No, They Just Don’t Care
In today’s Reuters Africa, writer Claudia Parsons writes about Denis Mukwege, a Congolese doctor who runs a hospital for abused women and children in eastern Congo. Dr. Mukwege was awarded a U.N. human rights prize for his work in helping these victims. In “UN prize winner from Congo laments world hypocrisy,” Ms. Parsons suggests that the western world is hypocritical in lamenting the crisis but doing nothing. People around the world are deeply concerned about the problems in the Congo. The problem lies in the fact that our leaders are not hypocritical – they simply don’t care.
The European Union has bigger fish to fry. The French government has abdicated its responsibility in the region and probably contributed to the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s. Belgium in all of its colonial glory led the charge in destroying the tribal region and the United States government really does not care. I suppose if al Qaeda opened a training camp in North Kivu the U.S. would open a new front on the war on terror, bomb the region into the stone age and send in the squadrons from USAID and the World Bank to capitalize on the resulting mess.
I must respectfully disagree with Ms. Parson’s characterization. People do care. Governments on the other hand do not. Dr. Mukwege’s work is justifiably honored. We must both recognize his work, expose the horror and demand that all of our governments do the right thing – not the expedient one.
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