World News 10-12-2004 1,000 Die Every Day in Hidden War who: International Rescue Committee what: Says 1,000 people die every day due to war where: Democratic Republic of Congo when: Yesterday snippet: "More than 1,000 people are dying every day as a result of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)," reports the BBC following the publication of figures from the aid agency International Rescue Committee, which says "the vast majority of deaths are from easily preventable illnesses". "An estimated 3.8 million people from a population of 60 million have been killed in six years of fighting," says The Telegraph, "meaning that the conflict dwarfs every other humanitarian emergency, including that in Sudan`s Darfur region." In other chilling statistical news, the UN children`s agency, Unicef, has published its annual report, The State of the World`s Children, and estimates that 90 million children are "severely hungry", 270 million have no health care at all and "nearly half of the 3.6 million people killed in war since 1990 have been children". Unicef executive director Carol Bellamy says the spread of HIV and AIDS is "the worst catastrophe ever to hit the world" and combined with conflict and poverty, it is depriving a billion children of the most basic essentials, most of them in developing regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, southern Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. [... more]

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