The international community must not "cut and run" from the Congo after this month's historic elections but should stay engaged there to tackle a humanitarian crisis that is killing 1,000 people a day, rights groups say.
Amnesty International, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and other groups are worried the United Nations may be tempted to speedily dismantle its peacekeeping presence in Democratic Republic of Congo if the July 30 polls go ahead successfully.
The elections, in which donors have invested more than $400 million, are intended to help Congo make the break from decades of dictatorship, war and chaos, including a 1998-2003 conflict whose effects have killed an estimated 4 million people.
President Joseph Kabila, who assumed power after his father was assassinated in 2001, is running against some 30 challengers including several former rebel leaders.
Rights groups say the presidential and parliamentary polls, the first free elections in the former Belgian colony in 40 years, could be a turning point if they produce a stable government and political institutions. But they argue they should be only the start of a massive international effort to rebuild the vast, mineral-rich country whose health, education and infrastructure are in tatters.
"Our fear is that the international community will look at the elections as the starting point for their exit strategy," Amnesty International's Veronique Aubert told Reuters.
"It's vital that after the election the international community doesn't just cut and run, leaving the job half done," Oxfam International's Juliette Prodhan said in a statement. The groups said Congo's humanitarian crisis created by the five-year war remained "massive" and "absolutely catastrophic".
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