Monika Hauser - Ein Portrait

A cinematic portrait of the founder of medica mondiale and winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize, Monika Hauser. For 25 years, gynecologist Monika Hauser has been fighting locally and internationally for traumatized victims, because every war is also a war against women. The film follows Monika Hauser as she looks back on her work and accompanies her in her everyday life. It always stays close to her as a person and allows us to share in the motives and commitment of this courageous woman. Monika Hauser was born in Switzerland, but her parents' home village—the mountain village of Laas in Vinschgau, South Tyrol—is also a place of longing for Monika, who often visits with her parents and sister. Her grandmother Elsa tells her about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband (Monika's beloved grandfather). And she asks her granddaughter to keep it a secret. “I understood early on that women and violence go hand in hand.” In 1992, Monika Hauser, a budding gynecologist, reads an article in Stern magazine about the mass rape of women and girls in Bosnian camps – and reacts: she sets off for Bosnia, wanting to help immediately. It was not an easy path: authorities and organizations refused to support her. On the ground, she encountered rejection and contempt from men and silence from women. In Zenica, a small town in central Bosnia, the world's first center for women traumatized by war finally opened in the spring of 1993, while the war was still raging. Here, they would receive sensitive medical and psychological care. This was the beginning of medica mondiale. Today, medica mondiale is active worldwide: in the Balkans, Rwanda, Liberia, Guatemala, and Afghanistan, to name just a few countries. Since 2008, the UN Security Council has considered sexual violence in armed conflicts to be a separate criminal offense. A historic decision that was long overdue. For Monika Hauser, this was both confirmation and incentive, as was the Right Livelihood Award, the Alternative Nobel Prize, which she received in 2008 for her commitment.