One-third of their babies will be born with HIV. As many as 15,000 people will die within the next three years, and more than 1 million of their people already infected. Conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo are dismal now taking death tolls and conditions back to the place it was before treatment became available, all because many the world countries of the Global Fund weaseled out of their promises to provide antiviral drugs. Out of more than a million HIV/AIDS patients, only 44,000 receive treatment today in the Congo.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) also blames the Congolese for not making this pandemic a priority. Conditions are horrifying as people flood to clinics with advanced illnesses and MSF doctors are crying out for help before it gets worse. The government ignores this silent massacre. It spends an average of $2 a year for every infected person.
Most of the world—including the media—has turned away from the atrocities of the region. War plagues its history in the fight to be the superior ethnic group and allows money-grubbing corporations to rape and pillage the land and wildlife as much as the government does its own people.
Though true figures are much higher, the United Nations recorded 11,000 rapes in 2010 with reports of mass rapes of women and children (both girls and boys) in the North Kivu province in July and August. Rape is a horrific weapon of war and more than 200,000 innocents from all ethnic groups in the region endured or died because of rape and violent sexual assaults by rebel forces and the Congolese army. At war with seven neighboring nations since 1994, the people and armies have penetrated the Congo for its rich mineral resources resulting in an ongoing battle for political power. Logging, poaching and mining are destroying this vast resource at an alarming rate, with little very little reported by international media.
War Child, a United Kingdom relief organization, calls the conflict in the Congo “Africa’s First World War” and is the earth’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
Statistics on the region are sobering.
With a population of more than 7.1 million, the Congo has lost more than 5.4 million people. One in five children will not live to see a fifth birthday. More than one million people have been forced to leave their homes torn by war and genocide, many fleeing into the depths of this tropical paradise and destroying the natural habitat that this planet depends on. With more than 20,000 peacekeepers, the U.N. reports 100,000 civilians have fled their homes because of raids on villages and clashes between rival militia groups since last November.
Conflict is rooted in gluttony. Gold is a large resource and responsible for the majority of the ongoing bloody wars and massacres. Government or rebel forces control mines and the conditions of the men and children miners are horrifying. Western consumers unknowingly fuel oppression of the Congolese. The Congo is the world’s supplier of minerals such as coltan, tin and tungsten, all minerals used for the fabrication of consumer electronics. Manufacturers continue to make disposable electronics as violence escalates.
Things look bleak and hopeless for the people of the Congo and very few are listening to the screams of the innocents. Before you rush out to buy your next piece of technology, use your cell phone to your ear, fail to recycle electronics, remember that lives are being abandoned, forgotten and lost for that luxury. Post that to Facebook via your mobile device.