Earlier this month, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said that its studies had found that at least 3.3 million people have died in the war that has gripped the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1998, making it the deadliest documented conflict since World War II. Michael Despines, now senior policy and programme adviser for IRC in New York, worked in eastern Congo for six years, and challenges humanitarians to influence humanitarian policies that would result in real change.

Three million, three hundred thousand people dead in a four and a half year war. Sound familiar?

Have you seen it on the news? Have you heard about it being debated by any parliaments or congresses or world conferences?

In less than five years, the equivalent of the entire population of Chicago was wiped out in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. That's the equivalent of every man, woman and child in Ireland being killed. Surely if something of this nature occurred, it would have made the headlines. It's too shocking and horrible to ignore, one would think.

Earlier this month, the International Rescue Committee widely disseminated the findings of a comprehensive mortality study in Congo. The most conservative estimate is that 3.3 million people died in the war that has gripped this desperate and largely forgotten country since August of 1998. That makes it the deadliest documented conflict since World War II.

Just stop for a moment, and try and get a sense of the number. Think of the children, the families, the loss and suffering this country is experiencing. Picture ten children, perhaps your children, plus your nephews and nieces, plus their playmates, and so forth. Now imagine seven of them dead before they reach the age of two. This is what life is like in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I worked in Democratic Republic of Congo for the last six years, coordinating the IRC's humanitarian operations in the war-torn eastern part of the country. During that period, every six months or so, I would go to the United States or other countries for business or a break. And year after year, after mentioning where I work and what I do, I would get blank stares and comments like: "I didn't realize there was a war going on there."

I am not sure which is the greater horror, the fact that 3,300,000 people could have died in one country in four and half years of conflict, or the fact that no one seems to know or care.

It seems preposterous that I have to struggle and scour my mind to try and find strategies to highlight the suffering in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One thousand people die every day in this country as a result of the ongoing war. How is it possible that the United Nations has not made this a priority? Where are the headlines? Why are no politicians pounding their fists on a podium somewhere demanding action?

It's safe to say that the combined death toll of every conflict that made headlines in recent weeks and years represents a fraction of what has occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Where is the outrage?

The first four Principles of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and non-governmental organizations in disaster response programmes are:

1. The humanitarian imperative comes first.

2. Aid is given regardless of the race, creed or nationality of the recipients and without adverse distinction of any kind. Aid priorities are calculated on the basis of need alone.

3. Aid will not be used to further a particular political or religious standpoint.

4. We shall endeavor not to act as instruments of government foreign policy.

Nevertheless, humanitarian assistance is doled out as yet another tool of political strategy and national interest. In the case of Democratic Republic of Congo, it is not of geo-political interest. It is in a hard to reach place and the conflict serves the economic interests of the west, so the suffering goes on.

Humanitarians feel good when they're able to deliver that bag of food or shipment of medical supplies to a community in desperate need. But I often wonder, at the end of the day, what the impact of my small project is, when politicians in western capitals determine where billions of dollars go or don't go, or determine how their political, economic and military might is brought to bear to save tens of lives here, or hundreds, or perhaps thousands of lives there. In the meantime, catastrophes in places not on their radar screens flourish. Are we so cynical, and so defeated that we just accept this?

In Iraq a coalition of thirty countries sent armies and lost lives and will spend at least 100 billion dollars on its military and reconstruction efforts. Yet the entire Iraq conflict has produced a death toll equivalent to a few days in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Who are the greater hypocrites, the politicians or the humanitarians? Do we not need to rethink how humanitarian agencies do business and reassess how we use our scarce resources? If we are true humanitarians, should we not direct more energy and collective effort to influence government policy? Isn't it at this level where the true humanitarian decisions are made? If we are to be true to ourselves, and the ideals of humanitarianism, isn't this a fight we have to try?

If we don't, who will?