FAO Goodwill Ambassador says support for women crucial to nation's improvement amid fragile peace. 13 March, 2008, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo --- Singer and activist Miriam Makeba says women survivors of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo face a "triple tragedy" of physical, psychological and social damage, undermining the country's attempts to improve living conditions.

Makeba undertook a four-day visit to Kinshasa in her role as FAO Goodwill Ambassador to tour small farming projects designed to help rape survivors feed their families and increase self-reliance. The women have received FAO-donated seeds, tools and agricultural training. Makeba was accompanied by the DRC's Minister of Gender, Family and Child Welfare, Philomène Omatuku.

Makeba, who won the Dag Hammarskjöld Prize for Peace in 1986, called the systematic rape of women in recent years the "most horrifying feature of the complex emergency" in DRC, Africa's third-largest country.