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UN:
UN HUMANITARIAN CHIEF CALLS FOR BOLSTERED PEACE EFFORTS IN EASTERN DR
CONGO: 12/9/2007 (MaximsNews.com, U.N.) |
UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com@
U.N./
- 12 September 2007 –
Increased dialogue and
negotiation, and not a military solution, are crucial in protecting civilians
from the violent clashes wracking the troubled eastern region of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC), United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator John
Holmes told the Security Council yesterday.
“We
need strong, urgent and concerted political and diplomatic action, by the DRC
Government, by the concerned governments of the region and by the international
community as a whole,” he said in an address to the 15-member body.
Mr.
Holmes, who also serves as Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs,
briefed the Council on his recent five-day mission to the vast Central African
nation.
In
Kinshasa, he expressed his concern to President Joseph Kabila and Government
officials over the “potentially catastrophic humanitarian consequences of
further fighting” among DRC forces, renegade troops and armed groups in the
east, particularly North and South Kivu.
Nearly 1
million people have been internally displaced because of the fighting in the
Kivus, and in North Kivu alone, roughly 300,000 people have been force to leave
their homes since last November, he said.
In North
Kivu, Mr. Holmes visited a camp in Mugunga, which he characterized as “a grim
sight.” The capacities of UN agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
and the Red Cross to distribute relief supplies are being stretched to the
limit, and “we have recently noticed trends both of longer-lasting
displacement than in the past and self-segregation along ethnic lines among the
displaced,” he said.
At the
Panzi Clinic near Bukavu in South Kivu, the Emergency Relief Coordinator heard
first-hand from women who are victims of brutal sexual violence, which he said
is a “particularly horrific feature of the DRC.”
He noted
that the statistics are also shocking, with 15,000 women being treated since
Pranzi opened its doors in 1999, nearly a third of them children. Almost 30,000
cases of sexual violence were registered in South Kivu last year, but “who can
say what the true figure is? For many victims, registering a case and speaking
out means almost certain ostracism by their own family and community,” he
said.
The
climate of “virtually total impunity” for such horrendous crimes must be
reversed, Mr. Holmes told the Council. The Government must stamp out
disorderliness in the military, and the justice system must be improved to bring
perpetrators of sexual violence to justice.
“Everything
in the DRC is huge, including its problems,” said Mr. Holmes. Emphasizing that
the country’s crisis needs to receive the same level of attention as that in
Darfur, he appealed to donors for increased funding, given the urgent
humanitarian needs in the Kivus.
A brutal
six-year civil war in DRC cost 4 million lives in fighting and attendant hunger
and disease, widely considered the most lethal conflict in the world since World
War II. Last year, the country held its first democratic elections in over four
decades, the largest and most complex polls the UN has ever helped to organize.
“The
point is that if we allow these issues to fester further they may put at risk
all we have achieved in the DRC in the last few years, at such difficulty and
cost,” he said. “That would be the biggest tragedy of all.”
Labels: United
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