One of my counterparts, Catie Fowler, has a great, brief summary on her fundraising page on the situation in the Congo, how it relates to the work we will be doing with CIYOTA, and finishes with a little bit on her personal passion for the region. She is also an alumni of the President’s Leadership Class here at CU-Boulder, studied Anthropology focusing on sub-saharan Africa, worked for a think-tank in Boulder researching the mineral conflict in the DRC, and was recently a Peace Corps Volunteer in Rwanda–where her service was cut short due to an increasingly unstable situation there. Needless to say I am ecstatic to work with such an incredible person and can not wait to continue learning more and more about this complex situation. I wanted to share her summary with all of you since she composed it so eloquently. She’s also included a great half-hour video on the crisis in the Congo. I’ve pasted it all right here, written by Catie:
The Situation in Congo is Boiling Over
The Crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo cannot be isolated within its borders. This conflict, which has taken the lives of what is now an estimated 7 million people, is the deadliest in our world, even surpassing the numbers of civilian deaths caused by the Holocaust.
Eastern Congo is no place to live. Children live in fear of abduction as now over 31,000 have been forced into lives as soldiers or sex slaves since the conflict’s beginning in 1999. Some of those children are as young as nine.
The government and various rebel groups fight for control over a natural resource known as coltan, which is used as a connector metal in new technologies, exploiting the local population as miners, therefore ensuring that the Congolese people see few of the benefits of living in Africa’s most resource-rich state.
If that isn’t bad enough. Congo has also been titled the “Rape Capital of the World.” The bodies of hundreds of thousands of women have become a battleground, used to destroy the spirit of their communities and humiliate the people of Congo.
This needs to stop. In a completely unprecedented move, the UN determined to send in their first offensive force to seek out and eliminate the rebel groups of the Congo, but so much more needs to be done than that. Communities need to heal.
So how can that happen? There are over 400,000 Congolese citizens now living outside of their borders. These refugees often live in squalor, but they also have a unique opportunity to solve the problems of their country that the UN simply does not.
The Problem Solvers
Refugees in the UN’s Kyangwali Refugee Camp are seizing that opportunity. Eight years ago, the youth of Kyangwali united to form COBURWAS (Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Sudan) and change their community. After developing a nursery, primary school, and women’s micro-finance program, the members of COBURWAS simply were not satisfied. They found a way to send their older students to secondary school in a town nearby and started to form youth groups with a focus on peaceful methods of solving the conflict in Congo all over Western Uganda and Eastern DRC.
For Congo to heal, there needs to be a focus on women. That’s why COBURWAS has built a women’s cooperate that has not only financed 60 women to start businesses and build homes for their families, but also created a small farm and built a mill to grind grains for poor members of the community. In addition, the women of Kyangwali participate in an anti-violence program to educate the members of their community of the dangers of violence against women.
It’s Somewhat Personal Now
My interest in Congo dates back past five years at this point. I spent my college years working for a think tank, forming a club, and writing my Honors Thesis all on the topic of the DRC. I never could have anticipated that any event could possibly change the way I felt about ending the crisis in Congo. I was wrong.
I spent the past year as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a community called Busasamana in Rubavu, Northwestern Rwanda, within short walking distance to the border of Congo. As I fell in love with my community and life there, tension was rising the DRC and ended up spilling into my fragile world. After being forcibly evacuated the first time bombs fell, I then sat in the nation’s capital receiving frantic phone calls from my village as rebel soldiers crossed the border and seized my market before being forced back out of the country by the Rwandan military. This conflict has displaced me as well.
Although Peace Corps determined I could no longer live and work in my community, I am not at all done with the DRC. I know now that, in order to do justice by the people I love, I must do everything I can to stop this. I truly believe that lasting change must always come from the bottom up, from the people of a country, not by its leaders or even by international force. This opportunity allows me a to lend a hand to the people of Congo who I believe can actually CHANGE Congo and, given what they have accomplished so far, I could not possibly be more excited to work with them.
In the past year, I have developed a tremendous passion for the power of women. After facilitating a camp called GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) at my school and working with a local Kung Fu organization to teach women’s self-defense, I can see what women can do when they are given the opportunity. As such, my position at COBURWAS will focus primarily on improving existing organizations for women as well as creating a forum for women to take on a larger leadership role in their community.
–Catie Fowler
Yazan Fattaleh 