Sam Brownback: “I rise to speak on a situation now developing to which I hope my colleagues will pay some attention. If we get involved…”

“I rise to speak on a situation now developing to which I hope my colleagues will pay some attention. If we get involved at an early phase, it may be something we can head off rather than have it develop full scale. And I will have some pictures. I am talking about the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We have seen a situation there where thousands of people have been dying on a monthly basis. It had been stabilizing some with the U.N. policing force that was in the area, the largest in the world. Now it is escalating again. It had stabilized. It is something we have to get after right now and, if we can, it might be such that we can stop it from spreading. But we have to pay some attention to it and look at it now. Not even 12 months after their first free elections in 40 years, the fragile stability of the entire country is at stake. Senator Durbin and I visited there about a year and a half ago. It was starting to achieve some stability. They hadn't voted yet for the election. Now we are seeing the present situation in eastern Congo, specifically in an area called North Kivu, gravely deteriorating. According to the U.N. relief agencies, we have seen nearly 40,000 people displaced this month. We saw another 100,000 displaced in June, in addition to the 100,000 displaced in January, all from this year. So nearly a quarter million people have been displaced in this one region.”