[Mb-civic] UN Sees East Congo as Worse Crisis Than Darfur By Robert Evans

[Michael Butler]

Also see below:    
UN Vows to Act in Congo    €

    Go to Original

    UN Sees East Congo as Worse Crisis Than Darfur
    By Robert Evans
    Reuters

    Wednesday 16 March 2005

    Geneva - Eastern Congo is suffering the world's worst current
humanitarian crisis, with a death toll outstripping that in Sudan's
strife-torn Darfur region, a top United Nations official said on Wednesday.

    U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said that over the last
six years the toll in the Democratic Republic of Congo's amounted to "one
tsunami every six months" - a reference to the December disaster which left
about 300,000 people dead or missing in Asia.

    "In terms of the human lives lost ... this is the greatest humanitarian
crisis in the world today and it is beyond belief that the world is not
paying more attention," he told a news conference.

    Egeland was speaking during a visit to Geneva for talks with U.N. and
other relief workers on improving the global humanitarian aid system can be
improved.

    On Tuesday he came under fire from the Sudanese government over
estimates transmitted through his spokesman that up to 180,000 people may
have died from hunger and disease in Darfur, western Sudan, over the past 19
months of fighting.

    At his Geneva news conference, he insisted the figure was a reasonable
assumption - given that an average of 10,000 civilians had been dying each
month since the start of the conflict between local rebel groups and
government forces backed by militias.

    But the rate was declining now that the Sudanese authorities had allowed
foreign aid teams into the country to help about 1.8 million people driven
from their homes and largely living in refugee camps, Egeland said.

    He spoke before a U.N. envoy in Khartoum said all international staff in
part of Western Sudan were being pulled back to the local state capital
because of threats from the pro-government Janjaweed militia.

    More Focus on Congo

    Asked if too much emphasis was being put on Darfur by the international
community, and especially big Western powers, Egeland said: "The amount of
focus on Darfur is correct, but there is too little on (eastern) Congo."

    Egeland, fresh from a tour of the region, said he had impressed on the
Sudanese government and rebels that they had to negotiate seriously for
peace.

    He had also expressed indignation to the government in Khartoum that
some women raped by Janjaweed fighters and now pregnant were being
persecuted for violating Islamic sharia law against sexual relations outside
marriage.

    "That is the ultimate insult for women who have been raped," he
declared.

    Egeland said the problems in eastern Congo arose because of the
complexity and variety of the fighting groups there, which included regular
soldiers, militias and criminal groups.

    Among the fighters in eastern Congo are ethnic Hutus who fled Rwanda
after the 1994 genocide there - many of them accused of involvement in the
violence in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were
killed.

    The United Nations has mounted a major relief operation in the region,
where Egeland said some 3 million civilians buffeted by the conflict are in
need of help to survive, and this week gave militia fighters two weeks to
disarm.

 

    

    Go to Original

    UN Vows to Act in Congo
    Scotsman

    Thursday 17 March 2005

    Militiamen fighting in north-east Congo grilled bodies on a spit and
boiled two girls alive as their mother watched, UN peacekeepers claimed
today.

    "Those responsible for atrocities will be brought to justice," said
General Patrick Cammaert, the Dutch Navy commander of UN forces in Congo, as
he presented a report on abuses allegedly committed by the Patriotic
Resistance Front of Ituri.

    Cammaert said peacekeepers were working to cut off weapons supplies to
the group, who apparently entered the country from neighbouring Uganda.

 

© Copyright 2005 by TruthOut.org