Keynote speaker Denis Mukwege is a famous gynaecologist, human rights campaigner, as well as Nobel Peace Prize laureate. His global campaigns against the use of rape as a weapon of war have made him a top professional in treating wartime sexual abuse survivors.

While in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denis Mukweg joined his dad in visiting the sick in Bukavu. One day, they paid a visit to a boy who was on his terminally ill. All they could do was pray.

At the age of eight, Mukwege really wanted to become a doctor. He wanted to offer treatments instead of prayers.

Dr. Mukwege established the City of Joy in Rwanda, along with Eve Ensler and Christine Schuler Deshryver. The City of Joy seeks to aid patients’ recovery from the assault by offering them leadership training and life skills. The City of Joy proves to change and empower individuals’ attitudes on money, domestic decisions, and other important matters. In 2011, the City of Joy opened and prompted a Netflix documentary that came out in 2016.

When the UK came to be president of the G7 in 2021, Mukwege was named to a newly constituted Gender Equality Advisory Council.

Dr. Denis Mukwege dedicates his time to stopping sexual violence as a weapon of war around the world. Both Nadia Murad and Dr. Denis Mukwege obtained the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.  Denis received a multitude of honors. These include the Right Livelihood Award, the UN Human Rights Prize, and the Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament. He was placed on TIME magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most important people, and he was recognized by the Carter Foundation as “citizen of the world”.