Basic information* Capital: Kinshasa
Population: 56 million (UN, 2005)
Area: 2.34 million sq km (905,354 sq miles)
Major religions: Christianity, Islam
Major languages: French, Lingala, Kiswahili, Kikongo, Tshiluba
Life expectancy: 42 years (men), 44 years (women) (UN)
President: Joseph Kabila
Human Development Index: 167/177 |
From BBC online:
“A vast country with immense economic resources, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR has been at the centre of what could be termed Africa's world war. This has left it in the grip of a humanitarian crisis. The five-year conflict pitted government forces, supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda. Despite a peace deal and the formation of a transitional government in 2003, the threat of civil war remains.
The war claimed an estimated three million lives, either as a direct result of fighting or because of disease and malnutrition. It has been called possibly the worst emergency to unfold in Africa in recent decades.”
BBC September 2006
Refugees**
- Refugees and asylum seekers: 486,587
- Number of internally displaced persons: Unknown
- Total: 486,587
- Number of asylum applications to the UK (June 05 - June 06): 495
Current Situation
From Human Rights Watch: “The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken the lives of over 3.5 million people since 1998. Every day more than 1,200 civilians die, some directly from the violence, many others due to the lack of medical care and hunger. Their deaths go mostly unnoticed
Congo’s first democratic elections in over 40 years are scheduled to start on July 30. The country is on the brink: the elections are tipped to change the current tragedy and help the country turn a corner. The German government, working under the umbrella of the European Union, has authorised that 780 of its troops help in this effort. Yet the challenge in turning Congo from a failed state to a stable and democratic one is immense and the underlying problems of this huge nation will not be fixed by elections alone.”
Human Rights Watch, August 2006
From Amnesty International: “I am standing in a makeshift ward in the Panzi hospital in Bukavu, the only hospital that is trying to deal with the bushfire of sexual violence in eastern Congo. Most have wrapped themselves deep in their blankets so I can only see their eyes staring blankly at me. Dr Denis Mukwege is speaking. 'Around 10 per cent of the gang-rape victims have had this happen to them,' he says softly, his big hands tucked into his white coat. 'We are trying to reconstruct their vaginas, their anuses, their intestines. It is a long process.'
We walk out into the courtyard. 'We started with a catastrophe we just couldn't understand,' he says quietly. One day early in the war, a woman was carried here on her grandmother's back after an eight-hour trek. 'I had never seen anything like it. She had been gang-raped and then her legs had been shot to pieces. I operated on her on a table with no equipment, no medicine.
She was only the first. 'We suddenly had so many women coming in with post-rape lesions and injuries I could never have imagined. Our minds just couldn't take in what these women had suffered.' The competing armies had discovered that rape was an efficient weapon in this war. Even in this small province, South Kivu, the UN estimates that 45,000 women were raped last year alone.”
Johann Harri, Report for Amnesty International, August 2006
* This information is taken from the BBC's country profiles
**These numbers were taken from UNHCR figures published June 2nd 2006 and Home Office figures June 2005 - June 2006
