“My friend, my friend!” Two little Syrian girls come running toward me as they see the camera around my neck. These two words are part of their limited English vocabulary, a language they are being taught in school at the Vathi refugee center—known as a “hot spot”—on the island of Samos in Greece.

In the confines of their home in Boston, the Bandukwalas decided that their 8-year-old would not undergo khatna, the name given to the practice of female genital mutilation by their community of Dawoodi Bohras. While hardly dinner conversation, the topic was in the air all evening. Finally, the couple agreed not to do it.

Six years after one of the worst single incidents of mass rape ever recorded in the 21st century, no perpetrator of the Walikale mass rapes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has ever been brought to trial in either a domestic or international forum. The attacks were condemned at the time by the United Nations Security Council, which urged swift prosecution. The hundreds of victims have never received any acknowledgment or reparation from the Congolese state.

To paraphrase one of Friedrich Nietzsche's most-cited sayings, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Rape and sexualized violence can kill, but those who survive it may emerge stronger. They need strength to testify against their perpetrators in court, strength to tell their husbands what happened, strength to carry on with their lives.