Mennonite Weekly Review

CHICAGO — Christian Peacemaker Teams is beginning a three-month project based in Goma, Congo. A team of four CPTers was due to arrive in early December.

The group follows three previous short-term CPT delegations to the region from 2005 to 2007.

A Goma human rights organization, Groupe Martin Luther King, has invited CPT to join them in their work of promoting nonviolence and conflict resolution, monitoring human rights and providing a peaceful presence in the conflict zone and the camps for internally displaced persons.

Congo is a resource-rich country with large reserves of gold and diamonds, along with tin and coltan used in the electronics industry. The conflict in Congo is a resource war, complicated by civil war and the previous genocide in neighboring Rwanda that spilled across the border.

A peace agreement was brokered last year among several armed groups in eastern Congo. This agreement has broken down in the past two months. The recent fighting among Laurent Nkunda’s militia, the Congolese army, U.N. peacekeepers and other armed groups has led to more deaths and displaced tens of thousands of people around Goma. Relief agencies have found it difficult to bring food and supplies to those in need as the battles have continued in the countryside to the north of Goma.

More than 5 million people have died in Congo as a result of armed conflict over the last 12 years. Rape, a frequent tool of war, has been used systematically against tens of thousands of women, leaving them traumatized, injured or dead, and decimated family and social structures. Little of this violence has been reported in the global North. Nor has much been said about the role of foreign extractive industries in fueling the conflict.

The CPT field team consists of Cliff Kindy, North Manchester, Ind.; Wendy Lehman, Chicago; Rosemarie Milazzo, Maryknoll, N.Y.; and Jane MacKay Wright, Providence Bay, Ont.