Dewar: “Congo is calling – will Canada answer?”

KINSHASA, DRC – New Democrat Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar called on Canada to make the Democratic Republic of the Congo a country of focus for Canadian aid.

“Over five million people are estimated to have been killed in the ongoing conflict in the Congo and two million people have been internally displaced,” said Dewar who is travelling in the DRC as the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Prevention of Genocide and other Crimes against Humanity.

The International Monetary Fund has called for aid to the Congo as a country on its list of “highly vulnerable” states. Yet, the DRC is missing from CIDA’s list of focus countries.

Dewar called on the Canadian government to:

• Contribute to the UN peacekeeping mission with personnel and resources that are desperately needed
• Take action against sexual violence
• Monitor the operations of the Canadian mining companies in the Congo and adopt Corporate Social Responsibility methods that ensure protection of human rights and the environment
• Change the Patent Act and the Food and Drugs Act to make it easier to manufacture and export drugs to help fight HIV/AIDS and TB
• Help protect the rain forest of the Congo through the Convention on Biological Diversity

“Canada’s reaction to the escalating humanitarian crisis in the Congo has been inadequate” concluded Dewar. “Congo is calling – will Canada answer?”

Dewar ends his mission to the Congo tomorrow.