“Peace for Congo Network” is a group of missionaries and lay people. The missionaries have lived for a long time in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (RdCongo) and now they live in Italy.
“Peace for Congo Network” was born little by little, day by day.
At the beginning, in 1994, many missionaries, who lived in Italy, witnessed the massive arrival of Rwandan refugees in Kivu (RdCongo), after the tragic events happened in their country.
In 1996, the Congolese missionaries raised alert over the situation, when the Rwandan refugee camps, in Congo, were bombed.
In 1998, at the beginning of the second war in RdCongo, the missionaries, who were in the Kivu province, made a peal, so the Italian missionaries decided to start a “fast and pray chain” for the peace in Congo. This chain wanted to be a “little” solidarity gesture for Congolese people.
Many countries joined the initiative: from RdCongo to Italy, France, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Spain, Switzerland… and many associations like “Beati costruttori di Pace”, “Chiama l’Africa”, “Agesci” and the Congolese community in Italy.
“Peace for Congo Network” was born from that contacts and joining, with a view to an exchange of information about RdCongo and further initiatives.
The most important aims are:
- Keep the Congolese tragedy in the spotlight. From 1998, more than 5 million people were killed because of the war. Our tool to distribute information is a monthly newsletter send via e-mail: “Congo News magazine”. It is, essentially, an information tool that it used also for analyze the political, social and economic reality of the Great Lakes’ countries.
- Put pressure on authorities, because they take important decisions about the life of the country. We believe that politicians should be in service of peace, justice and defence of human rights. For this reason we try to maintain contacts with Foreign Ministry and members of the Italian and European Parliament.
Finally, “Peace for Congo Network” is an associate member of Eurac (Europa-Africa Centrale/Central Africa-Europe), an European Ngo network that are in the Great Africans Lakes Region, above all in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. The Eurac base is in Bruxelles (Belgium).