ABSTRACT
The announcement of such a high death toll should not have come as a surprise. It was already known in May 2000 that the conflict in the DrC was the deadliest in the world when the International rescue Committee (IrC) announced the results of its first mortality survey in that country, revealing a death toll of 1.7 million people. and the same organization continued to provide updates on the growing death toll through its surveys: 2.5 million in 2001, 3.3 million in 2003, and 3.8 million in 2004. It was also known that, even as the fighting died down, the failure to address the needs of the displaced and otherwise affected, and the damage to life-sustaining social structures and services, meant that the death toll would continue to rise: far beyond the toll caused by the bullets and bombs.
