Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Congo War Claims 1,000 Lives Per Day, 01/12/05
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june05/congo_1-12.html

Initiating Questions:

1. The Asian tsunami has received a lot of attention in the media lately. Where else in the world are people suffering from natural disasters or man-made conflicts?

2. How does violence and conflict cause people to be sick and die from ailments such as hunger and disease?

3. Where is Africa? Find the Democratic Republic of Congo on a map. What countries surround it?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. According to the International Rescue Committee, where is the most deadly place in the world? Why?

Despite the horrific images of the tsunami aftermath in South Asia that continue to draw international attention, the most deadly place in the world remains the African nation of Congo, where fighting has taken more lives than any other conflict since World War II, according to a new report from International Rescue Committee (IRC).

2. How many people are dying there and why?

More than 1,000 civilians die each day as a result of the simmering civil war, the group said, citing statistics from on-site medical teams.

Six years of war have claimed about 3.8 million lives - half of them children. According to aid organizations, most of those killed are victims of disease and famine brought on by the war. Most deaths are from easily treatable ailments, including measles, but the victims live in the still-isolated eastern region of the country.

3. What is causing much of the violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

Much of the violence in Democratic Republic of the Congo can be traced to ethnic clashes that have raged throughout the region, and to ongoing power struggles for the region's rich natural resources.

4. Who was Laurent Kabila and what was his role in the conflict in Congo?

Mobutu allowed the Hutu rebels to remain, which threatened the now Tutsi-governed Rwanda and another neighboring country, Uganda. So Rwanda and Uganda recruited a rebel leader, Laurent Kabila, to lead a revolt to bring down Mobutu. The Rwandans and Ugandans thought that if Kabila won power, he would protect their countries by forcing out the radical Hutu groups.

Kabila successfully ousted Mobutu and was hailed as a conquering hero when he marched into the capital, Kinshasa, in May 1997. The people of newly renamed Democratic Republic of the Congo hoped he would reverse Mobutu's years of terror and corruption. Kabila's backers in Rwanda and Uganda also felt they could count on the new leader to no longer harbor Hutu rebels.

Within a year, however, Kabila changed his mind and refused to force the Hutus back into Rwanda. The Rwandans and Ugandans, realizing that the Hutu threat would now remain along their western border, abruptly switched sides and began to support rebels seeking to overthrow Kabila.

5. What happened to Laurent Kabila?

Also during this period, Kabila, who had come to power during a bloody insurrection, met his own bloody end when one of his body guards gunned him down in 2001. Since the assassination, Congo has been run by Kabila's son, Joseph.

6. What is the current political situation in the region?

Most recently, evidence that Rwandan troops have reentered eastern Congo has sparked concerns that the fragile peace settlement of 1999 could collapse as Congo's neighbors jump back in for another ethnic fight.

United Nations peacekeeping forces in the region reported Rwandan troops in Congolese territory, suggesting an invasion had begun. Rwanda admits amassing troops on the border to stem attacks on Rwanda from Hutus in Congo, but says its soldiers are not in the Republic.

The Congolese government has called for the U.N. Security Council to condemn what it sees as Rwanda's aggression, and impose sanctions.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Why is it important to know about conflicts occurring far away from you and around the world? Explain your answer.

2. Research the U.S. government's response to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo. What is the government doing? Should it be doing more? Why or why not?

3. How can you help people suffering in the Congo, either through education or other means?

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.