According to an article in The Hill this morning, there are 1,500 people dying per day in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). But looking at the western media, the casual observer would never know it.
The number is hard to fully comprehend. To put it in perspective, the US has lost 4,148 men and women in the war in Iraq, and 584 in the war in Afghanistan (Washington Post Count) That is to say, in three days more people die in the DRC than have died in the Iraq war since it started in 2002. And in one day, three times as many people die in the DRC than have died in Afghanistan since that military operation began. The Congolese are facing a severe crisis, the death toll over the past decade has surpassed 5.4 million. This is the equivalent of having the Indian Ocean tsunami hit every 6 months.
The problems of the DRC are incredibly complex and as such, many nations are reluctant to render aid. Butcher sums it up by saying “The world seems reluctant to grasp the heartache of the Congo because the turmoil is so complicated. The violence in the Congo does not lend itself to tidy categorization; it is not “genocide,” although there are occasionally genocidal components; it is not a “crime against humanity,” although some of the systemic sexual violence against women falls into that category; it is not part of the “War on Terror,” although close attention should be paid to the Congo’s poorly policed uranium mines in Katanga, mines that produced the uranium refined for the bomb used at Hiroshima, and the proximity in nearby East Africa of al Qaeda sympathizers.”
But complexity should not be an excuse for ignoring the situation. The government in power was democratically elected in 2006 and has asked the ICC to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the violence. They clearly need help upholding the rule of law, and have gone so far as to cede their own sovereignty and ask for international assistance. The international community should not turn them away, but rather embrace them with open arms. Other forms of aid are also needed desperately as the government attempts to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, public resources and improve the well being of its citizens.
“A hundred years ago this November international pressure helped the Congolese when outsiders, including U.S. Congress members, forced Leopold II, king of the Belgians, to cease his murderous private rule over the Congo and transfer it to the Belgian government as a colony. It was not the end of the Congo’s problems but it was a definite improvement.
The centenary of a pioneering human rights achievement should inspire us today not to give up on a country and those 1,500 souls.”
September 17, 2008
