The BBC has reported on the security needed to end the civil war and help facilitate the first multi-party vote in the Congo in 40 years:

More than 25m people are entitled to vote, protected by the biggest UN peacekeeping operation in the world.

Over 9,000 candidates are running for parliament.

[…]

The presidential candidates include the four vice-presidents who took office in 2003 in terms of a transitional power-sharing deal.

Three of the four vice-presidents are the leaders of former armed factions.

And as if the political stakes aren’t complicated enough, there is also the problem of actually getting people to the polls to vote:

Election workers in Democratic Republic of Congo are putting the finishing touches to possibly the most complex and challenging elections the world has ever seen.

Helicopters, canoes, motorbikes and porters have been used to transport election material to almost 50,000 polling stations across a country two-thirds the size of western Europe, with just 300 miles of paved roads.

Compared to this effort, can you believe people displaced from the Katrina hurricane in Louisiana were unable to vote? If the Congo can get 25 million people in some of the remotest parts of the world a ballot, then you would think the US could figure it out.

Another report had a cute story about changes happening in terms of people’s sense of risk, which caught my eye:

This is good for the poor jobless youth who are having a fun fair shouting their voices hoarse and riding their bicycles silly, at times daring the UN mission (Monuc) drivers to knock them over.

I hear its big business – if you’re knocked over by a UN car, the dollars that come with the pain are appealing. At least no one was knocked.

This must be a big cultural shift from how the youth interacted with the warring militias. I mean how often did someone challenge a security/military vehicle with the hope to collect benefits from the vehicle’s owner?