United Nations Radio

Ben Affleck and Rose Mappendo

Diane: You're listening to music from the film "Gimme Shelter", a film set to the Rolling Stones song of the same name was produced for UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, by actor/director Ben Affleck and the Rolling Stone's Mick Jagger. Gerry Adams has more.

Presenter: The 4-and a half minute short details the unseen suffering of families in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who are fleeing fighting in the province known as North Kivu. Affleck and Jagger made the film to help raise $23 million for UN efforts to pay for clean water and emergency aid kits for the refugees. Ben Affleck was at United Nations headquarters to release the film:

"In terms of raising awareness, there are a couple of things. One obviously is...money. Organizations like UNHCR who are doing work, that is providing a service - people are being fed, people are getting clean water, people are being sheltered, literally, and being moved to areas that are safer than areas they came from. That work doesn't get done simply without money."

Narrator: Mick Jagger has said that the Rolling Stones are very happy to contribute to "Gimme Shelter" to support efforts to raise the profile of the conflict in the Congo. Women and children in that conflict have become the most vulnerable. One woman from the area, Rose Mapendo, managed to escape the brutality but not before it changed her life forever:

"Women during war are the ones who pay the consequence. For example, my husband was killed for no reason. We were forced to be in a death camp to be killed with the children. Every day was the end of our life, every night."

Narrator: Rose Mapendo had grown up in the South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When war broke out in 1998, she and her family were forced into a prison camp because of their ethnicity. As a pregnant Rose and seven of her children huddled in a cell, she could hear her husband being shot to death. She says the conflict between ethnic tribes that led to her husband's death doesn't make sense:

"And please, I need some people to understand the issues about these two tribes between Huti and Tutsi. I don't care who they are. I don't care to be Hutu or to be a Tutsi. But I care about being a human being. Human being, they are suffering for no reason."

Narrator: Weeks later, completely unaided, Rose gave birth to twin boys on the concrete floor of her cell. In an act of forgiveness and an appeal to the humanity of the commanders who ran the prison, she named the twins after them - the very same men who killed her husband.

"I think in this situation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not that it is an invisible situation - it is very visible and the film shows it. The problem is that it is neglected. Hence, the first objective is to raise awareness."

Narrator: Pierre Bertrand, Director of UNHCR, the UN refugee agency New York.

Producer: Gerry Adams
Duration: 4'04"