 months. Then she began to cry.
“I was thinking to kill myself, but I was looking at my children,” said Mapendo, who gave the NUCHR’s keynote speech Thursday at 8 p.m. to an audience of about 200 people. “I said God, you know my heart. I am not the enemy to anyone. I was singing to keep my children alive.”
NUCHR is a student-run annual conference that brings speakers and delegates from colleges across the country together to discuss human rights issues over three days. This year’s topic is Human Rights in Transit: Issues of Forced Migration, said Julie Kornfeld, a SESP senior and co-director of NUCHR.
“It’s a rare opportunity that people get to meet people like Rose Mapendo who experienced horrific things and are willing to share about it,” Kornfeld said. “I hope Mapendo’s story inspires people to become activists for human rights”
The winner of the United Nations’ 2009 Humanitarian of the Year award, Mapendo tearfully recounted her experiences as a prisoner and refugee during the 2008 genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After the government executed her husband, Mapendo was forced to raise ten children alone, even giving birth to twins at the camp. Mapendo said she struggled to keep the rest of her family alive on only two cups of rice each day. Once, she had to give her 17-year-old daughter to a soldier in exchange for her son’s life.
“I was willing to give anything to protect my family,” said Mapendo, who said she still does not understand the hatred that motivated soldiers to brutalize her people. “I can’t imagine killing someone you never meet, you never have a problem with, and you are happy to torture them?”
Eventually, Mapendo and her children were rescued and moved to the U.S. Today, she runs Mapendo New Horizons, a non-profit she founded with her brother.
“If we cannot help another, what is life about? It is nothing.”
One of the 41 non-Northwestern delegates at NUCHR, Illinois-Wesleyan University senior Emily Coles said she hopes to earn a Masters degree in human rights and work with refugees. Coles said she was inspired by Mapendo’s humanitarian work.
“As someone who wants to go into the field, it’s always best to hear it from someone who has gone through the experience,” Coles said. “It was really moving.”
But conference delegates weren’t the only students who enjoyed the speech. Weinberg freshman Marisa Prasse heard about the event through Facebook.
“Her personal strength especially hit me,” Prassey said. “That even though she went through incredibly tough times that most people in the United States could never imagine, she found a way to not only go through it but find a positive outlook.”
