Education Resource

Meet Journalist Pete Jones

Journalist Pete Jones talks about two projects: Congo: Consequences of a Conflict with No End, a story undertaken in early 2013 with award-winning photographer Fiona Lloyd-Davies, and Poaching, Conflict and Conservation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

With a grant from the Pulitzer Center, Jones and Lloyd-Davies traveled to Eastern Congo to report on the mass rape perpetrated by a retreating Congolese army. Writing for The Guardian, Jones tells of the army retreating into the town of Minova: "The soldiers were embarrassed, angry, upset and out of control; their commanders had disappeared and the battalion and regiment structures had disintegrated."

Jones's second story took him to Province Orientale where a protected nature reserve with UNESCO World Heritage status was under the thumb of a brutal militia. The militiamen were destroying the land, poaching animals and mining precious metals. They smuggled ivory and gold from the region, with a cut of the proceeds awarded to high-ranking officers in the Congolese army in exchange for protection.

Read more from this project.