Since August of this year a quarter million people have been forced to flee the Democratic Republic of Congo. Over the last decade an estimated five million lives have been lost. Sexual violence has been staggering. Yet the question of what the international community can do–there are already 17,000 UN peacekeepers in the Congo–and what the United States should do remain unanswered. Poet, playwright, and activist Eve Ensler who has traveled to the D.R.C. three times in the last 18 months says that one solution is to work with local grassroots organizations–movement building on the ground–and support them with the resources they need.

Benjamin Barber, a distinguished senior fellow at Demos and the author of Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole says that there is an inherent conflict between global rights of sovereignty and the principle of universal human rights. Can we invade a sovereign nation to defend human rights? Barber says in the end that it is a choice between doing nothing and doing something and that the Obama administration may be best equipped to rethink the issue of humanitarian intervention.    

Scott Ritter former UN weapons inspector in Iraq and the author of Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change, says that the United States is not equipped to deal with conflict in the Congo–a  place of enormous complexity. And that intervention would require convincing a family in Poughkeepsie that they should send their son to Africa. He says that the perils of humanitarian intervention are too great unless victory is certain.

International human rights activists Witness and Ajedi-Ka document the lives of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo in their short film A Duty to Protect. Get involved here.

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