I wrote a couple of days back about my sense of guilt at not covering the plight of Sudanese refugees in Cairo more carefully. Thinking about stories that I – and others – haven’t covered closely enough in Africa, two come to the front of my mind: Darfur and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. A few links on both subjects:
The Lancet has released a study (free registration required) that estimates that the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo – active from 1996-7 and then 1998-2002 – continues to have a massive effect on mortality in the vast country, causing 38,000 deaths a month, primarily from preventable diseases like dehydration caused by diarrhea. The study estimates that the war in the DRC is responsible for 3.8 million deaths that would not have otherwise occurred, making it the largest humanitarian disaster in the world, and making the “First African World War” the most deadly worldwide since World War II.
The study establishes a baseline for mortality by surveying households, asking how many people died each year and of what causes for each year over the past several years. The years without wars are used as a baseline for the “crude mortality rate” for the nation, and are contrasted to the crude mortality rate in the years where the nation is at war.
This is an estimation method – it’s impossible to count all the people who died in a country like DRC in a given year – it can be highly accurate if careful random sampling takes place… and from my brief glance at the Lancet study, it appears to have been very carefully done. Because it’s a sampling method, not a count, the survey can’t state definitively that 3.8 million people have died in DRC – instead, that’s the middle of a confidence interval of the survey. There’s a 95% confidence interval that DRC’s crude mortality rate was between 1.6 to 2.6 per 1000 per month, as contrasted to sub-Saharan Africa’s crude mortality rate of 1.5 per 1000 per month. In other words, there’s less than a 3% chance that there isn’t a significant affect on mortality from the conflict above the continent-wide baseline, and a strong chance that the effect is a profound one.
The same methodology was used in the Lancet study of civilian deaths in Iraq – Dr. Richard Garfield was an author on both studies and is an expert on the cluster sample survey methodology. The Iraq study, as you may recall, caused some controversy because its 95% confidence interval included a range of Iraqi civilian deaths from 8,000 to 194,000 deaths. That survey tallied results from approximately 900 Iraqi households – the DRC study, which has now been performed four times with similar results, most recently surveyed 19,500 households.
While the Iraqi study found that most deaths were due to violence – specifically collateral damage from US airstrikes – the vast majority of deaths in DRC are due to disease, often complicated by malnutrition. Basically, the war – which destroyed the public health system and displaced hundreds of thousands of people – is a man-made disaster beyond the scale of natural disasters like the Southeast Asian Tsunami or the India/Pakistan Earthquake. While the DRC government is making progress on holding elections and rebuilding some social services, Eastern DRC is vast, desperately poor, extremely hard to navigate (few roads, militias still operating in some areas)… and isn’t getting much attention or aid from the global community. Updating the numbers of dead to this new, stunning figure probably won’t change that much, but it’s an important reminder that one of the most important conflicts of the 20th century is still having tragic impacts.
(If you need a refresher on the war in DRC, BBC’s timeline from late 2004 isn’t bad – the situation is less tense than it was when the timeline was published, though many of the underlying factors are still at play.)
Attention doesn’t always mean intervention, as the conflict in Darfur has demonstrated. Despite sustained campaigning by several groups, countless editorials by smart folks like Nicholas Kristoff and Samantha Power, the Sudanese government and their affiliated thugs have succeeded in chasing Darfurians off their land and into refugee camps.
Fortunately, the attention has helped sponsor relief efforts that are trying hard to prevent the sort of death rates in Darfur that were experienced in the DRC at the height of the conflict. My friend “Sleepless in Sudan” is on leave, getting a well-deserved rest, so I’ll take the opportunity to point you towards Yoo-Mi Lee, a remarkable activist and humanitarian, who has stories and photos of her recent work in Darfur, helping women in refugee camps learn to cook using fuel efficient stoves (critical, since woodgathering is an activity that exposes women to attack – including rape – by Janjawid thugs), distributing food and reporting on the warning signs of attacks by the SLA.
(Who’s the SLA? The Janjawid? Again, the BBC has help for you.)
Yoo-Mi’s photos help make the situation in Darfur more immediate to me, and I find myself wishing that there were dozens of DRC photos I could point to in illustrating this post. One of my big hopes for Global Voices this year is that we’ll be able to get some digital cameras donated by one or more tech companies and get them into the hands of bloggers who can help illustrate some of these critical undercovered stories.
Hi Ethan,
I’m really looking forward to interviewing you and Rebecca tomorrow in the Yi-Tan conference call. I invite your readers to tune-in to the IRC chat or to email Jerry Michalski to be part of the call. Here’s all the relevant information: http://surfette.typepad.com/surfette/2006/01/help_me_guestin.html
Best regards,
Lisa Stone
Hi Ethan – Darfur and Sudan are excellently covered by Passion of the Present and Sleepless in Sudan but not the DRC. I too have been thinking about the issue of lack of coverage of this region. I had started covering the region last year – DRC – but have failed to follow through with up to date coverage. It is often difficult to know which stories or which region to report on as there is so much. It is also necessary to understand and contextualise when writing about countries which requires some degree of background reading and understanding. Nevertheless I hope that I will be able to follow up on previous posts on the DRC and possibly Angola over the next year or until a local blogger arrives on the scene that can provide more insight and reportage.
Pingback: Global Voices Online » Blog Archive » Covering DRC & Darfur
Hi Ethan,
I also posted about this study and commented that I was happy to see this coverage. There is some coverage of the DRC through IRIN and MONUC, and I try to keep some updates and news roundups going on my site.
Another useful link for the DRC:
DRC – A year in brief by IRIN NEWS
Thanks, Owukori and CongoGirl. CG, are you in the DRC now? If so (and even if not) we need to do a better job of picking up some of your stuff for Global Voices.
Hi Ethan,
First of all, chapeau bas for your work with Global Voices, it’s just awesome.
I am from the DRC, even though I live in the US. I try to do some news roundup, some translation from French, photos, and some opinion pieces on the situation. To be accessible to most Congolese, I often write my opinions in French, however (I try to give explanations in English). I am hoping Congo Girl will join me on my blog. I commented on the study too, by the way.
There is also Congo Watch, and for Sudan, there is always Sudan Watch.
Ethan, I was in DRC through 8/05, and will be traveling back there periodically throughout the year for work. I am planning to keep close tabs on the situation there, put together some tighter posts, and hopefully sprinkle that with personal anecdotes…
I would like to echo TheMalau’s kudos on the Global Voices project.
Pingback: Have Coffee Will Write » COUNTING THE DEAD…
Ethan, this is not directly related to your blog, but rather to your comment above — I have noticed that central Africa blogs are not getting a lot of attention lately on Global Voices (the little DR Congo icon on the front page keeps getting smaller and smaller!) I’ve been sending in email updates, but I rarely see them posted, and I am wondering if there is something else that I should be doing. I also noticed that right now, DR Congo and the Great Lakes are somehow grouped under “Zimbabwe and Beyond,” which has only had 2 roundups in the past 2+ months (6 weeks apart). Is there some way that I can help bulk up the feeds/roundups/posts on this region? I’d really like to see a lot more attention paid to this region, because it is so interesting and there is always something happening there.
Congogirl, I think the best thing you could do would be to work with Sokari Ekine – I suspect she’d be very grateful for some help featuring more Central African blogs – I’ll make an introduction via email…
Pingback: Black Looks
Pingback: …My heart’s in Accra » Is Israel a problem for the Democratic Republic of Congo?
Dear Ethan,
We would like to invite you to our special coverage of Election in Democratic Republic of Congo (http://hrw.org/campaigns/drc/2006/katanga/index.htm)
Human Rights Watch has been documenting human rights abuses in Democratic Republic of Congo for number of years. To find additional information about our work on Congo see the following link: (http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=africa&c=congo)
We came across your blog while searching online for blogs covering Congo. We are sending this invitation to a small group of bloggers who we thought might want to use our content to highlight human rights issues concerning people in Congo. Please let us know if you would like us to send updates about our work on a regular basis. We would be glad to add your name to our list. We hope that you will excuse us for sending one unsolicited email.
Lisa Okun
(afr_ik2@hrw.org)
Human Rights Watch, Africa Division
Human Rights Watch is an independent, nongovernmental organization, supported by contributions from private individuals and foundations worldwide. It accepts no government funds, directly or indirectly.
Pingback: …My heart’s in Accra » 5.4 million dead in Congo. Believe it or not, it could have been worse.
Comments are closed.