Sometimes I wish eastern Congo could suffer an earthquake or a tsunami, so that it might finally get the attention it needs. The barbaric civil war being waged here is the most lethal conflict since World War II and has claimed at least 30 times as many lives as the Haiti earthquake.
Yet no humanitarian crisis generates so little attention per million corpses, or such a pathetic international response.
Julie had just blown out the kerosene lamp and was lying in bed next to her husband when suddenly the stillness of the night was pierced by enraged shouts and the sound of a door being kicked open. Eight armed men burst into her house in a small village in Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, wielding machetes and automatic rifles.
The Democratic Republic of Congo might expel leaders of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in retaliation for increased pressure on the nation's army to halt violence against civilians, the Congolese ambassador said.
Last summer, news in the United States that Jaycee Dugard had been kept in captivity in Antioch, Calif., for 18 years and raped by her captor until her Aug. 28 rescue was widely considered shocking.
Women and girls in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are experiencing increasingly brutal sexual assaults and the UN peacekeeping mission, mandated to protect them, is not doing an adequate job, says the International Rescue Committee, a leading aid group assisting thousands of rape survivors in Congo.
While medical and psychological care are being provided to survivors of sexual violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where 7,000 women and girls have been raped this year alone, UN and aid workers on the ground say the funding response has been too narrow, leaving key issues inadequately addressed.
Thousands of Congolese citizens are being deported from Angola to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) under alarming circumstances, say humanitarian workers.
"The deportees have nothing with them, everything was taken; there are cases of violence, rape and sexual abuse," said Severine Flores, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
