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Robert Rotberg is the founding director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s program on intrastate conflict, a former senior fellow at CIGI and president emeritus of the World Peace Foundation.
Africa has more than its fair share of horrendous humanitarian emergencies. Today, half of Sudan’s 47 million people are experiencing severe hunger; 755,000 face starvation. Somalis and northern Ethiopians are also food-short, as are many millions of Malawians, Zambians and Zimbabweans. However, after Sudan, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the neediest region. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), a staggering 23.4 million Congolese suffer from severe hunger.
The peoples of the three eastern Congolese provinces of South Kivu, North Kivu and Ituri are especially endangered. In North Kivu alone, the WFP says that 720,000 people have lost their homes and livelihoods due to regional violence. It estimates that nearly 3 million children in the region are acutely malnourished. Cholera is rife, too, and epidemics of Ebola recur.
The famine has been worsened by unremitting, warlord-led violence in the region. Last month, a loose affiliation of militia groups calling itself the Co-operative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO) massacred 23 civilians in attacks across Ituri, while the Islamic State-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) killed 38 people in North Kivu. The March 23 (M23) Movement militia group has for several years killed wantonly in North and South Kivu and continues to do so.
For the rest of this column: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-to-stop-the-violence-in-congo-we-need-to-end-the-black-market-for-the/