The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 6.9 million people in 12 years. No war has cost more innocent lives since World War II, and the level of extreme violence, brutality against women, and even the enslavement of families and villages, appears to be escalating. The world’s attention has yet to fully focus on the plight of the Congolese civilians living in a state of perpetual extreme crisis day after day.

With nearly 7 million people killed, this ethnic slaughter of innocents is by far the worst genocide since the Holocaust, yet for its complexity, or its perceived remoteness, the eastern DR Congo has received shockingly little attention. The UN has more peacekeepers deployed there than anywhere else in history, yet the mission is said to be at risk of failure, as the peacekeepers appear not to have a strong enough mandate to protect civilians and combat the warlords.

CafeSentido reported in May 2009 that “A UN commander in Congo says the conflict is unpredictable and sporadic, changing with no warning, like the weather. There are only 17,000 troops in Congo, a nation of 60 million people, with a massive land area, as large as 20 states combined across the eastern US.”

The war needs to be tackled with an aggressive, unified global push on all three fronts opened by the Obama administration’s 3D diplomacy (development, diplomacy, defense). Increased hostilities are considered unlikely to help bring long-term peace, but a credible, forceful, effort needs to be made to stop the killing. 6.9 million lives have been lost while the world has watched

What can we do to mobilize international resources and consensus, to shape policies that will both help improve the security and quality of life of the Congolese civilians besieged by so much war and catastrophe, and end the killing once and for all?