Zachary Ochieng
7 April 2008
Nairobi — US-led efforts in recent weeks to end the crisis in eastern Congo have yielded a ceasefire, but the conflict is not yet over.
A report by the Enough Project says the international community must follow through on recent progress with a comprehensive peace strategy.
The report, titled Getting serious about ending conflict and sexual violence in Congo, says that while a recent ceasefire agreement is hailed as a diplomatic success, the continued suffering of Congolese civilians remains an international failure.
According to the report, systematic and widespread crimes against humanity continue to haunt the region.
According to the International Rescue Committee's latest study of mortality in Congo, death rates in the region remain unchanged since the end of the regional war that tore through Africa's Great Lakes region from 1998 to 2004.
By the end of this month, 45,000 more Congolese - half of them children - will die from hunger, preventable disease and other consequences of violence and displacement.
"Congolese women and girls in particular bear the brunt of this crisis. Indeed, eastern Congo right now is perhaps the worst place in the world to be a woman or a girl," the report says.
The sexual violence and rape exists on a scale seen nowhere else in the world as it is part and parcel of the conflict. It mutilates and humiliates. Its nature is brutal and vicious; it defies both description and imagination.
Often successful in its intent to destroy and exterminate, rape as a weapon of war is causing the near total destruction of women, their families and community members.
The international community has known about the extreme humanitarian crisis in the eastern Congo for years, and the sexual violence pandemic entered fully onto the international radar in 2002 after the release of Human Rights Watch's harrowing report - The War within the War.
Since then, there have been several reports detailing gruesome sexual atrocities committed against women and young girls, including recent high-profile segments on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's 60 Minutes and National Broadcasting Company's Today shows. This spotlight has failed, however, to generate effective action; efforts to protect women and girls in the Congo are failing spectacularly.
The report argues that the policies needed to better protect women and girls in Congo are closely linked to peacemaking and conflict prevention. Since rape is used as a weapon of war in Congo, bringing one of the most complex conflicts in the world to an end will ease the suffering of women and girls and, if sufficient resources are made available, enable women and girls to participate in the healing and reconstruction of their families, communities and country at large.
As Enough Project has argued in a previous strategy paper, international efforts to end the crisis must concurrently negotiate an end to the conflict in North Kivu province between the Congolese government and dissident Congolese General Laurent Nkunda, and remove the predatory Rwandan Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) from eastern Congo.
According to Enough Project, a comprehensive peace strategy requires vigorous pursuit of the 3Ps of crisis response - peacemaking, protection and punishment.
In terms of peacemaking, the international community - led by a quartet of guarantors that includes the US, the EU, the UN and the African Union - must consolidate a recent ceasefire and move forward with a "carrot and stick" approach to deal with the FDLR, a strong follow-through that requires additional funding and personnel for programmes to demobilise ex-combatants and stabilise the region.
As far as protection is concerned, the UN peacekeeping mission in the Congo, known as Monuc, must lead protection efforts by increasing troop presence in the eastern Kivu provinces and deploying to areas where sexual violence is most prevalent.
Donors, too, must increase support for humanitarian and development initiatives that deliver services aimed at reducing sexual violence and dealing with the health, psychological and socio-economic needs of individual women and girls affected by this decade-long crisis.
As regards punishment, international donors and the UN can help break the cycle of impunity by working with the Congolese government to build state capacity to investigate, arrest and try suspected criminals.
Additionally, the International Criminal Court should open an investigation into rape as a war crime in eastern Congo.
The end of 2007 was accompanied by an escalation in armed conflict and displacement in eastern Congo. Under the terms of a shaky truce agreed upon earlier in the year, Nkunda and the Congolese army agreed to "mix" their forces and attack the FDLR, a militia of about 6,000 to 8,000 fighters.
However, the FDLR live among the local Congolese population, and a brutal counter-insurgency campaign displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The "mixture" experiment, however, collapsed in June, and Nkunda defiantly refused to integrate his forces into the national army.
Congolese President Joseph Kabila rejected political talks with Nkunda and threatened to pursue a military solution. Sporadic fighting broke out in North Kivu, and by late last year, 20,000 Congolese forces had been deployed in the province and awaited orders to attack.
Seeking a strategic advantage over Nkunda's tough and well dug-in forces, the weak and ill-disciplined Congolese army allied itself with the FDLR and other anti-Tutsi Congolese militias.
In late December, with Congo's exhausted and depleted army incapable of launching another immediate offensive, and the international eye on Kivu's humanitarian situation, the Congolese government announced another attempt at finding a political solution - this time in the form of a grand conference.
The Conference for Peace, Security and Development in North and South Kivu, was aimed at putting an end to the conflict and formulating a plan for peace, security and development in the region.
On December 24, acknowledging the importance of the conference, Nkunda agreed to a temporary ceasefire so as to "allow the smooth running of work in a secure environment."
The conference, which began in early January in Goma, was attended by roughly 1,500 people representing civil society, armed groups and the Congolese government. The FDLR was not invited, however, for fear of making the atmosphere volatile.
Rwanda's special envoy to the Great Lakes Region, Richard Sezibera, was invited but declined out of respect for Congolese state sovereignty. These were significant absentees.
The current and historical carnage committed by the FDLR and Rwanda's subsequent refusal to engage in dialogue with what it terms a "genocidal military organisation" are two of the major causes of instability in the eastern Congo.
Tim Shortley, Senior Adviser to the Assistant Secretary of State for Conflict Resolution, leads US peacemaking efforts in eastern Congo and the US had established a diplomatic presence in Goma prior to the peace conference.
The EU, the African Union and the UN also sent senior diplomats to the region for the conference. After two weeks of bare-knuckled diplomacy, the Congolese government, 10 armed groups from North Kivu - including Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People or CNDP - and 13 armed groups from South Kivu signed an agreement.
Shortley described the deal as "a ceasefire agreement, which provides a process to achieve a sustainable path to peace."
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