Posted by DipNote Bloggers on Aug 12, 2009 - 06:27 PM
Yesterday, Secretary Clinton visited Goma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While en route to Nigeria today, the Secretary reflected upon her visit to Goma.
En route to Nigeria, Secretary Clinton spoke about her time in the eastern Congo. Secretary Clinton said, "I've been in a lot of very difficult and terrible settings in my years. And I was just overwhelmed by what I saw, both in the camp and in the conversationIt is almost impossible to describe the level of suffering and despair, in the camp, particularly...It is just tragic, to see 10,000 people in that space. And still, you know, children are still, you know, dying of malnutrition, they're dying of diarrhea, they're dying of malaria, the women are getting raped...It's just horrific."
Yesterday, Secretary Clinton visited the Mugunga Internally Displaced Person (IDP) Camp in Goma and toured the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) air support operations base. She also held a roundtable discussion with NGOs and activists on sexual and gender-based violence and announced that the United States will provide more than $17 million in new funding to prevent and respond to gender and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Secretary Clinton said, "[H]ere in Africa we can find humanity at its worst and humanity at its best. And we have seen both here, in Goma. My delegation and I have been working hard, even before we came, to see what we could do to try to assist in the ongoing efforts to end the conflict and the violence that still stalks this land, and to help the Congolese people, who have suffered enough."
This is what the media should be covering not that foolishness about her losing her temper.
