AlertNet recently ran this post by an aid worker in Goma, Congo, which highlights the continuously grave humanitarian conditions in eastern Congo, despite numerous peace deals.
When I arrived in Democratic Republic of Congo five months ago, you couldn’t move for journalists, photographers and film crews. They’d come to report the mass displacement of 250,000 Congolese forced from their homes by clashes between Government troops and the CNDP, a predominantly Tutsi rebel group, led by renegade General Laurent Nkunda.
Since then a surprising chain of events has led to Nkunda’s arrest, his troops’ integration into the Congolese army (their recent foes) and a peace deal, witnessed by the United Nations and its international mediator.
Donors and the international community are starting to refer to eastern Congo as a post-conflict crisis, while close to 300,000 people have already returned to their homes and farms, which they find mostly destroyed.
Now there are only a handful of reporters left in the east and the ongoing conflict between the government and extremist Hutu rebels the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) gets few headlines – even this week when the U.N. coordination body, OCHA, reported that more than 250,000 people have been displaced from their homes since January.
There are many reasons why what made front pages six months ago is now failing to be listed in "news in brief."
To read the rest of the post, click here.