63 NGOs make collective plea for eastern Congo

On April 23, 63 nongovernmental organizations from around the world made a plea to the United Nations and international leaders. They asked for help for the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

An estimated 1.1 million displaced people currently live in the North and South Kivu provinces, according to a media release issued by Enough, a project of the Center for American Progress aimed at ending crimes against humanity. 550,000 of those people fled from fighting since 2007.

The NGOs called on the UN to appoint a high-level special advisor on human rights for eastern Congo who could focus attention on the region and work to ensure action is taken.

Enough’s release read: “On January 23, 2008, after weeks of talks, the Congolese government signed a peace agreement in Goma, North Kivu, with 22 armed groups committing all parties to an immediate ceasefire and disengagement of forces from frontline positions. Yet since the signing, scores of civilians have been killed, hundreds of women and girls raped, and many more children recruited into armed service, adding to the extraordinarily high number of civilians who have already endured such crimes over the past decade.”

Human Rights Watch, Oxfam International, Global Witness, and World Vision are a few of the more prominent NGOs that have included their names on the release. Many African and Congolese NGOs are also listed.

The Congo is likely one of the most miserable and least reported on countries in the world.

In 2004, Howard French, a former Africa correspondent for the New York Times, wrote A Continent for the Taking about the time he spent working in western and central Africa. Included in the book were horrific chapters on war and violence in the Congo. I recommend it to anyone looking for an easy and informative read on the continent’s troubles.

French has since been reassigned to China. But I found a post on his blog from 2006 that provides frightening insight into what it can be like to live in the Congo.

The piece was written by Bryan Mealer for Harper’s Magazine and is really nothing more than an anecdote about a conversation he had with another reporter one night in a bar. A section of it reads:

It was our usual banter, tasteless and maybe a little too loud. But something about it must’ve struck a nerve in Dave, who went quiet for a minute, then said: “I haven’t written one story in six months where someone didn’t die.”

“Same here,” I answered. “I’m thinking of counting all the dead people in mine. I wonder how many I’ll get.”

You could never count all of Congo’s dead, the way they kept piling up. The country is slowly emerging from a five-year war that has killed 4 million people, mostly from war-induced sickness and hunger, and aid groups estimate 1,200 people still die every day. The war drew in seven African armies at its peak, and helped create and maintain tens of thousands of militiamen who still live by the gun, killing and maiming at will. The militias have all but commandeered the eastern half of the country—rich in timber, gold, diamonds, and coltan—which they’ve divided into personal fiefdoms at the expense of the population.

A longer excerpt can be found on French’s Web site.