Picture of deforestation in the DRC. Photograph by Daniel Beltra of The Guardian When Charles Marlow made his way up the Congo in search of the notorious Mr. Kurtz at the turn of the twentieth century, he described the land as one of impenetrable jungle, a steamy, dense, green world to which white man had very little access. Over a hundred years later, the landscape immortalized by Joseph Conrad has been remarkably well preserved. While the Con...
On December 6 this past year, I was anxious to get to Goma, a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to witness the nation’s presidential election. While my flight was originally at 10:50 a.m., I headed to the Jomo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi at 7 a.m. in hope that I could instead catch an earlier flight. Little did I know that my desire to get to Goma in time for this historic statement would be worthless; the rest of the DRC and I...
...with less than 500 rebels. Soon it turned against its own Acholi people, first to punish them for occasional cooperation with government forces, and later to spread the terror gripping the region to the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. Because of this and his early receipt of support from the Sudanese government for fighting its South Sudanese minority and their SPLA rebel forces, Kony lost popular support in norther...
...and 2007, the UN at large took 501 actions (resolutions, decisions, reports, cases, letters, and visits) on Israel and 220 on Sudan. This year alone, Israel has received 135 actions, while Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo have received 69 and 40, respectively. Last year, at the Human Rights Council, Israel was top on the list with 39 actions, the US pulled in at second with 29, while Cote D’Ivoire had 9. This year, 15 actions have been...
...cts of land from developing nations. Most of the land sold to foreign investors in this way is in eastern Sub-Saharan Africa. The deals are concentrated in five countries: Ethiopia, Tanzania, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Madagascar, according to a 2012 report from Oxfam International. The intended uses of the acquired land are diverse, but biofuel extraction and food crop production are usually the primary objectives. Land grabbin...
...communities—missing out on? A momentary lapse in realistic self-awareness is necessary here: science and technology do not have the power to end tragedies such as the violence and systematic rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Furthermore, as the eloquent scholar of the internet and society Evgeny Morozov would remind us, the viability of tools such as the internet, in creating significant political change depends greatly on political will,...
...in the entire continent. Certainly, an escalated conflict in Kenya would have severe implications for a region already plagued by ongoing conflicts in Somalia and Darfur and continued instability in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But the entire continent? This seems unlikely. There is no logical reason that Kenya would represent a tipping point for investment, given all the preexisting sources of political instability in Africa. There is also...
...r’s initiating an investigation may pressure states into commencing war crimes trials, either nationally or at the ICC. Indeed, the first cases in the history of the ICC resulted from such pressure. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) referred the violence in Ituri to the ICC for investigation only after the Prosecutor threatened to initiate an investigation himself, and the DRC acted to avoid the public embarrassment of being investigated by...
...he Holocaust.” Obama explained that when he discussed slavery with his children, he emphasized that it is important to “use [these] extraordinary moments to widen the lens to focus on the issues of Darfur, the violence in the Congo, sexual violence and other instances of contemporary human cruelty.” Yet, Obama neglected to include the problem of slavery itself. In 2011, slavery still has significant contemporary relevance because it still exists....
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