[Ugnet] End This 'Forgotten Tragedy'

As the United Nations prepares to discuss the future of its peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a British charity has urged the international community to give the conflict-torn country the attention and resources it desperately needs.

On Tuesday, March 29, 2005, the UN Security Council was scheduled to discuss the future of the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) just under two months after nine peacekeepers were killed in a rebel ambush.

The Catholic Agency for Overseas Develoment (CAFOD) believes that "peace will not be restored in DRC unless the UN ensures that MONUC has sufficient resources and manpower to cover the country" where continued insecurity and displacement claims an estimated 1 000 lives daily.

Many areas are not covered by the UN peacekeepers, leaving civilians vulnerable to attack by uncontrolled militias. Arms trafficking continues across many places along the inadequately policed borders, adding to an estimated 800 000 guns in circulation within DRC.

"The UN currently has a peacekeeping force of 16 700 soldiers covering a country the size of Western Europe," CAFOD said in a statement dated Wednesday, March 23, 2005. "By contrast Liberia, a fraction of the size, has 15 000 troops. Kosovo, two years after its conflict, had more than 36 000 international troops in a province that could fit into DRC more than 200 times."

CAFOD Conflict Policy Analyst Amelia Bookstein who has just returned from DRC, said: "Instances of violence against the civilian population are rising despite the 2002 peace deal, especially in Ituri and North and South Kivu.

"The appalling loss of life in DRC is a scandal which the world chooses to ignore. How many more millions of lives have to be lost before the international community finds the political will to bring peace to the country?" Ms Bookstein posed.

It is estimated that the civil war in DRC has claimed 3.8 million lives since 1996 - around fourteen times the death toll of the December 2004 Asia tsunami disaster - the worst death toll of any conflict since World War II.

Over three million people have been forced from their homes by the fighting. Countless hundreds of thousands of women have been raped, tens of thousands of children abducted and forced to fight and the country's health and education system has been destroyed.

CAFOD said that "the new resolution for MONUC must emphasize the need to take a robust approach to the disarmament of the Interhamwe and other militias operating in eastern DRC -key to stopping violence and attacks against women."

"At the same time, MONUC has the clear responsibility to act to the highest standards of international law, to distinguish between civilians and militias in their operations, and to ensure a full stop to any sexual abuse by the peacekeepers themselves," said the agency, which is working in DRC and throughout the Great Lakes region with local partners and the Catholic Church structures in youth support, trauma counselling, agricultural projects, and peace and reconciliation.

Ms Bookstein said: "The international community must remain engaged and vigilant throughout this unstable but important time in DRC's emergence from war. Peace cannot take root if attacks against civilians are allowed to continue on this scale."

[Ugnet] End This 'Forgotten Tragedy' - Agency

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