'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
Attacks by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern Beni region is forcing families from their lands in the so-called “triangle of death.”
Displaced mother Priscilla, 48, and her son Josua, 7 months, live in a makeshift site in Mabasele, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. © UNHCR/Natalia Micevic
By Vania Turner in Kalemie, Democratic Republic of the Congo*
Thousands of children are thought to be missing as DR Congo’s displacement crisis deepens.
Faiza, 31, says her children were kidnapped – and probably killed – when their village came under attack. © UNHCR/Colin Delfosse
NEW YORK, 16 September 2024 (UNICEF)* – UNICEF has launched an appeal for US$58.8 million to address the rising mpox crisis across six African countries where children are most affected.
(UN News)* — Violence against children caught in armed conflict reached “extreme levels” last year, with a “shocking” 21 per cent increase in extreme violations, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a report published on Thursday [13 June 2024].
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© UNICEF/Tess Ingram | A young boy recovers in hospital in Gaza after the shelter he was living in with his family was bombed.
Children were killed and maimed in unprecedented numbers in places such as Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, notably Gaza; Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Ukraine, his annual report on Children and Armed Conflict revealed.
The alarming increase was due to the evolving nature, complexity, and intensification of armed conflict, as well as the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, the report said.
In Uvira, eastern Congo, Lake Tanganyika waters have risen so high that the town is flooded. People have been forced to move from their homes, and fields and houses have been destroyed. An estimated 180,000 people have been affected, and over 142,000 people have been displaced. 4,500 homes, 53 schools, and over 124 hectares of farmland were destroyed. Credit: WFP/Benjamin Anguandia
He is among 9.8 million people in Zambia to have been affected by a severe drought linked to the ongoing effects of the El Niño weather phenomenon.
Morehouse College professors protested US complicity in Congo Genocide by unfurling a Congolese flag behind Joe Biden as he addressed the 2024 graduating class. A brief, quixotic coup took place in Congo on the same day.
In 2011, Congolese American Christian Malanga offered to pay me to promote his candidacy for president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I declined, believing he suffered from delusions of grandeur.
Siddarth Kara’s book exposes the exploitation behind the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Photo Courtesy of Siddharth Kara
“Unspeakable riches have brought the people of the Congo little other than unspeakable pain.” So writes Siddharth Kara in Cobalt Red, How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. It’s one of the many poetic phrases that make this book easy on the ear but hard on the heart and mind.
There’s pleasure in turning the pages of such finely crafted prose, pain in knowing that, if you have half a heart, you’ll never be able to see your smartphone, laptop, tablet, solar power system, or electric car quite the same way again, that you’ll see blood all over the supply chain that put them in your hand, on your roof, or in your driveway.
(UN News)* — Truck drivers in southern Africa who have been recruited to traffic or smuggle people illegally are learning about the risks involved thanks to the UN drugs and crime agency, UNODC.
“I used to transport sugar from Malawi,” said an anonymous driver, who was arrested for migrant trafficking. “In 2016, I had to wait for several days at a border crossing in Tanzania for customs checks. I was approached by a man who offered me a lot of money to transport goats.”
His story is not unique.
(UN News)* — The international community must act now to protect future generations from the scourge of conflict-related sexual violence, the UN’s advocate on the issue, Pramila Patten, told the Security Council on Friday [
“Every new wave of warfare brings with it a rising tide of human tragedy, including new waves of war’s oldest, most silenced and least condemned crime,” she said.
The Council meeting to examine implementation of its resolutions on conflict-related sexual violence was convened by the United Kingdom, which holds the rotating presidency this month.
Presenting her latest annual report, Virginia Gamba, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, appealed for “bold and resolute action” to protect boys and girls at risk of death, recruitment, rape and other horrors.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 