OneWorld.net (U.S.)

WASHINGTON, Dec 22 (OneWorld.net) - Nine months pregnant, Vestine was forced to flee one refugee camp for another, where she gave birth to her second child, Solange, on the dirt floor of her tent just days after arriving. The outside world must help the Congolese people by working to address the root causes of the conflict, says veteran journalist Michael J. Kavanagh.

• Kavanagh in a Congolese refugee camp, October 2008. © Michael Kavanagh / Pulitzer Center on Crisis ReportingEarlier this month, Oxfam International urged European governments, "particularly France, Germany, and the UK who have the capacity to lead the way," to ensure the swift deployment of a peacekeeping force to provide greater protection for people in desperate need now. 

• The women of the Democratic Republic of Congo were honored as finalists for OneWorld's People of 2008 Award. Sexual violence in the country has been called "the worst in the world," and it has only gotten worse in recent months. But amid the daily threats to their life and communities, women are organizing to support each other and demand justice and protection.
  

• In one part of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where conflict has subsided and people are beginning to return home, a community-driven reconstruction project is fostering democracy, rebuilding social services, and creating new economic opportunities. The International Rescue Committee reports from Cirimiro, in South Kivu.

The Story of Pascal and Vestine

From: Worldfocus/WNET.org

The Democratic Republic of Congo has endured one of the world’s bloodiest wars for over a decade. More than 5 million people have died, mostly from preventable disease and starvation.

In the last year alone, more than a million people have fled the fighting in eastern Congo.

In spite of a peace accord in 2003, fighting continues and many fear that foreign countries are still involved. Recently, there have been more signs of Rwandan involvement and encouragement of rebels.

The 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers in Congo cannot ease the growing number of casualties as a rebel group threatens to overthrow the Congolese government.

Worldfocus correspondent Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and video journalist Taylor Krauss recently visited the refugee camps in eastern Congo. Together with Lisa Biagiotti, they produced this video on one family’s story.

Note: In the weeks since this story was filmed, the camp has been attacked and Pascal was forced to flee a third time. The camp is now deserted except for a small rebel force, and Worldfocus reporters have not been able to locate Pascal and his family.

Read reporter Michael Kavanagh’s blog post about his experience reporting with video journalist Taylor Krauss in Congo here: Giving a human face to Congo’s conflict.

Giving a Human Face to Congo's Conflict

From: Worldfocus/WNET.org

By Michael J. Kavanagh

Michael J. Kavanagh is a journalist with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He recently reported on the crisis in eastern Congo for Worldfocus: The story of Pascal and Vestine. Here, he writes about his experience covering the conflict.

The conflict in Congo is too complicated to explain in a five-minute video, so we’ve left most of the context out in order to focus on Pascal’s story.  For more background on the recent fighting, check out my Q&A on history, rebels and crisis in eastern Congo.

I’ve been reporting on DRC for five years now, and there’s nothing that frustrates me more than the dismissive comments I often get about how conflict in Africa is endemic.

Violence is rarely irrational — it almost always has root causes that can be addressed. We’re often just too busy or lazy to learn enough about a situation to figure out how.

Given the extent of the outside world’s involvement in Congo over the last century, I am of the school that says we owe it to Pascal, Vestine, their two children and the millions who are suffering in Congo to try.

As Taylor Krauss and I filmed in these camps, people were saying they hadn’t eaten in days and they hadn’t received food aid from humanitarian groups in months.

And then there’s the violence. It sometimes seems that every other woman you interview is a victim of sexual violence (we’ll air a piece about this in the coming weeks); an equal number of men have been tortured, killed, or forced to fight in armed groups.

These conditions make reporting in eastern Congo extremely difficult — read Taylor’s account of our detention by Congo’s notorious secret police.

We couldn’t have done our work without the help of many brave and generous Congolese citizens, United Nations staff and humanitarian workers. The International Rescue Committee — in particular, Danielle de Knocke van der Meulen, Lia Pozzi, Fidel Bafilemba and Elinor Raikes — were hospitable and patient with the sometimes burdensome requirements of television.

IRC is one of the few aid groups that consistently sends aid workers into the most dangerous places in the world, even when the danger is most acute. They save hundreds of lives every day.

We also need to thank the people at Virunga National Park who gave us the footage of the fighting in Rumangabo. Virunga is home to an extraordinary array of wildlife — from gorillas to gazelles to hippos. It’s also one of the main centers of war.

The Virunga rangers are the bulwark keeping armed groups from completely overrunning the park; over 100 rangers have been innocent casualties of the fighting over the years.

When the war ends and Virunga is again a naturalist’s paradise (it seems crazy even to write about that possibility at the moment), we’ll have the rangers to thank for preserving it.

OneWorld.net: Latest News, Groups working on the Democratic Republic of the Congo