DRC / Country background
Size, natural resources and population make the Democratic Republic of Congo one of the giants of Africa . Warlords, rebel chiefs, heads of militia, entrepreneurs and other corrupt groups all contribute to wreaking chaos in the region. "The players change, but the game stays the same," wrote the Economist in 2003. Respect for human rights has improved in recent years, but journalists and members of opposition parties often still land in jail. Throughout the past five years, foreign soldiers have been plundering the country and raping and killing the Congolese, regardless of ethnicity, religion or political preferences. The DRC's mines, hardwood forests, coffee plantations and cobalt minerals are easy targets for exploitation.
The provinces of North and South Kivu are the focal points of destabilization in the DRC, where conflicts revolving around matters of territory, nationality and power, and the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide have torn apart the ethnic communities there, and civil war has plagued the region for the past decade. These conflicts have created very antagonistic attitudes on the part of the country's population. This state of affairs in turn influences politics in the country's capital of Kinshasa, where politicians in the recent election campaigns focused on issues surrounding Congolese nationhood and policies towards the Kivu provinces.
Recently, the country held historic elections that brought the DRC's first democratically elected government in over 40 years to power. The election and its preceding campaign was marred by the use of hate speech by candidates' privately-owned broadcast media, as well as armed confrontations in the capital that led to hundreds of casualties. The country is currently undergoing a fragile but steadily progressing process of stabilization under the leadership of its new government, but atrocities are still taking place.
DRC / Strategy
In the DRC, Radio Benevolencija organizes communication campaigns in the form of radio programs and community activities and, starting in 2008, television programs.