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Democratic Republic of the Congo

I remember that. I remember, too, that in the last polling station that I visited in Maniema, my most useful job as a monitor was to hand over my torch to the people who were trying to count the votes. They had one lamp, which they could hardly read by. That is an illustration of the issues. It shows the contradiction in the fact that there is an amazing river, which could provide all that electricity, when the people do not have electricity or even safe water. We decided to go over to the other side of the river, as other monitors would not be doing that, and to go right down to visit polling stations in Maniema. We perilously, and rather nervously, took the Christian Aid jeep across on two boats made from hollowed-out tree trunks tied together with bits of rope. I must admit that Stephen and I sat on the edge, watching the process and waiting for the jeep to fall in, before we got into the boats without it. We successfully reached the other side, and we then went up the one road or track, calling at about 10 polling stations. On our way, we called on a Christian Aid project that revealed a number of the difficult issues that we need to tackle. We had to go on motorbikes on a track off the main road miles from anywhere to go and visit the project. We arrived and were greeted rather beautifully by 40 women singing to us in Swahili. They pointed out to us that they were concerned about education, as it was difficult for their children even to get to school until they were old enough to be able to walk the distances. They had been displaced by one of the rebel groups, the Mai-Mai; their houses had been burnt out, and they had been subjected to the sexual conflict that so bedevils the Congo. A practical issue in trying to develop our commitment to education is dealing with the distances that the children would have to travel. They asked whether it would be possible to get somebody out to the project to educate them. Of the 40-odd women, only five had been to school. That was a practical difficulty in education. We have made a welcome commitment to immunisation through the international finance programme for immunisation against the five killer diseases around the world. I am proud of that; it is a wonderful commitment. How easy does the Secretary of State think it would be to bring that programme into a country such as the DRC? Of every 1,000 live births, 205 die before the age of five. We asked whether anyone at the project knew of children who had died before the age of five, and they immediately said, ““Oh, that woman’s child died two days ago.”” That is common. According to UNICEF, more children die each year in the DRC than in the whole of China, which is 23 times bigger. That is a massive problem. We went to one Department for International Development-supported Merlin hospital, which was unusual. I was amazed to find a child with meningitis who was clearly going to live. Children in my constituency have died from meningitis because they did not get to hospital in time, so that case was rather remarkable given the distances. It brings home how difficult it is to engage in such programmes. I would welcome hearing what we can do through our education and health programmes. I am aware that another early-day motion has been tabled about the way in which resources go into conflict-afflicted zones. The statistics from Save the Children show that a smaller proportion of our resources go into non-conflict zones than into conflict zones. I understand that an international donor day on education is coming up, and I hope that we will express the importance of getting education into conflict zones and post-conflict zones, because that is difficult. The early-day motion supports Save the Children’s request that 50 per cent. of our international education resources should be put into conflict and post-conflict zones. Obviously, that is a difficult area, but I would appreciate some comments from the Secretary of State about our education programmes. I realise that I have not thanked all the people whom I should have thanked. I thanked Christian Aid, and I should thank the other organisations that were involved with the various projects that we saw. Andy Sparkes, who is our ambassador, and Phil Marker, who is head of DFID in the DRC, were both extremely helpful to those of us who went out to the elections, and they have been helpful since—particularly when I have phoned the ambassador to ask what is going on in the DRC, when I have been asked to do radio programmes and have not wanted to land him in it by saying the wrong things about the situation. They have been helpful and play an important role. I also thank our support staff on the all-party group on the great lakes region and genocide prevention—Stephen Carter and Hazel Rogers—for all the assistance that they give us, without which we would not be able to do our work. I wish to touch on three main issues before I hand over to other hon. Members, who, I am sure, will go into some of them in greater detail. The first issue is security sector reform. Without security, nothing else can happen. We know only too well that the security situation continues to be difficult. Integrating the forces and forming a national army that does not have a large presidential guard under the control of the President clearly is a major issue. It is generally agreed that some overall co-ordination of the international contribution is needed. It has been suggested that MONUC—the United Nations mission in the DRC—may be able to take on a short-term training role, but several observers have said that the overall co-ordinating role should be given to EUSEC, the European Union security sector reform mission in the DRC. I would appreciate comments from the Secretary of State on the matter.