War’s Chaos Steals Congo’s Young by the Millions

New York Times: In a report released in July, Unicef described the death toll in Congo as a “tsunami of death every six months.”

“It is fair to say that the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been the deadliest for children in the past 60 years,” said Richard Brennan, health director of the International Rescue Committee. “No other conflict has had the same levels of excess mortality, and children have borne a disproportionate degree of this burden.”

About 30,000 children have been forced into militias, while untold thousands of girls have been raped, according to the Unicef report. Children labor under toxic conditions in gold and diamond mines. Orphans choke the streets of Kinshasa, the capital, bedraggled platoons in Congo’s vast army of want.”