Geneva - Mia Farrow issued an appeal Monday for the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, focusing on the abuse suffered by women and children in what she has described as "a lawless place torn apart by violence."

The actress and goodwill ambassador for UNICEF said she wanted to "plea for protection and peace," and recounted stories of her recent visit to the North Kivu region in the troubled eastern DR Congo.

"People asked me to tell the world they need protection, need the violence to end," said Farrow at the UN's Geneva office.

She spoke about meetings she had with Congolese people who have been affected by the country's turmoil, including former child soldiers and women who had been brutally abused and raped.

Disappearances and random acts of violence, she said, were daily occurrences and fear was commonplace.

A recent outbreak of fighting between government forces and Tutsi rebels led by General Laurant Nkunda has caused some 250,000 to flee their homes, adding to the over
1 million refugees and displaced persons already from DR Congo.

Farrow said aid workers needed better access to reach the populations at risk.

Estimates have placed the number of people in the country who died in nearly 15 years of violence, starvation and disease, at about five million.

Farrow, a Golden Globe winner who blogs about humanitarian issues in Africa on her website, has visited several of the world's poorest countries since taking up the UN envoy position, including the Central African Republic, Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan.

"There's not enough sense of outrage to produce the political will to provide protection to an imperiled population," Farrow said about the Kivu region, blasting what she called the international community's "reluctance to respond."

"This is a failed state if ever there was one - a lawless place torn apart by violence," she wrote in her latest blog post from DR Congo. "I saw children literally starving to death." (dpa)