News of the recent fighting between the government and rebel forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has once again brought horrific images to our screens. The UN refugee agency has described the situation as "a total disaster". Foreign Secretary David Miliband is due to meet Rwanda's Paul Kagame and his Congolese counterpart Joseph Kabila with the French Foreign Minister today after talks with a senior EU official yesterday.
Like me your first instinct may be to think - oh no - another mess in Africa, there is nothing we can do, it is a lost cause - as we quickly move on to the debate over our domestic economic woes and whether Jonathan Ross should have been sacked. I suggest we need to pause and focus on a few facts.
What a strange world we live in when the DR Congo with a population of 62 million (21st in the world in terms of population) and a GDP per capita (even using sympathetic PPP numbers) of $311 a year sits next to the UK in the league table in terms of population size. We have a population of 61 million people (22nd in the world) and enjoy a GDP (using PPP) 118 times higher at $36,570 per capita.
Of course the answer to this grotesque disparity of wealth can be found in the DR Congo’s history, the tribal differences, the impact of colonial rule as a depressant to normal development of civil society and governance, the trauma of civil wars and poor relations with neighbouring countries leading to underdeveloped trading patterns. I am no expert on DR Congo specifically but what I do feel, as we read about the rapidly deteriorating situation, is how fortunate we are in the UK.
As we fret about the losses to our pension funds, the cost of living going up, whether or not our job is secure we must remember the plight of others who are less fortunate than ourselves. Any solution to the DR Congo problem will be precarious, and our Government will need to tread carefully. I suspect a military intervention is unlikely to be helpful. However, in understanding the lifestyle and plight of that country’s people it does give us perspective on our own trials. We do have so much to be grateful for and perhaps because of this we should be more inclined to spend more of our resources, our diplomatic capital and our experience in seeking to deal with the problems of Africa.
The awful cynicism that engulfed David Cameron and Andrew Mitchell during their trip to Rwanda last year at a time of unseasonal flooding in Oxfordshire was unfortunate. We live in a world where a country which has the same number of people as our own struggles to exist - where the average income is about 40p a day. That is permanent poverty; it means living with little hope and a life expectancy of 45 years. Relief from such dire circumstance may take painstaking work, years of investment, masses of patience and recurrent slip ups along the way but let's get behind David Miliband as he seeks to use his political skills and diplomacy to broker some sort of peaceful outcome. As a country we owe it to our neighbours to do all we can – neighbours being the whole human race - not just those we trade with or need to secure oil from.
