Paul Carlson Partnership | Investing for Sustainable Communities

Kristof: Getting Smart on Aid

Good column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, forwarded to us by our own Erika Beckstrom. The smartest brief discussion on economic aid that you’ll see for awhile. It’s also very nice that two examples he mentions of effective aid are de-worming children and microfinance — both of which the Paul Carlson Partnership is doing in Congo.

SAJ

Getting Smart on Aid

One cost of the uproar over Greg Mortenson, and the allegations that he fictionalized his school-building story in the best-selling book “Three Cups of Tea,” is likely to be cynicism about whether aid makes a difference.
But there are also deeper questions about how best to make an impact — even about how to do something as simple as get more kids in school. Mortenson and a number of other education organizations mostly build schools. That seems pretty straightforward. If we want to get more kids in school around the world, what could make more sense than building schools?
How about deworming kids?
But, first, a digression: a paean to economists.
Read more….

“rape in the DRC… has emerged as one of the great human crises of our time”

Worthwhile article found on the BBC online–bound to provoke either rage or despair when you read it.

DR Congo: 48 rapes every hour, US study finds

A study by US scientists has concluded that an average of 48 women and girls are raped every hour in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The study, in the American Journal of Public Health, found that 400,000 females aged 15-49 were raped over a 12-month period in 2006 and 2007.
That rate is significantly higher than the previous estimate of 16,000 rapes reported in one year by the UN.
The DRC says the figures reflect women being better able to report rape.
Sexual violence has long been a dominant feature of the continuing conflict in eastern DR Congo.
Amber Peterman, leading author of the study, said: “Our results confirm that previous estimates of rape and sexual violence are severe underestimates of the true prevalence of sexual violence occurring in the DRC.
“Even these new, much higher figures still represent a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of sexual violence because of chronic underreporting due to stigma, shame, perceived impunity, and exclusion of younger and older age groups as well as men,” she added.
Read more …

Women in Congo: How Much Do You Know?

What else do you know about women in Congo? Besides the outrageous rapes that are acts of war, that is. That epidemic is appalling beyond words, and simple brother- and sisterhood in the human family calls us to do anything we can to end it.

But that’s not the only problem women have in Congo. To give just a few examples that aren’t even related to war:

A woman in the DR Congo is treated as a minor, in the custody of her husband. She can’t make a legal contract without her husband, or travel out of the country without his permission. And if she marries a foreigner, she loses her Congolese citizenship.

A woman in a rural village lives in deep poverty. She does all the work to gather food for the family, walking as much as several kilometers just to bring back water. If the family is growing food of their own, she does all the work after her husband clears the land. She plants, tills, harvests — all by hand, of course. And if she grows enough food to be able to sell some at market, she carries it there herself and sells it. Then her husband takes the money she earns.

A Congolese woman has just over a 50% chance of being able to read and write. She probably did not have access to a secondary school education, and may have had only two years of primary school. She has no hope of ever being able to take part in the leadership and decision-making of her country. There are so few women who can.

And, wherever she lives, she may well be subject to some kind of violence. Is that so surprising, when she and all women are regarded as worth less than men?

A woman living in the eastern part of the country, particularly in North or South Kivu, where the war continues, lives in constant fear of being raped — by militia members or even by regular soldiers. She most likely has family members and friends who have been victims. It has happened to literally hundreds of thousands of women in the past decade or so.

And even a woman living many miles from the war zone has a 17 times greater chance of being raped, by a civilian, than just six years ago.

We all need to understand more about what women in Congo face every day. With the goal of offering some help towards that, we’ve compiled some resources on women in Congo. We invite you to take a look, check into some of the sources we suggest, and come back here to post your reactions. If you have suggestions for more good resources, this is a good place to let us know about them.

Get involved at least enough to understand. For the sake of the women in Congo.

SAJ

Double Whammy

One day last week two things I read collided with each other in a more kinetic way than usual. First I stumbled over the current issue of Forced Migration Review, a publication I hadn’t known existed. It’s published by the Refugee Studies Center at the University of Oxford (England), and the current issue is on Congo. The 30 articles (they’re not terribly long, don’t worry) focus on the people in Congo who have been forced from their homes by the civil wars of 1996-2003 and the continuing violence in the east. It’s good stuff, with data, analysis, and recommendations, written by people with solid Congo experience.

When I took a break from ransacking the FMR online to check my email, one of the items was the day’s Advent devotional from 4th Presbyterian Church here in Chicago. The reflection for the day was written by John Vest, one of the pastors at 4th Church, and the assigned scripture passage was Jeremiah 23:3-4: “Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock…” Suddenly the mental machinery began rattling, and it grew louder as I read on.

John has graciously agreed to our republishing his meditation here. First, two notes: (1) if you’re interested in reading more from John, see his blog, “Posts from the Blog of an (un)Tamed Cynic”; and (2) it’s easy for us to visualize the promised shepherds as those of us in the West who are trying to be of some use over there; we need to include Congolese shepherds in our mental pictures as well. Here’s John:

Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 23:3-4
“Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord” (NRSV).

Reflection
In the face of human failure to lead people away from pain and suffering, God boldly promises to intervene in human history and raise up new shepherds that will lead us to peace, security, and prosperity.

Centuries and continents removed from the situation that gave rise to these prophetic words, for those with eyes to see, the suffering of our world is just as palpable for us as it was for the Jewish exiles that first heard these words of hope. Like them, we too wonder who will be the leaders that will bring back the glory days of the past. We too wonder who will lead us to peace in places of simmering conflict and outright war. We too wonder who will have a clear vision of a better future for all and a correspondingly clear strategy for getting us there.

Until those leaders rise, we wait. Like generations before us, we wait.

As Christians, we are tempted to read Jesus into this passage. We are tempted to assume that this was some kind of prediction about the Messiah and be content with it as a beautiful Advent passage of hope. But this promise is about shepherds (plural), not a shepherd.

Perhaps some of us hearing these words today are the shepherds God is talking about. Perhaps now is the time for a new intervention. Perhaps now is the time for peace, security, and prosperity for all of God’s people.

Perhaps Advent is not just about waiting. Perhaps it is also about listening for God’s call.

Prayer
God of bold and mysterious promises, give me eyes to see the suffering of your children and ears to hear your voice calling me–even me!–to lead them home. Amen.

Putting Africa and Congo in Perspective

Among the many good things the Thornblooms have done for Congo, Jan has a good eye for news and she takes the trouble to pass it along. Last week she came up with a real gem: Someone has taken the outline map of Africa and set into it the shapes of the U.S., China, and other countries in the world. The resulting graphic, titled “The True Size of Africa,” is a real eye-opener. Too many people have a rather vague idea of Africa (it is, after all, on the bottom half of the globe….) — not to mention those who treat the continent as a country. Here’s a link to the graphic. Take a look. It’s worth it.

A couple years ago we came across another effective graphic. “Stunning” might be a better word. This one takes the comparative death tolls of the Congolese civil war and other post-Cold War conflicts and represents them quite simply by red circles. The point is not that the other conflicts are not important. Keep that in mind. The point is to show the discrepancy between the actual human cost of a war and the amount of public attention paid to it globally. The graphic, called simply “Death Toll Comparisons,” is found in a blog, and here’s a link to it. Keep in mind that these charts used 2007 death toll data. The numbers have certainly grown in Congo since then, and in some of the other conflicts as well. But not enough to change the dimensions of the comparisons.

Finally, one small bit of data that gives another striking comparison. According to Time magazine, when the UN appealed to the nations of the world for help for the victims of the south Asian tsunami that struck at the end of 2004, they received an amount equivalent to $550 for each person affected. In February 2006 they appealed for help for Congo, and they received…. just over $9 for each person affected.

Just wanted to help us put some things into perspective.

SAJ

Power and Water in Congo: Not So Simple

Guest blogger Kenneth G. Brill traveled to Congo in December 2009 with Paul Carlson Partnership executive director Byron Miller. While there he visited the hospital at Karawa (Equateur province) that Paul Carlson helps to support.

How do you run a 100-bed hospital without electricity? Or without clean running water? USAID and its German counterpart funded the development of the Zulu hydroelectric station at Karawa back in the early 1980s. Zulu’s original concept was well thought out, and the “bones” are still good. The dam has two small water turbines, one with an 80 kW and the other a 120 kW generator. Even in the dry season there is sufficient water to run the smaller generator. Yet Zulu has not produced electricity for about two years because the turbines which drive the generators need major repair and the medium voltage power cable, which takes the electricity back to the hospital, has so many shorts it is not reliable. The dam itself is leaking water and needs relatively minor repair. While the hospital has a small generator, it is run only in emergencies. Fuel costs $10 per gallon, and there has been no funding source to pay for it. This means that at night the staff work by feel or by moonlight.

Clean water for the hospital used to come from springs located at Mbudi. Again, this was a well-thought-out design thirty years ago. The collection pipes go back into the mountain springs to prevent contamination. The water flows to a holding tank where sand settles out. The water then is piped directly to a pump that is turned by a wooden water wheel. Originally there were redundant pumps and water wheels. Only one is now running. The overflow from the springs is collected into a small pond and then routed to the water wheels via a thirty-inch metal culvert.

When I was there, the pump had just been restarted for the first time in five months, and clean water was flowing for three miles to a large concrete holding tank on a hill above the hospital, which provided the pressure to distribute water to the buildings. The repairs had been accomplished for the cost of two bags of cement, a leather piston seal, and the time and talent of someone with technical knowledge. While the pump was now working, water from leaks was spraying in many places, the mechanical drive system was totally out of alignment, and discharged water from the wheel was undermining the foundation wall on which the water wheel rested.

But, after five months, water was again flowing to the holding tank! The holding tank itself was leaking and needed a lining. We had to leave before I learned if water actually had gotten to the hospital. The people are good-hearted and want to be helpful, yet technical knowledge is limited. That is why a skilled Congolese layperson could make so much difference in one day.

UN Maps Atrocities

The final Mapping Report is out. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights created an investigatory group in 2006 that was to be tasked with “mapping” serious incidents of violence against civilians during the decade from March 1993 to June 2003. The plan was presented to DRC President Joseph Kabila in 2007, he approved the proposed investigation, and it was carried out. The result–admittedly incomplete–is a catalog of 617 brutal, bloody episodes. And that doesn’t include anything that has happened in this still-tormented country since 2003.

I’ve spent part of today with the report, though I’ve only read the Executive Summary. (You can find the PDF of the report, all 566 pages of it by clicking here. There is also a much shorter UN press release about it here.) It makes clear the scope of the crimes: “Very few Congolese and foreign civilians living on the territory of the DRC managed to escape the violence, and were victims of murder, mutilation, rape, forced displacement, pillage, destruction of property or economic and social rights violations.”

The report’s reputation preceded it. A draft leaked several weeks ago used the G-word: genocide. It also accused some of Congo’s neighbors of complicity in these destructive and genocidal acts, including Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. Much of the public attention to the report has focused on that charge (made carefully and conditionally, but firmly, in the final report), the reactions of those three countries, and various reactions to their reactions. What if Rwanda and Uganda pull out of UN forces on peacekeeping missions? Will Pres. Kabila’s recent closer relations with Rwandan Pres. Paul Kagame lead to a tepid follow-up by the Congolese government? And so on.

The DRC representative to the UN, Ileka Atoki, posted positive comments on the Huffington Post: “The report is detailed and credible, and we welcome its publication,” he wrote. “It is also heartbreaking.” Among other things, he called on “international donors, including those who helped to fund the mapping report, to work closely with us to establish mechanisms that will take strong action against the perpetrators of this violence no matter where they reside and to help end impunity.”

This question of what happens next, of course, is way more important than exactly how the report’s authors talked about genocide or what Rwanda’s response may be. Human Rights Watch is optimistic, sort of. They see at least a possibility that the report can lead to criminal investigations, charges, and court proceedings. “These events can no longer be swept under the carpet,” says executive director Kenneth Roth. “If followed by strong regional and international action, this report could make a major contribution to ending the impunity that lies behind the cycle of atrocities in the Great Lakes region in Africa.”

The Baobab blog on the Economist website remains unconvinced. “The report may shame those who killed the innocent, but judicial action and sanctions are unlikely,” writes J.L. “The point of the report was never to create a comprehensive history of the Congo wars. It was to give a voice to the dead who have otherwise dissolved without a trace in the steaming jungle.”

That it does. But at stake is way more than the dead. At stake are millions of survivors all over Congo who are going on with their lives with unfathomable courage despite traumatized psyches and crippled families. Does anyone care about them enough to do the right thing now? Does the Kabila government? The international community? The makers of U.S. foreign policy?

SAJ

Katerina

Katerina is a farmer in Congo. She lives near the town of Loko in the Ubangi region in northwest D.R. Congo. She cultivates her small piece of land entirely by hand, her only tool a machete. In February 2010 Byron Miller, executive director of the Paul Carlson Partnership, and several Congolese colleagues passed Katerina’s home on their way from Loko to Karawa, and stopped to buy a pineapple that she was offering along with other fruits. We’ll let Byron pick up the story:

“I was rather taken by her somewhat feisty manner then and asked to see her garden. She questioned why we would want to see it (she was clearly suspicious) but eventually did take us there. I could see that she was making an effort but also noticed that she had a very poor machete. Just before we left, I gave her money to buy a new machete. At first she was reluctant to take it, fearful that I would come back someday, demand to see it, and haul her off to jail if she could not produce it! We assured her that was not the case, and she took it.

“Sarah Thontwa was along on that trip, and she was very impressed with the woman’s spunk and willingness to speak up to a stranger.” Sarah is a young Congolese woman with a U.S. university education who went back to work in Congo. She works for our partner, HOPE International Development Agency, as their staff person for Farmers to Markets, our USAID microenterprise project. “Sarah has visited [Katerina] twice subsequently and provided some additional help, including salt that she could sell. Katerina did indeed buy the machete. Her neighbors were jealous of her, and came and demanded that she give away the salt. She had to give some, but has sold the remainder in other villages.”

On Saturday, Sept. 18, the story continued as Byron, Sarah, and others again traveled from Loko to Karawa. In Byron’s words again: “So we stopped today, and she instantly recognized us. The greeting was effusive, and she proudly displayed her machete. She took us to her house and then to her garden. Her garden this time was larger and in much better shape. She clearly has used the new machete to great advantage. She is just the kind of person we want so much to encourage. She took our small gifts and is making something much larger while growing in spirit as well.”

We have come to associate Congo with war and violence, especially sexual violence as a tactic. And that news urgently needs to be known so the rest of the world can create ways to bring the horrors to a halt. But we also have to avoid the pitfall of seeing the people of Congo only as brutal attackers and crushed victims.

We need to remember Katerina. There are thousands of Katerinas all over Congo — strong women, and men who are deacons, not killers. Rich in spirit, they are desperately poor materially. In the poorest country in the world, where do people get a start?

That’s what we’re setting out to do in Farmers to Markets. It’s hard work, but people like Katerina encourage us. Their strength feeds us. Who then is giving and who is receiving?

SAJ

What Is the Human Cost of a Mobile Phone?

It can be a lot higher than you realize. The problem is certain minerals that are essential to mobile phones, laptops, and other tech toys that so many of us depend on every day. These substances, including tin, tungsten, tantalum, and cassiterite, have come to be called conflict minerals because they are fueling the continuing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The eastern DRC is now known as the “rape capital of the world” because of the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war. That part of the country is rich with minerals, including gold as well as those named above. Local militias (some from neighboring Rwanda) and government troops are fighting for control of these very lucrative substances. The struggle goes back to the first Congolese civil war in 1996, through the second civil war in 1998-2003, right down to today.

When the U.S. Congress passed the new financial reform bill in July of this year, it contained a little-noticed big victory: a provision requiring manufacturers to report the steps they are taking to make sure their products do not contain conflict minerals from the DRC. It was a Republican senator, Sam Brownback (Kansas), who persuaded Democratic leaders to include it in the bill. This is the first such law in the world.

And now DRC president Joseph Kabila has banned mining in three of the most troubled provinces (North and South Kivu plus Maniema). Calling those who control the mining interests there “a kind of mafia,” the president made his announcement during a visit to a mining town in the area.

While there are questions about how both of these measures will be enforced, they are steps forward. The provision in the U.S. legislation has the potential to make a real impact, if corporations are held to it. And that partly depends on us. Think of blood diamonds. One woman I know well wears a sapphire engagement ring because she didn’t want to risk wearing a blood diamond. We can create change.

If this matters to us — if the lives and safety of several million people matter to us — we need to pay attention as this law is implemented. Only by holding these companies’ feet to the fire will we be able to reduce the human cost of our iPhones and Androids.

SAJ

Kristof’s Obscene Number

I won’t admit in public what I said when I saw the number. Enough to say it threw me back in my chair, staring, willing it to be wrong and knowing it was right.

This afternoon I spent a little quality time with Nicholas Kristof, the author and New York Times columnist. Not face time, though I think I would like that. I was catching up on his last four columns. He’s been traveling in eastern DR Congo and writing from there. I had caught the first one — even wrote a response to it that showed up as comment #95 on his blog. But I’ve been busy at the office and hadn’t gotten back yet to read the other three pieces.

Nicholas Kristof is an advocate for Congo. He advocates for the people of Congo with his head and his heart and his pen (or keyboard), and I strongly recommend these columns. (I’ll give you the links at the end of this post.) He wants to put Congo on the radar screens of the international powers that he believes could help bring an end to the war and violence that have come to seem endemic to Congolese life. International powers that have pretty much ignored Congo since we no longer find the country useful to us.

In his fourth and last column, Kristof suggests four steps towards ending the violence. In my way too simple summary, they include (1) pressure on Rwanda regarding its influence, (2) international monitoring of mining exports, (3) demobilization and repatriation of Rwandan militia forces, and (4) professionalizing the Congolese army. Obviously, the DRC can’t do all that alone. It needs partners with clout. Like the U.S., for instance.

And the number? 6.9 million.

That’s his estimate of the number of Congolese people who have died as a result of war since 1998 (see the third column in the series). He’s done his homework, and I’m afraid he’s right. He started with 5.4 million, the number that has been generally accepted since the International Rescue Committee published it in January 2008, one finding of an extensive study done in ’07. A second finding was that 45,000 people continued to die every month from aftereffects and continued violence. And Kristof did what I hadn’t yet bothered to do (and haven’t seen anywhere else) — he did the math.

6.9 million people dead as a result of war. This is no longer just the deadliest war since World War II — it was that three years ago, at 5.4 million. This is a second holocaust.

And we can’t be bothered to get involved. Yes, props to Hilary Clinton for her visit late last summer. But it’s going to take a lot more than that.

If you can be bothered to get involved, there are good opportunities in addition to our own medical and economic development work in the northwestern part of the country. A friend of ours, HEAL Africa, does wonderful work in Goma, in eastern Congo, treating victims of violence while helping individuals and villages to find the strength to shape their own futures. The Enough Project, “The project to end genocide and crimes against humanity,” does advocacy for international attention to Congo. (And what was on their blog just now when I pulled up the page to check the URL? Kristof’s number and his Congo columns.)

6.9 million fathers and mothers and running boys and laughing girls and … sleeping babies. Makes you want to swear and cry, all at once. But then, get up and do something.

Here are the links I promised to Kristof’s four columns:

“Orphaned, Raped and Ignored”

“From ‘Oprah’ to Building a Sisterhood in Congo”

“The World Capital of Killing”

“The Grotesque Vocabulary in Congo”

SAJ