We live in a globalized world. Our neighbors are no longer only the people who live next door but include all of those whose lives are connected to our own. It's almost impossible to go a day without using or eating something that doesn't have parts or labor from a country or a person halfway across the world.
The challenge is that while the technology that connects us continues to advance, our understanding of the ethics and virtues that should guide our relationships with our global neighbors has not always kept up.
No place on earth exemplifies the failure of our ethics to keep up with our globalized relationships and technological growth than the Democratic Republic of Congo. Home of the world's deadliest conflict since World War II, over 5 million have died over the past dozen years and tens of thousands continue to die each month, according to a 2008 survey by the International Rescue Committee.
The stark ethical reality is that you and I have helped fund the criminals and armed militias that have been doing the killing.
Present in our cell phones, laptops and everyday electronics are minerals sold by warlords who use their profits to buy tools of death and destruction. The technology that allows me to call my son and check to make sure that he is safe is made from the same stuff that has been a death sentence for the sons of other fathers in the Congo.
Conflicts and wars in far off countries can often be invisible. The ongoing deaths rarely make the front page of our newspapers or lead on the nightly news. Still, there are stories of both tragedy and triumph that need to be told.
I Am Congo is a new video series released by the Enough Project that tells the stories of five everyday people, from the Congo, working to make their country a better and safer place. In these videos we see the strength and resilience of an artist, activist, community builder, conservationist and human rights lawyer who are re-building their nation from the bottom up.
As a Christian, I was especially inspired by the story of Denise. She is a human rights lawyer who helps victims of rape seek justice and recover from their injuries and trauma. She talks about her personal faith, and time at Church, as the moments when she is renewed and finds the hope to continue fighting. In spite of all the challenges, Denise refuses to give up. "If we just sat with crossed arms what would happen then?" she says in the video.
Faith matters in the lives and work of many of those living in the Congo. In the United States, the faith community has a powerful voice to raise awareness and build political will on issues that could otherwise be marginalized.
Inspired by this project from Enough, Sojourners has created a discussion guide, Faith Leads to Hope, that accompanies the videos for people of faith to think about and engage the questions of how we can all be better global neighbors.
The stories told in I Am Congo are a testament to the hope that still grows even in areas of conflict. They are an introduction to people that many of us may never meet but we are still connected to. It is through learning of the work that we are reminded of the great promise of faith, that a light still shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it.
Please share the videos and the hope that the light in these individuals lives bring.
Visit www.sojo.net/congo to watch the videos and download the Faith Leads to Hope material.
Follow Jim Wallis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jimwallis
Good values exist outside religion. Human suffering is felt by all. If you really have to drag religion into this, go do something about the church protecting criminals involved in genocide:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/jul/16/rorycarroll
Air drop food and medicine even if the gov doesn't want it.
Get the CIA to stop "helping"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo
I mostly agree about western "Help" as it is done now, the warlords control it all.
If you do simulations drops, there is no way they can get it all.
It's worth a try. It does not have the political corruption element, and we do want to help starving and sick people assuming we have taken care of our own people first.
But, this "as a Christian..." nonsense needs to stop. I'm not a Christian, and I have empathy for these people just as you do, Mr. Wallis. It's a silly phrase that sounds very, very self-righteous and pretentious, as if believing in a deity qualifies you as having higher ethics than other human beings.
In the end, we are taking the next step in human evolution to fuse the human race into a 'United People of the World' capable of dealing with the next great set of 'natural challenges' that face the human race going forward........global warming is just a warm-up exercise. The transition won't be pretty, and it won't be peaceful, but it is essential if we are to meet the challenges ahead.
We can begin here at home, but coming together as one people dedicated to the future of ourselves and of all other humans who are willing and capable of coming along for the ride.
The old ways of simply wiping out the opposition are no longer viable in the age of nuclear weapons, and the current way of fighting "police actions" appear to be the most humane alternative currently available to fill in the gaps.
As we go forward, perhaps the kicking and screaming against human progress will decrease and we'll gain more momentum towards more peaceful ways to cut through the "cultural" (aka epigenomic) obstacles to a unified, knowledgeable, objective, human, path forward.
Go ahead and join the military and have the courage of your convictions. You too Jim.
Too much power in central governments even in democracies result in one size fits all laws and regulations. A one world government is a very bad idea.
We tend to make a big deal out of our influence in squalid, war-torn, disfunctional nations. But there are poor developing nations who are making it work. Do we deserve credit for their successes, the same way we deserve credit for the failures' failures. Nope.
Fact is, we buy stuff. We buy stuff from Europe. Are we responsible for Europe's political puzzles? No. We buy stuff from Asia. Are we responsible for the repression in Thailand or Myanmar, the deflation in Japan? No. The wonderful thing about respecting the sovereignty of other nations is that their problems get to stay theirs.
Congo's extraction and sale of Coltan is barely a blip on the world market, and if we successfully stop the trade in it, the locals digging it up will just find some other of their treasures to plunder, and the warlords will keep extorting the hapless poor who do the digging. If you think stopping the illicit trade in tantalite will somehow magically stop the rebels from fighting there, you're more naive than anyone giving advice on foreign policy ought to be.
We risk giving up in confusion and helplessness.
I don't know how best to navigate this other than to try to keep informed, and - weirdly, for a Christian - to keep a Buddhist principle ('Right intention') foremost in mind: my actions should be judged by my intentions, not by their unintended consequences.
THANK YOU for bringing this topic into your community. I have argued myself blue in the face with people of faith that their actions speak louder than words and every purchase they make should come with a little research so they know they are making a moral choice and not just broom this info under the carpet and pretend they bear no responsibility in propping up the evil in the world.
1) The 5 million people died as an extension of the Rwanda massacres and ongoing border wars and power struggles. Minerals had NOTHING to do with the motivations surrounding this war.
2) Minerals were not even introduced as one of many sources of militia funding until long into the war.
3) The UN says the minerals are approximately 20-40% of the militia's funding, which includes owning restaurants, farms, and other businesses, and pillaging other people's restaurants, farms and businesses, and taking illegal tolls on public roads (their biggest funding source). Using the "cell phones are evil" logic, why don't we demonize all restaurants, farms, businesses and roads in central Africa?
4) The regulations have shut down all artisanal (tribal) mining in all of central Africa, an area the size of the United States. The conflict area is the size of Vermont and is NOT CONNECTED to the rest of the Congo by roads - completely isolated to the east. Yet 10 million people who get their living from mining throughout central Africa (UN Panel of Experts) are being devastated by this naive approach.
5) While their is a 100% de facto embargo on all legitimate artisanal minerals, the militia continue to thrive and export minerals, agriculture goods, run their restaurants and take illegal tolls. Only the innocent have been devastated.
Research would show you how horrible this legislation has been for central Africa. Please do some.
Then tell me how great it is.
We are a Congolese-owned social enterprise mining company working with Chiefs and their tribes, using an OECD compliant process. We have challenged Enough Project to find just one buyer for these tribes. In the last two years there has been a 100% embargo of legitimate artisanal minerals. 400,000 miners are unemployed and 10 million who depend on mining in the Congo are devastated (World Bank).
This strategy assumes if you remove one source of revenue from a burglar, that the burglar will stop stealing – a profoundly naïve assumption. Enough Project has burned down the entire mining industry of 10 million Congolese in the random hope that it might catch a militia or two in its path. According to the US Panel of Experts, the militia continues to export.
The sad fact is most minerals don't even come from the relatively small conflict area in the Congo, yet all of central Africa is being punished in hopes of reforming this militia.
Enough refuses to recognize that minerals are not the problem, criminals are the problem. As Eric Kajemba, leader of a Congolese civil-society group says, “If the advocacy groups aren’t speaking for the people of eastern Congo, whom are they speaking for?”
And as Aloys Tegera of the Pole Institute in Goma says, "They picked the wrong target."
Target the militia. They are the problem, not minerals.
It's not 'capitalist fascists' pointing the guns at the heads of poor miners demanding a tithe of what they scrape from the ground, it's people led by the likes of Bosco Ntaganda, a war criminal indicted by the ICC,.
You also do not understand capitalism. For thousands of years it was the circulation of value locally, making everyone better off. Giant corporations are not traditional capitalism. The only hope the Congo has is the rebuilding of hundreds of thousands of small and local businesses, and that will require a lot of capital to do it. And as we fund these small businesses, we will not work with a single non-profit or self-indulgent NGO like Enough Project to get it done. After 100 years of non-profit and NGO involvement, Africa is far worse off economically than it was 100 year ago. We will fix Africa using "ugly, evil, horrible" capitalism, not the crony capitalism the Bush and Obama administrations practice, and not the kind giant corporations practice that get them bailed out.
The problem is NGOs, non-profits, and nonsense regulations that only hurt the 10 million innocent people in the Congo while the militia thrives.
western civilization, colonists, imperialists and capitalists...there's your criminals.
the planet, let alone it's inhabitants cannot continue to mine, suck, drill, pump, blast and clear cut the planet into a moon scape and expect things to improve.
There are limits to what Americans can do. There are limits to the worldwide spread of our imperial ambitions. We cannot continue down the path of unpaid mercenary forces.
The U.S. is repeating the failed policies of 19th century Britain.
We already pay 4.7% of GDP to national defense.
Our competitors pay around 2%.
We must begin to invest in America and Americans so that we can compete against the "rise of the rest" - China, India, Russia, Brazil.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/features/collections/the-rise-of-the-rest
We spend, roughly, half our budget on defense
http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
We have poverty, homelessness, despair here in the U.S.
We cannot help others out of a hole if we join them in it.
We need to reduce defense spending on future wars and seek to invest in education, poverty reduction, etc. - right here in the U.S.
We can cooperate with regional economies to help in other countries, but we are sliding down a slippery slope against the rest. We must do more to help people here. We must focus here.
this culture is INSANE. i'm all for helping a person with shelter and food but none of us really need more than that.
george carlin was right when he spoke of the american dream.
Balance in all things.