The Government is in a strong position to help to bring peace to a corner of Africa that the United Nations has described as facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world today, affecting 16 million people.
You would hardly know it from the Western media, but the Congo is embroiled in a war that involves seven neighbouring countries and is causing untold misery, death and destruction. In the first week of December alone, 60,000 people were driven from their homes and took refuge in Zambia. A generation of Congolese people has grown up without education or the benefits of even a basic health system; HIV/AIDS is rampant and every imaginable problem is theirs in abundance.
The Congolese people are no strangers to the misery and mayhem that comes with the politics of greed and corruption which forms the backdrop to this war. Ever since the days of the slavers, the Congo has been the victim of predatory traders seeking to get rich on the country's assets which include copper, gold, diamonds, ivory, rubber, timber. And, of course, the people themselves.
The Belgian king Leopold was at the vanguard of the European imperialists in Africa when in 1885 he grabbed the Congo and used it as a source of immense personal wealth. By the time the country gained independence in 1960 it was in economic and political chaos. However, things were to get a lot worse for the Congolese, as out of the chaos rose one Mobuto Sese Seko as their new leader.
Mobuto, or the "Leopard Prince" as he liked to be called, had learned well the lessons of his get-rich-quick predecessors. He brought the daily practice of graft, cronyism and corruption to new heights. Because he professed to be anti-Communist he received huge support both from the US and Europe. Aid flowed in and the Leopard became a very fat cat indeed.
Marble-walled palaces in and around Zaire (as he had renamed the country) were followed by luxury homes in the US, UK and the more glitzy resorts along the Mediterranean. On occasions he and his family would charter Concorde to bring them on shopping sprees to New York or California.
Meanwhile, the population of the country was living in the depths of poverty. The country disintegrated and parts of it were taken over as personal fiefdoms by cronies of Mobuto. Juvenal Habyarimana, for instance, became president of Rwanda. His death in a plane crash in 1994 sparked off a massacre which was to claim the lives of almost a million of the Tutsi minority, which in turn led to the war in the Congo.
With help from Uganda the Tutsis prevailed and the Hutu Rwandan army and assorted other gangs of assassins fled to Congo where they were offered protection by Mobuto. In 1996, the new Tutsi-dominated army of Rwanda invaded Congo, intending to establish a buffer zone between themselves and their former Hutu oppressors.
There are almost as many reasons for this war as there are combatants. Each of the parties lays claim to the high moral ground, but in reality the main bone of contention is who gets to control the country's natural resources. The only thing that has changed for the people is the depth of their suffering.
In 1995 GOAL had the highly unpleasant task of burying 40,000 cholera victims who had fled the massacres in Rwanda, and it is extremely sad to see the country continue on its downward spiral. The madness of a million people dead, wholesale slaughter, private militias and seven countries involved in a war over a country which, even if peace broke out tomorrow, would need international support for many years to come, is incomprehensible to many.
However, unless the international community takes this unpleasant bull by the horns it is going to continue on its wild rampage through the china shop that is Africa.
The UN seems powerless to halt the madness. In June Kofi Annan called on the Security Council to impose sanctions and other punitive measures to force Rwanda and Uganda to pull their troops out. This would seem to me to be a possible solution.
There are a couple of things the Irish Government can do to help bring an end to the misery of the millions of people whose lives are being devastated by this war. For a start, the Department of Foreign Affairs could stop giving money to the governments of Uganda and Rwanda. It is an obscenity that our Government should contribute in any way to the continuation of the war.
Secondly, Ireland is soon to take its seat on the Security Council of the UN and this will surely present the Government with an opportunity to help get the people of the Congo and neighbouring countries the international assistance they so badly need. Only when the fighting is stopped will it be possible to tackle the many crippling problems facing the Congolese people. A peace must be brokered and the UN is the only forum that has the clout to make any accord stick.
We in Ireland know about the economic dividends that establishing peace can bring and it is vital that we try to win similar dividends for the people of The Congo. The only certainty in the whole sorry situation is that these people will need our assistance for many years to recover from this devastating war.
John O'Shea is head of GOAL
Mary Holland in on leave