Answering Kennedy’s Call
"There are few worse places, if any, to be a child," said Amani Matabaro, former President of the Bukavu Mwangaza Rotary Club of E. Congo.
While we love to share the amazing impact your giving makes in the lives of the children and adults we partner with in eastern Congo, we also know it is important to share the horrific context in which these children we serve are not only surviving but thriving.
As noted in the September 2023 press briefing from the UN’s children’s agency UNICEF on Congo (DRC) and specifically the eastern part of the country where we are located, “the war-torn country had the world's highest number of UN-verified violations against children in armed conflict.”
The violence "has reached unprecedented levels," said Grant Leaity, UNICEF's representative in the country. "There are few worse places, if any, to be a child."
“The east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is facing one of the world’s most complex and forgotten crises. Around 2.8 million children are bearing the brunt of violent conflict, being recruited by armed groups, losing their families and homes, and being exposed to ever-growing levels of sexual- and gender-based violence.” (ReliefWeb infographic here)
It’s a harrowing and difficult report to read, a content warning for sexual assault and violence against young children.
In this space where so many use violence to control innocent civilians, our Founding Director Amani Matabaro’s vision for active peace is revolutionary. Each week at the Congo Peace School, the students and staff focus on a principle of peace and nonviolence as taught by Martin Luther King, Jr.
This last week the focus was the development and interpretation of Principle Three of Kingian Nonviolence: Nonviolence Seeks to Defeat Injustice, or Evil, Not People.
Training the teachers, Amani helped them put the concept into vocabulary that is easier for the students to understand – to attack the forces of evil, not the persons doing evil, so the students and staff could focus on how to practice the principle in the context of eastern DRC.
Amani spoke to some of the Peace School students to ask how they understood the principle, and how they are putting it into practice in their own lives.
As it is not located in a mining area, The Congo Peace School is in a place of relative peace, but the students and staff and community are surrounded by the violence of militias and war, the threat of being recruited as a child soldier, and the extreme poverty that leads to malnutrition, child marriages, and gender-based violence.
From the UNICEF summary of remarks: “In the first three months of 2023, in North Kivu alone, more than 38,000 cases of sexual- and gender-based violence were reported. That’s a 37 per cent increase compared to the same time period in 2022. Said another way: in just one year, there have been 10,000 additional reports of sexual- and gender-based violence. Those are the ones reported. And in North Kivu alone.”
“As well as unprecedented levels of violence, the lives of children in eastern Congo are threatened by epidemics and malnutrition. Around 1.2 million children under five in the east are facing the risk of acute malnutrition.
UNICEF’s Leaity warned about the risk of "acceptance of something which is unacceptable."
"As the world looks away, we are failing the children of DRC,"
he said.
Harlan Green © 2020
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
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