Since the war in the Congo has come up before, Congo war-driven crisis kills 45,000 a month: study:
War, disease and malnutrition are killing 45,000 Congolese every month in a conflict-driven humanitarian crisis that has claimed 5.4 million victims in nearly a decade, a survey released on Tuesday said.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which carried out the study with Australia’s Burnet Institute, said Democratic Republic of Congo’s 1998-2003 war and its aftermath had caused more deaths than any other conflict since World War Two.
“Congo’s loss is equivalent to the entire population of Denmark or the state of Colorado.
I assume these organizations have a bias toward inflating body counts. But even if they’re exaggerating by an order of magnitude, that would be ~500,000. It seems to me that most people operate under the assumption that rhetorical protestations of the universality of ethical concerns are a necessary Noble Lie. But when looking at these data it seems more a farce.
Until this conversation flared up, I didn’t realize Congoleze were dying in such high numbers.
220 died yesterday after failing to heed warnings to evacuate the area where a fuel truck had crashed and spilled its contents.
They were trying to score free gas, and someone lit a kerosene lamp when it got dark.
Unbelievable.
I am not personally scarred by this as I know I am supposed to pretend to be.
I don’t think we can feel the same level of agony for the suffering of distant peoples as we do for near ones (as has been discussed…).
BUT
I don’t think it’s quite right to say, “I couldn’t care less.” Also, the more we SEE (and before now, we’ve seen almost nothing, because we’ve been watching video of Israelis storming a would-be-blockade-breaking ship ad infinitum), the more I think a certain amount of sincere empathy kicks in.
Most of the apathy regarding the Congo is the result of lack of information.
If I picked up the newspaper, and it said, “Congo gets its act together. Income, infant mortality, math scores suddenly on par with Europe, Korea, and Japan” I would feel fairly pleased.
The concern is admittedly thin, but not non-existent. Maybe just latent or not yet developed.