Affleck On The Congo
June 27th, 2008 at 3:55 pm | posted by Ben.Affleck
Over the last year, I have been traveling to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in an effort to learn more about the country.
I view this as a long and ongoing learning experience to educate myself before making any attempt to advocate or “speak out.” My plan has been to explore, watch, listen and find those doing the best work with and on behalf of the people of the DRC, in an effort to give exposure to voices which might not otherwise be heard.
In short, I want to listen before speaking and learn before taking action. The “Nightline” segment airing Thursday June, 26 is an attempt to take the viewer along with me in that process.
It makes sense to be skeptical about celebrity activism. There is always the suspicion that involvement with a cause may be doing more good for the spokesman than he or she is doing for the cause.
I welcome any questions about me and my involvement, but I hope you can separate whatever reservations you may have from what is unimpeachably important about this segment: the plight of eastern Congo.
Anyone familiar with the Congo has heard the mind-numbing statistics: more than four million dead since 1998 (and many more before then), the most killed in any conflict since the Second World War. 1,200 people a day are still dying from conflict and conflict-related causes such as starvation and preventable disease.
The country languished as the second worst on the list of failed states until last year, when it bumped up a few notches (though it still ranks below Iraq and Afghanistan on many indices).
The larger war that was fought in Congo included eight countries; regional fighting and violence still continue and instability, impunity and inhumanity are rampant. There are some parts of the country where two out of every three women have been raped.
Children are still widely used as soldiers if they are boys, and as “wives” to militia soldiers if they are girls. The state exerts little authority over much of the eastern part of the country it is controlled by at least 22 known armed groups. These elements combine to create an environment, in some parts of the country that more closely resembles the movie “Road Warrior” than a properly secured modern state. Bands of militia groups roam freely and each answer only to their own respective leader, living off the population and offering as payment the “Congolese credit card” the AK-47.
Because these travesties have happened in relative obscurity for example, 16 times as many people have died in Congo as have in the terrible ongoing genocide in Darfur, yet far more has been heard about Western Sudan than Central Africa one goal here is to simply raise awareness. The hope being that a spotlight’s glare might help in a place where too much suffering has happened in the dark and also help those who are already hard at work trying to help themselves and their country.
My trip brought me to camps for people displaced from their homes, to rural hospitals, to gold mines, and even to remote operations with the United Nations designed to “sensitize” the most violent and vicious of the foreign-born militia in an effort to encourage them to return to their country of origin. I met with warlords and peacemakers, survivors and aid workers, all in an effort to try and better understand the inner workings of a terribly and yet wonderfully complex place, in the hopes of sharing that understanding with you.
I urge you to watch Thursday’s “Nightline” report. I know this place and its people will move you as they have moved me. I do not believe that we live in boxes, separated from one another by imagined boundaries. The connected human chain which binds us demands that we contribute, even if only in some small way, to the betterment of the world. Congo is a place that deserves, at the very least, our eyes and our ears.
-Ben Affleck
For more information or to get involved, visit:
Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital and Research Center: http://www.dmf.org/ourhospital.php
Save the Children: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/990.htm
Malu Malu and Goma Peace Process: http://www.amanileo.org
Stand Proud (Polio Rehabilitation Center): http://www.ipvrc.org
International Medical Corps: http://www.imcworldwide.org
Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders): http://www.msf.org
Doctors Without Borders in the Democratic Republic of Congo: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/country.cfm?id=2290
United Nations Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo: http://www.monuc.org
Heal Africa Hospital: http://healafrica.org
June 27th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I caught the special on ABC’s Primetime last night and it brought me to tears. It’s terrible that most of the everyday population doesn’t know about the situation in the Congo and I would like to know how I could travel there to take photographs, keep a diary, and talk to the people of the DRC. I want to write a book and have the proceeds go to a DRC fund that will help stop the violence. Now I just need help getting there. Thank you for posting this entry and running the documentary.
Best,
Nicole
June 28th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Hello Ben,
Thank you for sharing your experience. It is beautiful to see celebrities like yourself involved in helping our world where it is most needed. You are absolutely right in first arming yourself with the right information and making sure for yourself that any effort you support is in fact a worthy one. This is admirable and responsible behavior from your part that all people should engage in before endorsing a personality or supporting a cause. All human beings at some point in their lives experience a compelling and natural need to help humanity and this by no means excludes celebrities, for it is the celebrities that can help the most due to the prominent place they find themselves in.
I believe that once we reach a certain level of success, it is or at least it should be our responsibility to help the less fortunate. All things in life come to us with a higher purpose; however it is up to each individual to follow his or her heart and choose the higher. You have taken the high road and many have noticed and are supporting you. The way you’ve chosen to live your life speaks for itself. There is no way that at this point in your life anyone can assume that you would make any decision out of pure self-interest. Well, they can but it would be illogical.
Thank you for choosing to use your wisdom, fame, and success to help our world in the right way.
Supporting you,
Mayra
June 29th, 2008 at 5:12 am
As I began to read the Ben Affleck’s blog, I thought why did he chose the Democratic Republic of Congo to research? I had heard things were very bad there yet Southern Sudan and Darfur have been recognized as perhaps the worst situations in the world and have been relatively highly profiled in the media. It is amazing and, in this case, daunting what a little research can do. The most chilling effect of the blog is the realization that there are many parts of the world where similar situations exist and we just don’t know very much about them and thus very little help is getting to those places.
The solution to ending problems like these is 100% activism. If each person were to pick a global issue and location they wished to whole heartedly serve as Ben Afflick has, then we as global citizens could change the world even with a few good works as we have the ability and time to do.
Another well known activist from Massachusetts said, “If free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” John Kennedy recognized that we need to help as much as the poor need our help. It is a two way street and there is no way to stay neutral. You either help or, in choosing not to help, make things worse. Apathy and complacency are active forces as are activism and charity. The key to understanding all of the value in helping those who are monetarily poorer is in realizing that it is in giving that we receive and are fullfilled beyond are our wildest imaginations.
Thank you, Ben, for your great work and inspiration.
June 29th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Dear Ben, thanks for taking on learning about the DRC. I hope that your continued activism takes hold and helps to bring the needed changes in the lives of the DRC’s children. The abundance of attention on Dafur and other crisis, masques the realities of what people in eastern DRC have dealt with over the past 15 years. In addition, the minerals exploitation issues combine into the frey of keeping the silence.
I just completed my third trip to DRC since October 07, and have so far spent about 2 months in Kin, Katanga, Orientale and N. Kivu provinces. I am working with the Ministry of Social Welfare to carryout an assessment of the situation of orphaned and other vulnerable children (OVC) accross the vast country. The assessment is the basis for a national OVC action plan, and will hopefully draw increased attention and funding for programs. We are working with the Ministry of Social Welfare to improve coordination and programming for OVC in each of the 11 (and soon to be 26) provinces as we prepare the assessment. In June we brought together teams of both governement and NGO sectors from all provinces to discuss issues and strategies to improve the delivery of services for children. My colleagues at the Ministry of Social Affairs and the national OVC committee would be thrilled to share with you our iinitial findings and the progress of our work.
-Charles
July 7th, 2008 at 2:21 am
EVERYTHING in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country almost the size of western Europe, is on a scarcely imaginable scale—including the violence. Among the beautiful mountain vistas, terraced hillsides and lush tropical greens of eastern Congo, a bitter, decade-long civil war that officially ended in the rest of the country in 2003, and that has claimed several million lives as a result of fighting and disease, burns on in the eastern border provinces of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu.
July 15th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Your journey through the Congo was overwhelming in both your barebone facts about the devastation of a population and in the emotions you and the people you talked to experienced on a daily basis. For several years I have been working through the African Children’s Mission and the Global Interfaith Alliance (GAQIA) to bring aide to the people of Malawi, devastated by drought, famine and HIV/AIDS. I thought that their burdens are heavy to bare with over 1 million orphans from the loss of parents to AIDS. However, Congo’s burden is much heavier, frought by poverty and violence.
I think that your effort to make Americans aware of the situation is so important. I believe that the youth of America is the best target audience to involve in outreach. My 40-something generation has only now become open to outreach in Africa. I have just completed a children’s book about children and families in Malawi, offering ideas for outreach at the end of the book. I would be interested to find out if you would review my book and see if a similar tool might be used to make our youth aware of the situation in the Congo.
Thank you .
Carol