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I received the email below from Ellie, my daughter who leads the advocacy team in the Democratic Republic of Congo for Oxfam. Please sign and help to stop this senseless destruction of people's lives. Thank you.
"I know it can be a drag to receive petitions by e-mail, but I'm making an exception for this one. Right now the Congolese government, with strong backing - including logistics and firepower from the UN peacekeepers - from the international community, is carrying out an offensive against militia groups that is having a devastating impact on civilians, out of all proportion to the military gains.
A group of 84 Congolese and international NGOs recently estimated that for every militia fighter disarmed to date, one civilian has been killed, six houses burned down, 900 people forced to flee and an estimated seven women and children raped. Back in May, communities that Oxfam interviewed which had been directly affected by the offensive told us that sexual violence and armed looting had spiked since the operation started, and called for political rather than military solutions.Yet nine months after the first shots were fired, still there's no clarity about what the military objectives are or when or how the decision will be made to call a halt. 'We're suffering for nothing,' one woman in Sange in South Kivu told me - she'd been forced to flee her village with her family and the clothes they stood up in, and now she didn't know how she was going to feed the children.
Yet although the information is available on the scale of the suffering and humanitarian need created by this offensive, this month the UN Security Council opted to go on supporting it. Your government, my government - all are financially and politically supporting a policy that is ruining lives.
PLEASE sign the electronic petition by following the link below, to call on the international community to end support for this military offensive and work with regional governments to develop the non-military strategies so urgently needed to disarm militia groups in the region. We're going to hand the petition to the UN in New York in November, so please sign up now, and pass this on to other people who give a damn.
Stop the killing in the Congo | Oxfam International
Thank you!!
Ellie"
"I know it can be a drag to receive petitions by e-mail, but I'm making an exception for this one. Right now the Congolese government, with strong backing - including logistics and firepower from the UN peacekeepers - from the international community, is carrying out an offensive against militia groups that is having a devastating impact on civilians, out of all proportion to the military gains.
A group of 84 Congolese and international NGOs recently estimated that for every militia fighter disarmed to date, one civilian has been killed, six houses burned down, 900 people forced to flee and an estimated seven women and children raped. Back in May, communities that Oxfam interviewed which had been directly affected by the offensive told us that sexual violence and armed looting had spiked since the operation started, and called for political rather than military solutions.Yet nine months after the first shots were fired, still there's no clarity about what the military objectives are or when or how the decision will be made to call a halt. 'We're suffering for nothing,' one woman in Sange in South Kivu told me - she'd been forced to flee her village with her family and the clothes they stood up in, and now she didn't know how she was going to feed the children.
Yet although the information is available on the scale of the suffering and humanitarian need created by this offensive, this month the UN Security Council opted to go on supporting it. Your government, my government - all are financially and politically supporting a policy that is ruining lives.
PLEASE sign the electronic petition by following the link below, to call on the international community to end support for this military offensive and work with regional governments to develop the non-military strategies so urgently needed to disarm militia groups in the region. We're going to hand the petition to the UN in New York in November, so please sign up now, and pass this on to other people who give a damn.
Stop the killing in the Congo | Oxfam International
Thank you!!
Ellie"
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