MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Bob Kitchen discusses the series of mortality studies that his organization, the International Rescue Committee, has conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The most recent study found that 5.4 million people have died in DRC since 1998.
TRANSCRIPT:
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: This is Bridget Conley-Zilkic, and with me today is Bob Kitchen who is an emergency response coordinator with the International Rescue Committee. Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention.
BOB KITCHEN: Thank you.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: I want to speak with you today about some of the work that IRC has been doing in the Democratic Republic of Congo, both on the ground and some of the research that your organization has conducted. One of the most cited statistics from this conflict is one that IRC has produced, and it is the number 5.4 million people who have died as a result of the conflict since 1998. I wondered if you could explain for us a little bit more about how that number was achieved and what does it mean?
BOB KITCHEN: This is the fifth mortality survey that we’ve conducted since 2000. We’ve done five over the last eight years. For the survey conducted during 2006 and 2007, we visited 14,000 households in 35 health zones within all of the 11 provinces of Congo and asked questions that gave us an insight into the conditions people are living within, and what their family situations are, and how many people they’ve lost, both as a direct result of the war and the associated vulnerability that they’ve experienced as a result of the war. And what we found was over the course of these five mortality surveys is the massive rates of mortality, very, very high rates of mortality. Preventable diseases that are succumbed to as a result of the conflict, because people don’t have access to their usual sources of income, don’t have access to a fully functional health system. So what we found this time is that since the beginning of the war in 1980, 5.4 million people have died, which is an average of more than 500,000 a year, and a total of 2.1 million people have died since the end of the war in 1998. The interesting thing is that only 0.4 percent of this number is people who have died as a result of violence. The vast majority were children. More than half of this number are children who have succumbed to preventable illnesses within an environment of conflict. And as I said, all but 0.4 percent of the population who have died as a result has died of preventable diseases like malaria, pneumonia and malnutrition.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: The high rate of death from those preventable diseases, is that because, for instance, roads are impassible, or when people do get sick, health clinics that might have formerly operated are no longer operating? Is it this kind of cause?
BOB KITCHEN: Absolutely, it’s those causes. Congo is a massive country with an extremely weak transportation system. People can’t, especially within environments of war, where it’s dangerous to move, people can’t get to health centers. And even since the end of the war, it’s very difficult to move around. And then what makes it worse is when they get to the health centers is that they find a very broken health system across the whole country. They find health centers that don’t have trained clinicians, that don’t have the resources that are required. And in most places, they find health centers that, due to government policies and the status of the country, have to charge for healthcare. And Congo is a large but very poor country, so people don’t have the income that’s needed to pay for healthcare. So people get sick and people die.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Can you talk a little bit about other trends that these reports have noted? Where is mortality increasing recently? Where is it decreasing, if it is, anywhere?
BOB KITCHEN: We saw both trends within this last survey. In the west of the country, we saw an increase in the mortality rate in that more people were dying, and that’s as a result of there isn’t as much investment going into the west of the country through foreign aid. It’s also very difficult to deliver aid for development to make an impact within the west, because it’s such a harsh environment. It’s very difficult to access, very difficult to travel around to deliver assistance and resources. What we saw in the east was as a result of additional and ongoing commitment by the government and the international community, relief and development community, we saw a measured increase-- or decrease, rather in the mortality rate, itself. So there was an improvement of the situation. This, however, has been most recently, and it continues to be threatened by the emerging and worsening conflict, especially in North Kivu, where many hundreds of thousands of people, more than 400,000 people have been violently displaced from their homes over the last 18 months. This has obviously concerned the international community, because of this slight improvement that we saw that’s being threatened by this ongoing conflict.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Yeah, which makes it clear that the situation can be improved if there’s some measure of stability.
BOB KITCHEN: Yes. I mean the road away from this very serious situation -- I mean let’s put these numbers in context over the last ten years a population that’s equal to either the city of Atlanta or the country of Denmark have died, so one of those two locations has been wiped off the face of the map over the last ten years. So there is a way for us to solve this. And it’s true, significant and well-planned investment and development of the health system, of the transportation system, so people can move around to be able to access proper healthcare, to trade, to increase their own income to be able to support themselves.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Can you tell us a little bit more about the current situation in the east? You spoke about increased fighting over the past 18 months. What have been the effects of that on civilians? Where are people being displaced to, displaced from and how are they suffering?
BOB KITCHEN: The situation in North Kivu is a continuation of the struggle that formally ended at the end of the second war of Congo in 2002. One of the rebel groups continued, changed slightly, but continued to fight to protect their ethnic Tutsi group. This rebel group called the CNDP have occupied two very large areas of land within North Kivu and have, since that time, been fighting with the government and other non-state armed actors or rebels. So it’s a multi-fronted and very complex civil conflict that isn’t moving anywhere, or hasn’t been over the last 6-12 months, just ongoing fighting and front lines moving back and forth, but nowhere permanently. And the result has only really been at the cost of the civilian population’s health and well-being in that as I said that since the beginning of 2007, when the situation got very serious, more than 400,000 people have been violently displaced from their communities. And what that means is that they’ve had to pick up everything that they can carry from their lives and move either to host communities, which are communities away from the fighting, often across the front line in government-held territory where they stay, where they stay with friends or people from their own tribe. Or more laterally, they’ve been able to access safety and some form of normalcy within camps, within internally displaced person’s camps, which are often around bigger towns. But they’ve been cut off from their fields, from their normal sources of income. They’ve been pushed together within an environment where there’s ongoing fighting. It’s been very serious and continues to be.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Have any of those people fled over borders? Are they living as refugees, as well, or mostly within Congo?
BOB KITCHEN: The vast majority have stayed within Congo. The population of North Kivu has become-- and this is very sad-- but they’ve become used to living within an environment of war, so what we see is a lot of ongoing movement or short-term displacement. Small populations who live close to borders do displace across international borders into either Rwanda or Uganda, but only do so on a very short-term basis, until they feel as though their communities are safe to return to, so we have seen some refugees. The vast majority have been displaced within the border of Congo. And what we see is that people move away from the fighting into either host communities or displaced camps, and stay there only for the period until the fighting or insecurities subside. And that’s been bad in the sense that host communities, which are these safer locations away from the frontline a little way, have played host to multiple communities that have been displaced. So it’s not providing support to one village, it’s every village that gets displaced goes to these towns. So host communities, themselves, having shared all of their resources, all of their health clinics, schools, water and sanitation infrastructure over the last 18 months have become very vulnerable and very exposed to these illnesses that we’ve been discussing before, themselves, even though they’re not within the war zone. So it’s quite a complex and ongoing situation there.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And so many of these groups, these more recent rounds of displacement are probably not the first time that they have suffered such displacement, as well. Has this been the trend throughout this conflict that there are peaks and lulls? And if so, where are we now? Are we at the end of a peak? Are we at a lull? What does the future look like?
BOB KITCHEN: The good news, although it’s not quite as simple as it sounds, is that a peace deal has just been signed by the non-state Congolese actors and the government of Congo. And as a part of that peace deal, there is a cease fire. The cease fire has been in place since the end of January. So to answer your question, we’re in a lull at this point. We do see continued sporadic, if localized conflict that continues. And what we’re seeing is that especially between the rebel groups themselves and less involving the government. So the areas of origin where people have been forced away from their homes are still not perceived by the communities or by the international community to be completely safe, so people aren’t going home for the moment. They’re staying in camps. They’re staying in host communities to see what happens. The peace process is moving ahead. It continues to be extremely fragile and needs continued engagement by the international community. And when I say international community, I mean the governments of France, Belgium, England, the U.S. and the European Union to continue pushing all of the parties to the conflict forward, to make good on the agreements that they’ve signed up to.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And are you optimistic that this could be a lull that might hold?
BOB KITCHEN: We, as an agency, International Rescue Committee, are working very hard to deliver as much aid and assistance as we can during this lull. I’m hopeful that it will continue, and peace will be found and stability will be instituted across North Kivu, but it’s been a very long war. It has seen cease fires come and go in the past, so we’re prepared to continue to assist the hundreds of thousands that are living away from their homes at the moment.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: What kind of on the ground assistance does the International Rescue Committee provide?
BOB KITCHEN: We have a very large health program. As we were talking before, the health system in Congo is a paid system, so everyone has to pay to see a doctor, and then pay for the drugs that they require. And any intervention surgery or consumables they require, they have to pay for them, as well. It quickly becomes very expensive. And when you’re talking about populations that have been displaced from their homes, and from their fields, and from their normal trading opportunities, you’re talking about populations that have absolutely no money, and especially no money to pay for healthcare where they prioritize, obviously, buying food. So we’ve gone in and we’ve established a relationship with the Ministry of Health so we can provide support to 17 of the existing health centers within an environment that is shared, or to put it more realistically, contested between one of the major rebel groups and the government. So we provide free healthcare to almost 200,000 people living within this area, where they can come and access high quality healthcare for nothing, at no fee. We also have a second program that does a lot of distribution of what we call non-food items, which are plastic sheetings, mosquito nets, blankets, essential items that people use within the home as normal people. They’re normal things that everyone has, but people who have been forced away from their home, don’t. And that keeps them warm and keeps them safe when they’re living in the middle of nowhere within temporary shelters. Within that program, we’re also installing water and sanitation, latrines, so people can live safely, so there aren’t outbreaks of these preventable diseases that we’ve been talking about. So we’re extremely busy working with such a large population that have been forced from their homes.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Bob, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us today.
BOB KITCHEN: My pleasure.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about preventing genocide, join us online at www.ushmm.org/conscience. There you’ll also find the Voices on Genocide Prevention weblog.
