You simply must see these images. It’s a pictorial of “life” in the “Democratic” Republic of Congo. As in many African countries, long-running civil wars between enemy tribes take an almost unbelievable human toll. The photos in this pictorial show what a truly miserable existence these people have.

The little boy in the photo to the right is eight. He, his mother and seven siblings were attacked with machetes by a militia of the Lendu tribe. He was left for dead in a pile of bodies. His father found him still alive and hid him in the jungle. Later, the same militia found the father and hacked him to death, too. The child now lives in an orphanage with scars to remind him of what happened to his family.

It’s so hard to comprehend, sitting here in comfort in the United States, that suffering like this exists, but I know it does. What can we do to stop it? Can an outside force have an effect, of do we have to wait for those people to have a change of heart? The UN is clearly impotent in situations like these, and the US would be seen as some sort of interloper based on current world opinion, so who can help? Do we simply have to let it continue until one side wins, or both sides lose enough blood?