12A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2005
Hold on for dear life
Jared Soares/KANSAN
Jamie Hamilton, Leawood sophomore, left, and Katie Savute, Wichita sophomore, use a lunch tray to slide down a hill adjacent to JRP Hall. Lawrence received 4 to 6 inches of snow Wednesday afternoon.
GOVERNMENT
Brownback calls for Congo aid
BY SAM HANANEL THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Back from an eight-day visit to three African nations, Sen. Sam Brownback called the humanitarian crisis in Congo "dire" and said foreign aid programs there need better coordination.
The Kansas Republican said more than 1,000 people a day in eastern Congo are dying from preventable causes, like malaria, diarrhea and a lack of food and water.
"The whole assistance policy really needs to be rethought and there needs to be more prioritizing and self-help involved," Brownback said. "There needs to be a lot more coordination."
Brownback and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., were on the official congressional trip to gauge conditions in Congo, Rwanda and Kenya, where they met with local officials, diplomats and aid workers.
from back-to-back wars that killed an estimated 4 million people between 1996 and 2002. Thousands of Hutu rebels fled to eastern Congo after Rwanda's 1994 genocide that killed over 500,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Congo is slowly recovering
Rwanda and Uganda have invaded Congo twice, in 1996 and 1998, under the auspices of ousting Hutu rebels.
There is still sporadic fighting in eastern Congo, and Brownback said two of the most unfortunate side-effects are the use of child soldiers and the use of sexual violence as a tool of war.
"Many of the women - girls, mothers, young and old - are raped multiple times," he said.
At one hospital that gives medical treatment to rape victims, Brownback said he interviewed a 4-year-old girl and a 60-year-old woman who had been victims of multiple rapes.
The last day of his trip was spent in Kenya, meeting with wildlife conservation officials.
---