I came across this video report from the Mugunga Camps near Goma, today. The scenes here are only a kilometer or two from one of the Goma Student Fund’s schools:

EUX.TV Videojournalist Raymond Frenken travels to Congo and finds himself in a refugee camp near Goma - in the heart of the war-torn Kivu province - that was looted by army soldiers just a few days earlier.

Peace talks between the rebels and the government have begun, but the fighting has displaced a staggering half a million people or more. The tone of this news piece is hopeful, however. After describing life in Mugunga, it focuses on reforms that the EU is helping the Congolese military make, including biometric identification cards and a “full separation of the chain of command from the chain of payment.” The hope is that well-paid soldiers that can readily identified by the populace will stop their rampant looting and help stabilize rather than destabilize areas that they are deployed to.

Related Posts:

• t r u t h o u t - Military Hides Cause of Women Soldiers’ Deaths (February, 2006)
• Updated GSF Site (November, 2007)
• Mugunga (September, 2007)
• Goma Security Alerts (December, 2007)
• Congo line! (August, 2007)

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 11:08 am and is filed under goma, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.