Mar,+Derek+6


 * UN-Backed forces failing against rebel forces**

There was a new report that came out and it said that the UN forces and the Congolese Army has filed to stop the Rwandan Hutu Rebels in the DRC. This report were reported by the two news sources on November 25th, 2009. Since they couldn't stop the rebels, mineral resources are being plundered with impunity and there was a giant surge of rapes and killings. There was another report relating to this issue that the fighting and violence has displaced hundreds of thousands of people. There were human rights groups who said something last month about how more than 1,000 civilians have been killed since the UN combined forces with the Congolese army. Now that the rebels are not fighting anymore they can now control the mineral trade which is bad. There was this interesting quote, "This allows many actors to continue to buy tin and gold from areas controlled by rebel groups - thereby financing these rebels groups," by Jason Sterns, an DRC analyst. I'm not sure what he meant by these "actors" but from what I got from the rest of the quote is that people who would buy the minerals from these rebels would be supporting them. Supporting them would provide more guns, weapons, and other stuff. Currently the FDLR, the name of the rebels are funded by the illegal mining of gold and cassiterite. There have been multiple attempts at stopping the rebels but the closest to stopping them was only partially stopping them.

Sources: BBC: [] VOA News: []

The differences between these two articles was that the BBC article had quotes from people who had their say on this event. While the other news sources didn't have any quotes at all. The BBC had two pictures relating to this article while the VOA news only had 1. Also the VOA talked about the number of people that had died since the UN joined the congolese army while the BBC didn't talk about it at all. Also the general info about this event was different from each article. There were only like 1 similarity between these two articles is that they both talked about that was something relating to minerals.

My opinion on this event is that it sucks how we attempted to stop these rebels multiple times yet we come up short. So I think maybe tthe UN could get some more help from others other than use their own force as the only support to help out the Congolese army. It seems as just the UN is just not enough to help stop the rebels from causing pain to others and killing others. Another option to possible end this fighting is maybe come to an agreement on a peace agreement between the two sides. That could be easier but I think the rebels wouldn't give up like that easily and fast to the other. So this is my opinion on this event.