War in Congo has caused by now 5 million death and there is no end to it,  war in Sudan has cost by now 2.5 million lives. Further many millions of people were driven from their homes - both these very large countries, rich in natural resources, have been driven to abject poverty with a very thin crust on top - rich people that made their fortune from the misery of the many,

China has now invested $9 billion in Sudan in oil deals, and $5 billion in Congo in minerals - someone from the locals gets some of this money. Americans and Europeans spend money on aid campaigns and would really want to see an end to the Killings. They clearly feel this is a bottomless pit. Three prominent leaders in the NGO effort to do something about this upheaval in Africa are:

George Clooney - famous actor and director,  David Presman - human-rights lawyer, and John Prendergast - co-chair of “the Enough Project” wrote the following article as an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal.

Not on Our Watch, and the Enough Project cry out to President-Elect Barack Obama in hope that, despite the other enormous tasks that he will have starting January 20, 2009, he should also take on the problems of Africa - specifically Congo and Sudan. We are with them but we do not see how he could spread out in his first days in office beyond the clear focus on the US economy as we reported today based on Obama’s media presentation of today - November 22, 2008.

By coincidence, today I also met Safiyya Sarkin, President and Founder, Women Beyond Survival. She told me about East Chad, which has become an extension of the war in Darfur, a war caused by Sudan. Chad is not alone, The Central African Republic is in similar condition as extension of wars in South Sudan and Congo. The whole region is in flames and why cannot Africa get its act together and show that they are ready to speak up for their people?

The point is that a government should be responsible for the protection of its own citizens, and if they do not act according to the UN principle “The Responsibility To Protect” their neighbors should be helped to move in and establish order. And if the neighbors do not want to do it - or cannot - the UN should be able to take over. But did you ever look at what goes on at the UN Security Council? If there is no oil to protect, seemingly nobody acts, and if it is just one large power that works on that oil - what then? Will President Obama be ready to stand up and be counted as a defender of the people of Darfur even without a US interest in the oil of Sudan? We hope he will, but we are not convinced that this will be right at start. Further, we actually think that incoming Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who visited Darfur, and knows the atrocities, and being a woman, would be ready, after confirmation by the US Senate, to look at least on the women’s side of the East and Central African problems in line of www.womenbeyondsurvival.org

ICC President, Judge Philippe Kirsch, addresses United Nations General Assembly

The Hague, 31 October 2008

ICC-CPI-20081031-PR367_ENG

The President of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Judge Philippe Kirsch presented the annual report of the ICC to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on 30 October 2008.

President Kirsch provided an overview of recent developments at the Court and an assessment of where the Court stands ten years after the General Assembly convened the historic Rome Conference to create the ICC.  He noted that “the creation of the ICC reflected the resolve of States to give a permanent institutional dimension to a fundamental shift in international relations which had begun a few years earlier – from the culture of impunity to an approach based on respect for justice and the rule of law.”  President Kirsch observed that the Court today “is respected as an independent, purely judicial institution whose decisions will be enforced.”  Looking to the future, President Kirsch called on States, international organisations and civil society to continue to co-operate with the Court and to respect and to ensure respect for the Court’s independence and its purely judicial mandate.

The ICC is an independent, international judicial institution with jurisdiction over individuals accused of the most serious crimes of international concern: genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. It is independent from the UN. A relationship between the two institutions was established through an agreement concluded in 2004. In accordance with this agreement, the Court submits an annual report on its activities to the UN.

30.10.2008 - Address to the United Nations General Assembly, Judge Philippe Kirsch, President of the International Criminal Court
English | French

22.08.2008 - Fourth Report of the International Criminal Court to the United Nations for 2007/08
Arabic | Chinese | English | French | Russian | Spanish

For further information please contact Ms Sonia Robla, Head of Public Information and Documentation Section at +31 (0)70 515-8089 or +31 (0) 646448726 or at  sonia.robla at icc-cpi.int

Johann Hari: How we fuel Africa’s bloodiest war

What is rarely mentioned is the great global heist of Congo’s resources

Thursday, 30 October 2008, The Independent.

REUTERS
People throw stones at UN peacekeepers patrolling on a road in Kibati, about 16 miles north of Goma

Related Articles

• UN supremo urges Congo to reverse ‘collapse’
• Leading article: Ominous echoes of genocide
• Congo: the new exodus

The deadliest war since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe is starting again – and you are almost certainly carrying a blood-soaked chunk of the slaughter in your pocket. When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, with 5.4 million dead, the clichés of Africa reporting tumble out: this is a “tribal conflict” in “the Heart of Darkness”. It isn’t. The United Nations investigation found it was a war led by “armies of business” to seize the metals that make our 21st-century society zing and bling. The war in Congo is a war about you.

Every day I think about the people I met in the war zones of eastern Congo when I reported from there. The wards were filled with women who had been gang-raped by the militias and shot in the vagina. The battalions of child soldiers – drugged, dazed 13-year-olds who had been made to kill members of their own families so they couldn’t try to escape and go home. But oddly, as I watch the war starting again on CNN, I find myself thinking about a woman I met who had, by Congolese standards, not suffered in extremis.

I was driving back to Goma from a diamond mine one day when my car got a puncture. As I waited for it to be fixed, I stood by the roadside and watched the great trails of women who stagger along every road in eastern Congo, carrying all their belongings on their backs in mighty crippling heaps. I stopped a 27 -year-old woman called Marie-Jean Bisimwa, who had four little children toddling along beside her. She told me she was lucky. Yes, her village had been burned out. Yes, she had lost her husband somewhere in the chaos. Yes, her sister had been raped and gone insane. But she and her kids were alive.

I gave her a lift, and it was only after a few hours of chat along on cratered roads that I noticed there was something strange about Marie-Jean’s children. They were slumped forward, their gazes fixed in front of them. They didn’t look around, or speak, or smile. “I haven’t ever been able to feed them,” she said. “Because of the war.”

Their brains hadn’t developed; they never would now. “Will they get better?” she asked. I left her in a village on the outskirts of Goma, and her kids stumbled after her, expressionless.

There are two stories about how this war began – the official story, and the true story. The official story is that after the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu mass murderers fled across the border into Congo. The Rwandan government chased after them. But it’s a lie. How do we know? The Rwandan government didn’t go to where the Hutu genocidaires were, at least not at first. They went to where Congo’s natural resources were – and began to pillage them. They even told their troops to work with any Hutus they came across. Congo is the richest country in the world for gold, diamonds, coltan, cassiterite, and more. Everybody wanted a slice – so six other countries invaded.

These resources were not being stolen to for use in Africa. They were seized so they could be sold on to us. The more we bought, the more the invaders stole – and slaughtered. The rise of mobile phones caused a surge in deaths, because the coltan they contain is found primarily in Congo. The UN named the international corporations it believed were involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and more than 100 others. (They all deny the charges.) But instead of stopping these corporations, our governments demanded that the UN stop criticising them.

There were times when the fighting flagged. In 2003, a peace deal was finally brokered by the UN and the international armies withdrew. Many continued to work via proxy militias – but the carnage waned somewhat. Until now. As with the first war, there is a cover-story, and the truth. A Congolese militia leader called Laurent Nkunda – backed by Rwanda – claims he needs to protect the local Tutsi population from the same Hutu genocidaires who have been hiding out in the jungles of eastern Congo since 1994. That’s why he is seizing Congolese military bases and is poised to march on Goma.

It is a lie. François Grignon, Africa Director of the International Crisis Group, tells me the truth: “Nkunda is being funded by Rwandan businessmen so they can retain control of the mines in North Kivu. This is the absolute core of the conflict. What we are seeing now is beneficiaries of the illegal war economy fighting to maintain their right to exploit.”

At the moment, Rwandan business interests make a fortune from the mines they illegally seized during the war. The global coltan price has collapsed, so now they focus hungrily on cassiterite, which is used to make tin cans and other consumer disposables. As the war began to wane, they faced losing their control to the elected Congolese government – so they have given it another bloody kick-start.

Yet the debate about Congo in the West – when it exists at all – focuses on our inability to provide a decent bandage, without mentioning that we are causing the wound. It’s true the 17,000 UN forces in the country are abysmally failing to protect the civilian population, and urgently need to be super-charged. But it is even more important to stop fuelling the war in the first place by buying blood-soaked natural resources. Nkunda only has enough guns and grenades to take on the Congolese army and the UN because we buy his loot. We need to prosecute the corporations buying them for abetting crimes against humanity, and introduce a global coltan-tax to pay for a substantial peacekeeping force. To get there, we need to build an international system that values the lives of black people more than it values profit.

Somewhere out there – lost in the great global heist of Congo’s resources – are Marie-Jean and her children, limping along the road once more, carrying everything they own on their backs. They will probably never use a coltan-filled mobile phone, a cassiterite-smelted can of beans, or a gold necklace – but they may yet die for one.

To read more of Johann’s reporting on Congo, click here

 j.hari at independent.co.uk

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP, invites you to participate in the following side-event:

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO -
THE BIGGEST ENVIRONMENT CHALLENGE IN AFRICA TODAY.

Thursday 29th May, 13.15 - 14.45
Press Room, Maritim Hotel, Bonn
9th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity

Background:
The DR Congo is one of the worlds poorest, least developed and least stable countries whilst at the same time contains a wealth of natural resources including large areas of arable land, water , forest products and minerals. The forests of the DR Congo cover some one million square kilometers and as such can be also considered to be one of the largest and most important carbon sinks on the continent and the world. Armed conflict has raged across DR Congo on a large scale since 1994 resulting in more than five million deaths. Low level conflict and chronic instability continues to plague eastern Congo. Large scale displacement due to conflict is also evident with approximately 500,000 Internally Displaced Persons found in eastern DR Congo alone. The DRC economy is almost entirely driven by largely uncontrolled natural resource extraction and utilization. This has taken a significant toll on many aspects of the environment, with deforestation, species depletion and mining associated pollution being the three most significant issues. UNEP has recently launched a special programme to address these issues.

Agenda:

This side event will provide an introduction to the UNEP Programme in the Congo, including the following:

UNEP will report on our programme to assist the Congolese govt, including the post-conflict assessment, assistance with the environmental framework law, and facilitation of a stakeholder dialogue in the Virungas region.
The DR Congo government will outline its current and future actions.
The GRASP partnership will outline their latest activities in the country, including new funding for gorilla and chimpanzee conservation activities in Eastern DRC.
CMS will announce latest developments on the Gorilla Agreement, which comes into force on June 1.
CITES will report on latest figures the Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) programme has collected from Eastern DRC
UNESCO will report on their activities regarding World Heritage Sites in Danger
Professor Ian Swingland will discuss how DRC can benefit from using the market effectively to conserve its biodiversity

For further details, contact:  melanie.virtue at unep.org
 marie.khan at cbd.int or
David Ainsworth at 0170 558 5819 (until 30 May)  david.ainsworth at cbd.int
Information for journalists
To access the live webcast, please visit the home page of the CBD website,
www.cbd.int, and follow the links indicated.
For information on the ninth meeting of the conference of the Parties go
to:   http://www.cbd.int/cop9/
~~~~~~~~~
Melanie Virtue, Great Ape Survival Project (GRASP) Coordinator
GRASP Secretariat, UNEP, PO Box 30552, Nairobi, Kenya.
Ph: +254 20 762-4163 Fax: +254 20 762-3926 or 762-4300, Web:  www.unep.org
To call from outside Africa, dial Italy +39 0831 24 3000, wait for tone, then dial 124 4163

————————-

Please see attached the results from meeting of organizations of Indigenous Peoples and Traditional Communities from Latin America, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Papua, Indonesia, in the city of Manaus, Brazil for the Latin American Workshop, “Climate Change and Forest Peoples: Reducing  Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and the Rights of Indigenous and Traditional Peoples”, 1-4th of April, 2008.

Please forward to who ever you may think is interested, in particular indigenous and traditional population organizations. Please note that the Manaus Declaration and the Synthesis of the working groups are attached in all workshop languages: Spanish, French, Bahasa, English and Portuguese.

Other info:

Link to workshop other documents http://partnerpage.google.com/amazonfore…

Link workshop’s photos: http://amazonforestpeople.multiply.com/

Press news below English (NYT and Mongabay) and Spanish (El Publico)

Sorry for sending so many documents, but it is really important for the REDD Southern Outreach.

Best regards,

Paula Moreira
Advogada - Programa Mudança Climática
Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM)
(Amazon Institute of Environmental Research)
SCLN 210, Bloco C, Sala 211
70862-530 Brasília, DF Brasil
FONE/FAX + 55 61 3349.3698
 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/world/…

El Publico, Spain: ChequeIndígena (attached)

Mongabay: http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0407-manau…

Rainforest peoples form alliance to demand representation at climate talks
April 7, 2008

Rainforest peoples from 11 nations have formed a coalition to demand a greater say in future climate negotiations.

Meeting in Manaus, Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, representatives of forest communities from Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, French Guyana, Guyana, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname and Venezuela signed an agreement that calls on governments to respect forest dwellers’ rights to their land, natural resources and traditional livelihoods. The coalition hopes to gain access to ecosystem services payments like the proposed REDD (”reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation”) mechanism that won preliminary approval at last year’s U.N. climate talks in Bali, Indonesia. Proponents of the initiative say that REDD could deliver billions of dollars to rural communities while protecting forests and fighting climate change.

Some indigenous groups have been supportive of REDD, but others fear that the mechanism could worsen conflicts over land. The new alliance hopes that it can allay these concerns by ensuring that native peoples are represented in climate discussions.

The scenario provided by the REDD mechanisms brings together the interests of forest communities and the interests of scientists, environmentalists and members of social movements throughout the world, said Paulo Moutinho, from the Institute for Environmental Research of the Amazon (IPAM).

The indigenous people need to understand exactly what is happening to their forests. They have always been forgotten when it is time for decision-making and time has come for them to be taken into account because their ancestral knowledge on nature enables them to provide important inputs for the climate debate, added Yolanda Hernández, the indigenous representative of the Maya Kakchiquel people, of Guatemala.

Adilson Vieira, the Secretary General of the Amazon Work Group, said Brazil was an appropriate choice for the conference given the long battle by its native peoples to gain rights to the vast Amazon rainforest.

The experience of the people of the Brazilian forests in their struggle for the establishment of indigenous lands and extractive and sustainable development reserves is an experience that can be used by the other countries in the alliance as an inspiration on their path towards conquering their own rights, Vieira said.

The Manaus declaration was unanimously approved this Friday, April 4th, 2008 by 13 countries. UN observers and non-governmental organizations from Brazil, England and the United States attended the signing.

PRESS RELEASE:

International Alliance will unite the forest peoples

(The objective is to influence the UN debate on climate change)

Manaus, Brazil (4.4.08) – The forest peoples of the world are joining forces in in order to have access to resources deriving from the thriving green market, based on future mechanisms for the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), to be created through the UN Climate Convention. They want to use this opportunity so that their fundamental rights may be fulfilled: the right to land and to natural resources and respect to their traditional livelihoods.

Gathered in Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, the participants of the Peoples of the Forest and Climate Change workshop have just set the basis for an international alliance, based on a Brazilian model with a 20-year long history that brings together indigenous people, extractive producers and riverine populations, inspired in the efforts of Chico Mendes. The new alliance to be established will function as a network and transnational forum for the exchange of experiences between forest populations and mostly for influencing international discussions on climate, deforestation and mechanisms for the reduction of greenhouse emissions.

“When one single country manifests itself and claims its rights at the international level, it is a drop of water in the ocean”, compares Manoel da Cunha, the president of the National Rubber Tappers Council (CNS). According to Cunha, the initiative of establishing a transnational alliance brings greater density to the claims of the forest people and increases the chances from them to be answered.

The launching process to establish an International Alliance of Forest Peoples was unanimously approved this Friday (April 4th) by the 11 countries that signed the Manaus Declaration: Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guyana, French Guyana, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Suriname and Panama and by the members of delegations from Africa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Asia (Indonesia). The document was approved with the participation of UN observers and observers of non-governmental organizations from Brazil, England and the United States.

In spite of the differences in legislation regarding the use and conservation of forests that exist in these countries still hosting major extensions of rain forests, they share common problems and already feel the negative effects of climate change upon the planet in similar ways: severe draughts, floods, changes in the natural biological cycles, with interferences upon farming and fishing.

“The indigenous people need to understand exactly what is happening to their forests. They have always been forgotten when it is time for decision-making and time has come for them to be taken into account because their ancestral knowledge on nature enables them to provide important inputs for the climate debate”, said Yolanda Hernández, the indigenous representative of the Maya Kakchiquel people, of Guatemala.

“The experience of the people of the Brazilian forests in their struggle for the establishment of indigenous lands and extractive and sustainable development reserves is an experience that can be used by the other countries in the alliance to be established as an inspiration on their path towards conquering their own rights”, said Adilson Vieira, the Secretary General of the Amazon Work Group (GTA).

The differences that exist both inside as well as in between these countries may be better addressed in their quest for common solutions for ensuring the worthy survival of the people and the conservation of forests, i.e., for maintaining the environmental services required to the planet’s balance. “Therefore, the scenario provided by the REDD mechanisms brings together the interests of forest communities and the interests of scientists, environmentalists and members of social movements throughout the world”, says Paulo Moutinho, from the Institute for Environmental Research of the Amazon (IPAM). According to the coordinator of Instituto Socioambiental, Márcio Santilli, this also is an economic opportunity capable of changing the balance of forces on behalf of the acknowledgement of the territorial rights of the traditional and indigenous peoples.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

More information available at www.amazonforestpeople.com

Photos at http://amazonforestpeople.multiply.com/

For interviews, please contact Jaime Gesisky – (55) ** 61 81226042 –  jaimegesisky at gmail.com ; Milena del Rio do Valle (55)**  91 8121 6940 –  mdrvalle at gmail.com

Modern Purim thoughts include the UN.

Purim is the day when Jews remember the plans made by Haman to eradicate all the Jews of the old Persian empire. He did not succeed and paid with his life - as we say - the rest is history.

Jews were ordered to remember what happened then - so they read that story - the Megillah (the parchment of Esther) - year after year - on the evening before Purim. This year it happened on Thursday, March, 20th - so last night we participated at the “Megillah Madness” - at The New York Synagogue in Manhattan - led by Rabbi Marc Schneier.
The celebration was at very high tone and at serious decibels - this to the sound and projections of the Beatles Music and the noise of the traditional “grogger” rattles. Each time the name Haman is read - and this happens 54 times during the readings - mayhem brakes lose and the costumed servers came forth to bring us delicious Haman’s Ears (”Oznei Haman” in Hebrew - staffed with marmalade or poppy seeds), or glasses of sweet whisky spiked drinks. Purim is in effect an annual of catharsis, healthy for the mind and the soul. Quite nice when all you are supposed is to remember evil, so you are better prepared when it strikes again. You see, Purim does in effect obligate today the State of Israel to the UN mandate of: “The Principle to Protect.”

On Purim, the Jewish Jockers are used to run a competition for the coveted “Haman of the Year Award” and this year’s two top candidates were two heads of UN Member States who appear daily on the UN menu: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir of the Sudan. The former attacks Jews verbally every day, and has also sponsored militants that fight Jews and Israel daily, while the latter was reportedly actually engaged in genocide against less Arabized Africans of Darfur. www.SustainabiliTank.info has posted many times articles on above deeds. We even tried to understand the background of the genocide in Darfur by considering climate change aspects as an influence on what started the warfare. But whatever the reasons, it is the government of Khartoom that backed its favorites. We see here fights between intruding, more Arabized, pastoralists against lesser Arabized, and blacker, agriculturalists. Our claim was that this is genocide that was started by increased desertification in the region. The UN as an institution did not want to hear such arguments, and eventually it took Sir Nicholas Stern, and the intervention of the UK government at the UN Security Council, to vindicate last year what we were saying three years ago. Whatever the issue, it was al-Bashir’s responsibility “TO PROTECT” his citizens. Instead he puts hurdles before those from the outside that came to help.
The UN Security Council has had Darfur on its agenda for five years, and the genocide continues. But the Council spends disproportionately more time considering Israel’s actions with various UN diplomats berating Israel for defending itself vigorously.
Our “Haman of the Year Award” goes to President al-Bashir. If his enemies don’t get him, the UN has established an International Criminal Court and we wonder why was it not invoked yet in the matter of Sudan’s actions in Darfur. Our website described last week how Dr. al-Bashir let UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wait for him in Dakar, and never showed up for the meeting claiming a headache.

Happy Purim - and I would like to note further that this year Purim falls on the same day as Good Friday - or Easter Friday. This has happened only the second time since 1910.

Easter occurs on the Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, and that full moon usually coincides with the first day of Passover. That is how both religions - Judaism and Christianity have the renewal holidays aligned. This year this is not the case, and the reason is that it is leap year in the Jewish calendar, and an added month (a 13-th month) has been introduced. That brings instead the strange alignment between Easter and Purim. We would like to see in this an opportunity for healing - in the sense that we could say changes could be introduced so that Haman-type of hatred is removed from our lives - our society gets renewed like at Passover time, though this is Purim time. Would it be so terrible to ask the UN to consider this proposition of making sure that evil is remembered and actually acted against?

Forest Day: Shaping the Debate on Forests and Climate Change in Central Africa.
Palais de Congrès, Yaoundé, Cameroon.
Thursday, 24 April 2008, 09.00 – 17.00

‘Forests are a key issue for climate change discussions’, said Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC), during last December’s international climate meeting in Bali. The conference delegates also expressed an urgent need for ‘meaningful action to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation’ (REDD).

The Central African Congo Basin, the second largest forest area in the world, will play a crucial role in the success of any climate change policy. Proposed new climate initiatives raise questions about the impact and role of these initiatives in the region.

That is why CIFOR is organizing Forest Day – to help shape the debate on forests and climate change in Central Africa. Forest Day will be held on 24 April 2008.

Speakers representing a broad range of forest stakeholders will present and discuss prominent forest issues central to the climate change debate. There will be scientists, local and international NGOs, university lecturers, policymakers, communities, experts and others interested in the subject.

Forest Day aims to provide a regional perspective on the discussions surrounding forests and climate change. By debating and analyzing the social, economic, scientific, technological and political issues, Forest Day will provide stepping stones for informed climate policies in the region.

Presentations, discussions and debates will focus on:

- Forest’s role in climate change mitigation
- REDD and mitigating climate change in Central Africa
- REDD, markets and governance
- Forests and climate change in Central Africa
- Financing mechanisms
- Estimating carbon stock
- Pilot projects and their technical, monitoring and data-related challenges
- The carbon market and the forestry sector
- REDD and rural poverty
- Interactions between REDD and other forest management approaches

Contact Information:

Janneke Romijn
Coordinator for Forest Day - Cameroon
Email:  ForestDay-Cameroon at cgiar.org
P.O. Box 2008, Messa, Yaoundé, Cameroon
Tel: (237) 2222 74 49 / (237) 2222 74 51.
Fax: (237) 2222 74 50.

 http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/Regions/CAfri…

Africa - Rich nations attacked for failing Congo.
By Frances Williams in Geneva, for the Financial Times,  January 2 2008.

The head of the United Nations refugee agency has accused the rich world of failing to respond adequately to the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, even as its multinationals “systematically loot” the country of its resources.

In an interview with the FT shortly after his return from the DRC, António Guterres, UN high commissioner for refugees, said western assistance came nowhere near meeting people’s needs in a vast country where continuing instability and widespread poverty had created one of the worst humanitarian situations in the world.

Mr Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister, attributed this neglect in part to the fact that, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan or even Somalia, misery in the DRC involved no perceived threat to western governments.

“While multinational corporations extract the country’s natural resources, governments around the world have done little to address the needs of the Congolese people suffering from conflict and poverty,” he said.  He actually stoped very short from using the word looting.  www.SustainabiliTank.info comment)

“Even if we face a humanitarian disaster, as in North Kivu where there has been a dramatic increase in violence, nobody in the outside world feels threatened and so the international community is not really paying attention to DRC.”

Aid groups say 3m-4m people in the DRC, a country with a population of about 60m, have died in recent years as a result of conflict, poverty and disease. While most of the country is now stable – the civil war ended in 2003 and UN-supervised elections were held in 2006 – 400,000 people have been uprooted in the past 12 months by a resurgence of violence in the eastern province of North Kivu.