Do we like them?

Do we like Denis Mukwege?

Our score: 8 out of 10. Decades of care for survivors and a clean harm record in what we found, held back from the top by a gap on LGBTQ+ issues and a thin election record.

Denis Mukwege is a Congolese gynaecologist who founded Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in 1999. It treats survivors of sexual violence and women with severe gynaecological injuries, and that work is what the world knows him for.

The harm check comes up clean. We found no harmful words or acts on women, race, migrants, public health or the planet, and no dodgy company. The honest gap is that we found nothing from him on LGBTQ+ rights either way, so that one is unknown rather than a pass with flying colours.

In 2023 he ran for the Congolese presidency on a platform to end conflict, hunger and corruption. He lost, and has since become a prominent opposition voice, a role the government has long grumbled about, saying he mixes politics with his medical work.

The recent run shows the same pattern. In February he told AFP a new ceasefire risked looking like just a truce, and in May he said the US deal gives up Congo's resources without bringing the promised security. That's a political argument, and you can agree or not, but it's about his country's people rather than himself.

We found no court losses, no lawsuits against him and no credible allegations of mistreating anyone. Most of the dirt thrown at him came from partisan sources in the Rwanda dispute, and abuse and smears aimed at him don't count against him here.