Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-21-Speech-4-234"
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"en.20080221.22.4-234"2
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"Mr President, anyone who has ever seen the Great Lakes region of East Africa from the air might think that it was paradise. In reality, it is often more like hell on earth. It is a region of fantastic natural beauty and a wealth of natural resources, on the one hand, and appalling suffering, on the other: natural disasters, war, expulsion, famine, disease, massacres, mass rape and ethnic conflicts – worse than almost anywhere else. There are 800 000 internally displaced persons in North Kivu alone.
It is important to recognise that this problem of expulsion exists on both sides of the border. In Africa, there is a phenomenon which does not exist in this form anywhere else, namely that people are not just displaced from one specific side of the border to the other. Instead, each country expels people from its side of the border into the other country, so there are refugees and displaced persons on both sides. As a result, the countries are completely unstable. That is why we need to provide humanitarian aid, and we need a massive presence here in order to help the people.
In essence, however, that is merely tinkering with the symptoms. Unless we can establish reasonably viable state and rule-of-law structures, the disaster will never end, no matter how much assistance we provide. That is why it is extremely important for us to play a major role, also politically. The cease-fire of 23 January is extremely fragile and only really exists on paper. That is why we need to force all the parties, as a matter of urgency, to get round the table and talk to each other, but it also means that we have to play our part.
Regrettably, Europeans often profit from these disasters. That is why the call for us to take certificates of origin more seriously, e.g. for natural resources, is justified, for often it is the Europeans who brutally exploit the people's suffering for their own economic interests. We have a responsibility here too, and we should not be content with making pretty speeches and applying sticking plaster solutions."@en1
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