The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been plagued by conflicts over control, extraction and distribution of natural resources such as coltan, diamonds and oil. In this exhibition, photographers Isabel Muñoz, National Photography Award 2016, and Concha Casajús present the struggle of Congolese women in the face of the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. The show is a series of portraits and testimonies of women from Bukavu, in the province of South Kivu, in the east of the country. The exhibition aims to make the situation of these women visible, as well as the violence they suffer. But at the same time, it invites us to reflect on the way in which these women face such suffering, rejecting in many cases the status of victims and trying to survive with dignity. Many have managed to get rid of this stigma and have struggled collectively to become activists and successful women. All a song to those women who have broken the silence and, from mutual support and sorority, have become true heroines of this twenty-first century.

Egypt is a source, transit and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and sexual exploitation. The local dimension of human trafficking includes child labour, the sexual exploitation of children, the sale of human organs, and various forms of prostitution. Children are forced into domestic service, street begging drug trafficking, quarrying, and agricultural work in the country. NGOs report the lack of economic and educational opportunities cause family members to subject women and girls to sex trafficking to supplement family income, and in some cases women and girls are raped to coerce or forced them into prostitution.  Child sex tourism occurs in Cairo, Alexandira, and Luxor and Egyptian women and girls are purchased for 'temporary' or 'summer marriages' for the purpose of commercial sex, including sex trafficking, and forced labour. Egyptian adults are subjected to forced labour in construction, agriculture, domestic work, and low-paying service jobs in the region. Refugees from Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, and Yemen who have settled in Egypt in Egypt are also at an increased risk of trafficking, forced labour, forced marriage, and sexual exploitation. When the civil war in Yemen erupted in 2015, Yehia’s parents advised him to flee to Egypt to avoid conscription by one of the warring factions. Having arrived in Cairo via Sudan, Yehia contacted a smuggler who promised to take him across the sea to Italy. He was taken to a beach near Alexandria with other travellers and boarded a small boat, but the smugglers turned out to be gangsters who robbed the passengers and were going to put them ashore when the Coast Guard arrived and rescued them. Yehia was sent back to Sudan and tried a second time to get to Italy, but this time he was kidnapped and detained on a farm in the Egyptian desert.

The Central African Republic is a source, transit and destination country for men, women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and sexual exploitation. The majority of those trafficked are children subjected to sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, ambulant vending and forced labour. Moreover, civil unrest in the country has led rebels such as the anti-balaka to conscript children into armed forces in the northwestern and northeastern regions, as well as kidnap, rape and subject to conditions of modern slavery, many Muslim women in the country.  Zeinaba was 12 years old when she was captured by the anti-balaka and spent a week being raped and forced to cook and clean for the militia group under the threat of physical violence.