From The Economist: "Bartered Brides"

The kidnapping has been going on for some time, and locals talk of a number of cases so far this year. The abductions follow a pattern: a Hmong girl is wooed by an out-of-towner—whether from Vietnam or China is not clear—who speaks her language. She is lured to a rendezvous to be drugged and smuggled into China, probably near Lao Cai, about an hour’s drive from Sapa. Tall, pretty girls are said to be particular targets.

One 18-year-old recently managed to get back home to tell her tale after a four-day ordeal. Held captive in China, she escaped through a window and contacted the Chinese police, who returned her to Vietnam. Most do not escape. One of those kidnapped last month was a married woman with a son; friends fear her family may never see her again.

There is some tradition of bride-kidnapping among the Hmong themselves, but this gangsterised, cross-border variety is especially cruel. Village girls with little knowledge of the outside world tend to be trusting. And the kidnappers seem to operate with impunity—even, according to one account, seeking a reward for returning two underage girls whom they had failed to sell in China.

Within China itself, the abduction and sale of women has long been recognised as a prevalent social evil. Three decades of strict family-planning policies have exacerbated a traditional preference for boy children and contributed to a shortage of marriageable women.

Relations between Vietnam and China along their 1,300km (800-mile) border have improved: last month officials from the two countries, which fought a brief but bloody border war in 1979, completed a seven-year effort to demarcate the frontier. This, they hope, will open the way for increased links of various sorts. Stepped-up police co-operation to stamp out an evil little trade in Hmong women would be a good start.

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Furaha Bandu was working in her field with her husband when they heard gunshots. Suddenly, people began running frantically in all directions, screaming in terror. Congo’s brutal conflict had reached their community -- and the rebel soldiers would show them no mercy.

As villagers ran into the forest, the soldiers killed any they could find. Her heart pounding, Furaha picked up her two month old baby and ran for cover.  She found her husband -- but where were their five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter? In desperation, the young mother begged her fleeing neighbors: “Have you seen my children?”One neighbor stopped in her tracks to break the horrific news -- Furaha’s children were killed by the soldiers as they cried for their mommy.

The Will to Live

Furaha and her husband were so filled with grief that at first they, too, wanted to die. But the will to live took over and they pressed on through the forest, eating plant roots and sleeping under the trees at night. “We were so afraid,” Furaha recalls.

When they came to a road, they came across a horrendous sight -- the bodies of people who had been massacred. They walked another 10 miles until they arrived at a church in Kirotshe. There, the pastor told them not to walk any further.

With World Relief’s assistance, the church provided food to Furaha and other families fleeing the violence. World Relief built a school next to the church, and today Furaha serves in the church with her husband and trains other women in sewing and dress-making. Furaha is the face of Congo’s war. She has suffered incredible heartache. And yet she has found the courage to press on -- and the faith to believe that God has a purpose for her life.

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Here is a great video that tells the story of lives lifted out of poverty through microfinance:

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In my years working in Africa, I helped to start and grow three microfinance institutions -- in Rwanda, Burundi, and DR Congo. Microfinance is an important and effective tool to address poverty. Here is a technical definition of microfinance, taken from the Microfinance Gateway:

“Microfinance” is often defined as financial services for poor and low-income clients. In practice, the term is often used more narrowly to refer to loans and other services from providers that identify themselves as “microfinance institutions” (MFIs). These institutions commonly tend to use new methods developed over the last 30 years to deliver very small loans to unsalaried borrowers, taking little or no collateral. These methods include group lending and liability, pre-loan savings requirements, gradually increasing loan sizes, and an implicit guarantee of ready access to future loans if present loans are repaid fully and promptly. More broadly, microfinance refers to a movement that envisions a world in which low-income households have permanent access to a range of high quality financial services to finance their income-producing activities, build assets, stabilize consumption, and protect against risks. These services are not limited to credit, but include savings, insurance, and money transfers.

Many people first heard about microfinance in 2005, when Bangladesh's Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in establishing the microcredit movement across the developing world. 

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The situation in Congo continues to be of great concern, with the United Nations recently reporting that a notorious Ugandan rebel group has killed more than 500 people and kidnapped over 400, including several over the past four days. "We are increasingly concerned about the humanitarian situation and continuing attacks by the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, on the civilian population in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Oriental Province,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva.

The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative to Congo, Alan Doss, is calling for the return of all boys and girls fighting in the war zone. "The recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups is a war crime and a crime against humanity. This literally destroys the future of this country,” said Mr. Doss, who is also the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo.

Following is a moving video on the situation in Congo:

Did you know that 2008 was the "International Year of Sanitation" as proclaimed by the United Nations? I'll bet that most of us missed out on this important and interesting fact. The UN's goal in making this declaration was to raise awareness about the growing problem of unclean water and poor sanitary practices. Around the world, 2.6 billion people do not have a basic human necessity -- a toilet. You can learn much more about this serious crisis by reading the UN's talking points for the International Year of Sanitation -- a very interesting document that describes how good sanitation is critically important to lift people out of poverty, ill health and early death. Here are just two facts from the document that are stunning:  

• On a typical day, more than half the hospital beds in Sub-Saharan Africa are occupied by patients suffering from diarrheal-related disease; most of them would not be there if they had a way to safely go to the toilet and wash their hands.
  
• Diarrhea is one of the biggest killers of children under five worldwide, alone accounting for 17% of deaths in this age group. More than 5,000 children die every day from diarrhea.

This hidden global scandal constitutes an affront to human dignity on a massive scale. The following video from UNICEF is compelling in its call to all of us to do something to address this issue of poor sanitation and unclean water:

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Last week I wrote about the new Disaster Cauze that is focused on helping to alleviate the suffering in Congo. Cauzal Coffee is partnering with World Relief in this important endeavor, and here is a moving video introducing this new Cauze:

World Relief has recently given an encouraging update on their distribution of beans, flour, salt, vegetable oil, and soap to hundreds of families in the Rutshuru region of eastern Congo. "They were astonished to see us," said World Relief's Marcel Serubungo. "At the same time, we were surprised to see all of them alive." Hunger is the biggest challenge the local people face, as it remains unsafe for people to go into their fields to harvest crops.

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12-year-old Rhonda was walking through a familiar field on the way home to her grandmother. As the pathway turned the corner of an abandoned shed, a man grabbed her, threw her down in the shrubs and raped her. When he was finished he put a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone, then left her bleeding and alone, tossed aside like a piece of trash in the field. The man had pulled Rhonda’s right leg so violently that it came out of its socket and Rhonda could not walk. She crawled on her hands and knees to the roadside where she collapsed, covered in dirt and blood. A friend found Rhonda on her way back from school, carried her home and washed her.

Rhonda could not hide the pain from her grandmother, who thought she was sick, but never told about the incident. For Rhonda, all was hidden in fear and embarrassment. She tried walking her usual mile to school but soon the pain became unbearable and the silence impossible. Despite overwhelming fears from the perpetrator’s threats, she told a teacher what happened in the field. When Rhonda’s grandmother learned that her granddaughter’s pain was more than a serious stomach flu she began pleading with police to investigate and spent her entire savings on Rhonda’s preliminary medical exam. She prayed to God for rescue, asking why He had left them to suffer alone. Her pleas to officials fell on deaf ears until a magistrate told her to see the staff from International Justice Mission (IJM).

IJM Kenya staff listened to Rhonda, documented her case and, with local authorities have taken action against the rapist to ensure he will never abuse another child. In May 2004, the perpetrator was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

In their dirt-floor shanty, Rhonda’s grandmother offered a prayer, “Lord, I am worthless before the world but You are worthy. I am meaningless but You are our help.” And with the same voice of confidence she tells us, “He answered my prayers by sending you.” Rhonda is now receiving proper medical attention and continues to heal. IJM continues to stand with Rhonda and her grandmother, bringing hope where there was silence. 

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How many of you have been following the unfolding crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Although rape, killing and war in Congo has been going on for several years, it has recently escalated significantly. Click here to read the latest news reports from BBC on Congo. 

Did you know that 5,400,000 million people have died from war-related causes in Congo since 1998 -- the world's deadliest documented conflict since World War II?  This death toll far exceeds those of other recent and more prominent crises, including those in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur. You can learn much more about the faces and lives behind these statistics by downloading this report from the IRC.

Tragically, the situation in Congo has been recognized as the worst crisis of violence against women in the world. Rape is used as a weapon of war to punish and destabilize entire communities. In some displacement camps, more than 70% of the women have been raped, with some being as young as three years old!

What response do these statistics provoke in you? What do you think is going through the mind of the Congolese woman in the refugee camp, pictured to the left? Have her daughters and granddaughters been raped? Why aren't we more vocal to see this human catastrophe come to an end? Will you commit to telling someone else about this tragedy in Congo? 

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