King Leopolds Ghost

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), located in Central Africa, struggles daily because the government fails. The country has been in civil conflicts for nearly a decade, this however is not the main health hazard. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Congo was a popular location for slave trade, while foreign powers intruded they also exposed the area to their diseases that have remained for centuries. These diseases have developed

In the United States, there are the privileges of incredible doctors, medicine, insurance, and many other resources that help the society stay healthy and prevent disease. Disease and sickness can be detrimental to a society. For example, something as simple as getting a flu shot saves lives around the world every year. In the Congo, vaccines are lucky to come by and are extremely valued. When people in a society are prone to disease, this affects how effective the society can be as a whole. Furthermore, this starts from the youth. The youth in the Congo are deprived of basic health requirements, causing the Congo to be an ineffective and war torn society.

Sub point 1: Problem 2: Another huge problem is their lack of education. In another website called Education in Democratic Republic of the Congo, updated on April 19, 2017 by the USAID, 3.5 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in school. This issue is also largely affecting their health issue as well, because people have no knowledge of how to prevent diseases from spreading into their bodies, such as malaria as mentioned earlier. For most of us, who had K-12 education without any restrictions, these problems might be totally unimaginable.

Sacrifice is one of the roots in life. To have one thing, another has to be sacrificed. Just like with life, in order for one to live, another has to have a consequence. In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, Ruth May is the sacrificed soul to “save” the Price family. Because of her death, Orleanna was able to finally snap out of her Nathan ruled trance.

“Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.” -Pope John Paul II. We always find ourselves seeing how others are fighting and often killing but we have never stopped to do something about it. I think we should take actions on what is going on the other side of our world it’s our fault we have not done anything to help people with hunger and or lunatics killing innocent people. I strongly agree to Wiesel saying that we as humans should protect each other not as allies or as political people but as human beings no matter the race, religion, or beliefs because at the end of the day we are all the same and nothing else should really matter.

Tiara, I think you hit the nail right on the head. The United States government is a case in point that has helped a lot of countries and we continue to do so, on a regular base. We the people or government that the people elected help so much throughout the world because of our Christian faith this country was built on. There are times, such as after a war, the United States disengages from the country early leaving the citizens and an unprepared military to fend for themselves. Although things may have been not the best before we engaged in war, when leaving a country in an unprepared situation can result in rebel forces taking over, creating a possible more threating situation.

At these moments, life in the Congo is a living nightmare. The eastern provinces of the Congo see violence every day. Women are getting raped at alarming rates. Children are constantly abused and forced to become child soldiers. There are no sources of medicine or even clean water. Anyone can get murdered at any time, and no one is even safe in their own homes.

It is possible that up to a million more were killed, but many deaths weren’t accounted for because their bodies had decomposed or were eaten before anyone knew. About half of the people killed in this genocide were under the age of five (“World Without Genocide”). That is just a hard thing to hear, so many children killed for literally no reason at all. They could barely walk and talk so what did they do to deserve to be killed? Rape has also been terribly bad the Congo (“World Without Genocide”). As if the famine, disease, and deaths of many people you know wasn’t bad enough imagine having to deal with being raped as

The international community had a responsibility to stop the genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo by taking military action, not only because we should have learned from the holocaust but also over the years 40,000 women and children were

• The famine continued to spread, the population did not recover. • What were the long-term results of the conflict? • One of the long term effects of the Congo genocide was that because of King Leopold II the Congolese people lost their heritage and culture. To this day, Congo continues to struggle economically (Kenneth, The Effects of King Leopold…).

The Eastern Congo is considered a weak state because of the corruption, poverty and war. The Eastern Congo has a large amount of natural resources which should be an asset to the country, but war and rebel groups are feuding over these resources. The corruption and feud over these resources weakens that state. The Eastern Congo has a large amount of farmland that is not utilized and could be used to feed most of Africa, but conflict and control deter the people from utilizing the farmland[1]. The argument over these resources is ultimately affecting the civilians. Many of these disputes have existed for decades. I was astonished to hear that there have been 5.4 million deaths since 1994 in Eastern Congo, most of which are civilians and less

In conclusion, Congo is still not where it should be in regards to the modern world. With control passing from leader to leader on the political side, along with power belonging to the strongest in the communities, etc., Congo is crippled. It is difficult to build and maintain a successful country with civil wars, terrorists and corrupt government officials. Getting and maintaining an honest leader that the people can trust and believe in will be a vital step to a successful

In the past, many incidents of genocide have occurred, like the Armenian genocide or the Rwandan genocide. While these incidents may seem unrelated to current times, similar incidents are starting to occur in many parts of the world and one such place is Congo. Many sources hint that the conflict that occurs in Congo is a genocide because many elements of genocide appear in the conflict like classification or dehumanization. While what they say has some truth in the sense that this conflict contains some element of genocide but, not enough elements are present to make it a genocide. Although many would believe that the conflict in Congo is a genocide, there is evidence of the conflict being a territorial and power dispute because some countries invading Congo want the resources, others want power, and the cause of the conflict in Congo is the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.

This is a tale of horror and tragedy in the Congo, beginning with the brutal and exploitative regime of King Leopold II of Belgium, and culminating with the downfall of one of Africa’s most influential figures, Patrice Lumumba. The Congo is but one example of the greater phenomenon of European occupation of Africa. The legacy of this period gives rise to persistent problems in the Congo and throughout Africa. Understanding the roots and causes of this event, as focused through the lense of the Congo, is the subject of this paper.

The Congo War, a massive destruction to their country, is genocide. One reason it is, in fact, genocide is due to the amount of murders occurring. “But so far the brutal war in eastern Congo has not only lasted longer than the Holocaust but also appears to have claimed more lives [than the Holocaust],” (Kristof 1). This shows that although unpopular and unknown to most, the Congo War devastates further than what it seems like at first. The everyday struggle people go through to stay alive is relative, bloodier, and more