In the middle of May, I got an assignment to make it eassy to answer my main inquiry question for our capstone project. First, we had to take all our research and put it into an essay form. I thought at first this was challenging because our main inquiry question was our theist which made me confused. After I unstued the assignment it was not challenging but I felt it was time consuming because we had to rewrite all of our research in the matter of five days.

when you think of the Congo you may think of the dance but this is a country in Africa that has had lots of big wars such as the Second Congo War. This war had many deaths and was the second most deadly war behind WWll. This year, I am studying how the second congo war impacted the people and how they responded. The simple answer is that they have just been hiding from the war and staying out of it because of their lack of power. It is tough for them to fend for themselves because they would be going against militia and the civilians have no power over them. Also, the civilians are being pushed around, which has caused challenges for them.

The congo war started in the 90s when the congo elected a new president. Right after he was elected, Rwanda, a neighboring country, assassinated him. After that, the Rwandan genocide broke out and armed militias killed people from lots of countries. After that millions of Tutsis (a minority ethnic group that was persecuted) got revenge on Rwanda and invaded them. That helped stop Rwanda from terrorizing the Congo, but ultimately it was just the start of the war. The second congo war was known as the Great African War and is also refered to as the Death Toll. This is because during this war there were about 5.4 million deaths and it had the most amount of deaths during a war since World War ll. Although in the Second Congo War there were a lot of deaths they might not be due to what you would expect the cause to be. During the Second Congo War, most of the deaths were from starvation and disease. Although the mass amounts of people were dying due to starvation and disease there were still deaths due to gunfire but not nearly as many as starvation and disease. From 2000 to 2004 less than 10 percent of the deaths were due to gunfire. When the war started a lot of businesses shut down because the owners needed to fend for themselves. After that, mass amounts of people were being died due to the collapse of the health care system and food shortages. With a working healthcare system, these sicknesses would be preventable, diseases such as Malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, and malnutrition.

The war ended in 2003 and there was still massive violence between 2004 and 2013. It was believed that in congo there was up to 24 trillion dollars worth of minerals. This caused big problems for the congo. When this was known people treated it as the gold rush and everyone rushed to find these minerals to sell for money. When sold these people would not use the money for the right thing. Instead of using it for things like healthcare or a house or something as simple as clean water they would use it for things like weapons and combat items. This made it so that there were no positives at the time. 

The second congo war has not helped the people of congo or Congo’s government. During this war, many families and the people were terrorized and there is still trauma from it. The image of being forced out of your home or else you’ll be slaughtered by militia. Well, this happened to over 2 million people. Yes, over 2 million people were displaced from their homes due to the war. People tried to hide from the men just like during ww2.  After trained they would have to go fight for their lives. Sadly this would also during the war children were being taken from their families and their homes and turned into child soldiers. This was a terrible thing for the children and would give them PTSD something that is hard to handle simply as an adult. When children were by themselves they would almost be kid naped  Aand taken to their home and get the family parents ok to take them for money at the end. These children had many different roles. Some of these roles would include a mailbox. All they would have to do here is to simply give people information from far away. Another notable job includes really fighting. Sadly these would be the most common roles. This includes taking the mouth of a train and using guns.ld happen to kids as young as seven years old. A quote from a little kid that had to go through this was “Killing 15 people was like drinking a glass of water.” 

After the second congo war from 1998 to 2003, it started to get better or at least somewhat better. In 2004 although the countries had peace the militia groups were hard to stop fighting. These groups like the Tutu and the Hutu keep disagreeing and kept fighting for power and money, or what they would say justes.In 2020 it was known to man that the congo had 29,797,892 people working and getting paid which is better for the congo itself but is good for the civilians of congo compared to the stages that they were at in 1998 to 2003. In the DRC there are about 44 billion people that are above 18. This means that about 60% of the people of congo have a job and are making money. This number is lily to go up because there were fewer jobs in 2020 and lots of job opportunities closing due to covid. 

In conclusion From the peridot 1998 to 2003, it has been very hard for the people fo congo the thrive and lives a normal life. Although the U.S had helped with the problem it was just a really bad time. And sadly most people can hide from the military groups and stay out of it because of the lack of power they had compared to other groups and countries.  Also, they can not emigrate because of the lack of money they had like I said before they would only get like 15 dollars for doing really hard things. So overall it was tomitizing to the civilians during the war and you can say it gave them PTSD for life which could really impact people.

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