New film on children in the DRC

Coinciding with new reports of the gang rape of nearly 200  Congolese women is the launch of a new film looking specifically at young people in the DRC. As well as being highly informative, for each view of Children Of The Congo – From War To Witches money is donated to the Eastern Congo Initiative.

Children Of The Congo From War To Witches
Uploaded by renderyardchannel. – Films online.
The film investigates how children have been affected by the brutal war in Congo over the last decade. It documents the plight of street children living in Kinshasa and confirms the wide-spread accusations of child witchcraft, torture and child prostitution. Children of the Congo also examines the efforts to reintegrate demobilized child soldiers, displaced refugees, and orphaned children following the eruption of the massive Nyiragongo volcano, near the city of Goma in Eastern Congo.

Meanwhile a Congolese letterto Hillary Clinton is gathering numbers. Started by Congolese elected officials from the province of South Kivu who originally wrote to the Secretary of State during her visit to the Congo in August 2009, this letter makes strong recommendations for how the United States and the international community should be engaging with the situation in the Congo. In light of rebels raping women and babies near a UN base, this letter stresses that success in bringing peace to the DRC is a measure of the success of the UN as an organisation:

‘The DR Congo that you visit so far is not only affected by the result of wars of aggression unjustly imposed on our people for almost 15 years, but is also a country where the democratic process led by the United Nations is bogged down, thus bringing into question the credibility of the United Nations‘.

Backing up this focus on the UN’s role is a large group on Facebook; ‘Stop the killing in Congo’ which openly demands that ‘the international community to stop backing a strategy which is devastating ordinary people’s lives’. This refers to the 2010 UN campaign, known as Amani Leo/Peace Today. This operation was launched with safeguards for civilian protection built in, but the number of reports of violence received by Ch16 this month suggest that so far, this set of safeguards has been inadequate.