Claudine Muyala Tayaye Bibi

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Claudine Muyala Tayaye Bibi has served for two decades as chair of Programs for the Call to Women’s Action (PAAF), a network of non-governmental organizations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The DRC has been devastated by ongoing civil war and the intervention of regional powers. PAAF provides grants and micro-loans to other NGOs and designs media campaigns publicizing UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which calls for the inclusion of women in peace processes, and the Nairobi Declaration, which calls for women’s active participation in the Inter-Congolese Dialogues. Ms. Tayaye Bibi organizes gender and conflict workshops to train community leaders about these statements, and she is a signatory of multiple declarations—authored by a broad coalition of women’s groups—calling for women’s involvement throughout all aspects of the peace process. A member of the National Council of Women in the Congo, Ms. Tayaye Bibi was chosen to chair Civil Society’s Committee on Dialogue, and she has been president of the Congolese branch of All-Africa Women for Peace (AAWP) and vice president of the Federation of African Women for Peace. As an adviser to the DRC’s minister of health and family from 1990 to 1997, she headed the program on integrating women in development. Currently, one of her primary concerns is the destabilizing role of HIV/AIDS in the country. She was the first chair of the Women’s Catholic Movement in the Archdiocese of Kinshasa and the Catholic Action Movement for Men, Women, and Youth. She is also a senior lecturer at the University of Kinshasa.

Ms. Tayaye Bibi’s peace-building activities include:

• participating as a civil society expert in a UNIFEM-supported meeting of Congolese women in Nairobi in preparation for the 2002 Sun City Inter-Congolese Dialogues, and taking part in conferences promoting dialogue across the conflict line;
• chairing the January 2002 meeting of the Committee to Assess the Common Works of Civil Society in the DRC, where representatives from national women’s organizations came together to evaluate their work;
• organizing a 10,000-woman peace march that demanded the government fulfill the July 2002 Pretoria agreement and include women in its implementation;
• organizing workshops on women and peace, democracy, and negotiation, in cooperation with UNESCO, the Canadian Embassy to the DRC, and the Food And Agriculture Organization of the United Nations;
• organizing workshops and participating in a UNDP meeting on nonviolence, social justice, and democracy to end the proliferation of small arms in the DRC;
• publishing a database of women leaders in Kinshasa in 2003 with UNICEF and the Ministry of Women and Families; and
• producing brochures and leaflets on women, democracy, and human rights awareness in five languages: French, Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili, and Tshiluba.

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