9 April 2018. On the occasion of the 2017 dies academicus, the women’s rights activist Monika Hauser was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Political Sciences for her outstanding services to public welfare. The gynaecologist Monika Hauser, who was born in Thal, will be coming to St.Gallen on Wednesday, 18 April 2018, in order to report on her current work in the service of traumatised women and girls in war and crisis zones. The lecture will take place in the Main Building of the university (Room 01-012) and start at 6 p.m.

Her pioneering work for the benefit of girls and women who have suffered sexualised violence in the context of armed conflicts is without equal worldwide. Impelled by reports about mass rapes of Bosnian women, Monika Hauser went to the war zone in late 1992 and opened a therapy centre together with local experts in the town of Zenica in spring 1993. 25 years later, the organisation she founded, medica mondiale, with more than 50 employees in the Cologne headquarters, is a women’s rights and aid organisation still committed to an integrative approach. From Kosovo to Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, media mondiale supports rape survivors not only with medical care but also in psychosocial and legal terms, as well as through political human rights activities.

With her commitment, Monika Hauser is an impressive model of active humanism across borders. Her example shows what an outstanding contribution an individual citizen is able to make towards the improvement of concrete life perspectives but also with a view to the longer-term cure of societies ravaged by war.

Photo: Cornelia Suhan/ medica mondiale