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Trouble in the Congo

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  • 08-04-2003 1:29pm
    #1
    shotamoose
    Registered Users Posts: 1,411 ✭✭✭


    Thought people could do with a break from all the depressing news on the telly:

    An NGO called the International Rescue Committee has estimated that between 3.0 million and 4.7m people have died during the war in Democratic Republic of the Congo since August 1998. They say this would make it the deadliest conflict since WWII.

    About one-tenth of these were killed directly by the conflict, with the rest falling victim to treatable disease and starvation due to displacement and destruction of infrastructure etc. The situation seems to have improved somewhat recently with peace talks reaching a conclusion and foreign armies withdrawing, but fighting rumbles on elsewhere, with a recent in the Ituri province massacre claiming 1,000.

    So, do people think that DR Congo should get more humanitarian and reconstruction aid than Iraq? Sounds like a tasteless question I know, but that's exactly the question a lot of aid departments and agencies in developed countries are asking themselves at the moment - there's only so much aid to go around, and more often than not it goes somewhere out of political interest rather than humanitarian need. Plus it's a lot easier to put a lot of money into a country you control yourself rather than relying on someone you don't necessarily trust to distribute it.


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