POLITICS-EAST AFRICA: Plans Underway to Create Peaceful Region

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Jul 16 2003 (IPS) - Countries of the Great Lakes region, the African Union and United Nations, have come together to work out a long-term strategy to promote peace in the region.

Representatives of the two organizations, together with those from the Great Lakes countries comprising Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), met here recently and pledged to work towards quelling storms of war that have engulfed the region.

The meeting, called International Conference For Peace, Security, Democracy and Development for the Great Lakes Region, was the first of its kind. It marked the beginning of a process aimed at setting up a Marshall Plan for the region, through a pact that spells out mechanisms of formulating a lasting peace, democracy and good governance, as well as economic development and regional integration for the whole region.

Special Representative of UN Secretary General to the GLR, Ibrahim Fall, appealed for the support of the international community at all levels, saying the region was the epicenter of Africa.

The establishment of such a body for the region has been a recurrent idea since the early 1990s, and especially after the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Its necessity is demanded by the current situations in the DRC, Burundi and Uganda, where thousands of civilians have continued to die and others displaced due to civil wars.

In the DRC, the North-Eastern area continues to be volatile with rebels, mainly from the Lendu and Hema militia groups, currently fighting each other over control of resources. More broadly, conflict between rebels and government forces has reigned this Africa’s third largest nation for the past four years, and is said to have killed approximately 3.3 million people.

The situation is similar in Burundi where war between government forces and rebels of the National Liberation Forces (FNL), and FDD (Forces for the Defence of Democracy) still continues to ravage the country, with new fighting between the Hutu rebels and Tutsi-dominated army erupting in the Capital Bujumbura last week.

The warring sides have been in conflict since 1993, and as a result, more than 300,000 people, mostly civilians have died.

A ceasefire signed last year in Johannesburg, South Africa, by the government and FDD has been widely violated, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.

And in Uganda, Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, who dominate the northern part, have been terrorising residents in the region since it started its operations against the government 16 years ago.

LRA has been launching massive attacks on children, raping, kidnapping, torturing and even murdering them. Out of the 1.2 million Acholi, who are largely resident in the area, 850,000 have fled the war and are in camps.

These are issues the conference has had to grapple with. The general feeling that emerged during last months two-day inauguration of the preparatory process of the conference was that if conflict in these countries is not tamed, it may quickly spread across the entire region.

The meeting pledged to involve the issue of gender, especially in reconciliatory processes, citing the case of Rwanda, where women have been actively involved in peace projects. "The women and children were the principle victims of the genocide. In view of that, women have seen the need to own the process," said Eda Mukabagwiza, a Rwandan delegate at the conference, in an exclusive interview with IPS.

She said women from different fields in the country have come together under one umbrella organization, Twese Hamwe (all of us together) to reflect on how to strengthen the reconciliatory process, considering the fact that they are more than 53 percent of the eight million population.

"We are seeing what is happening in the DRC and we are suffering also," she said, adding that it is time to guard against bad situations that might occur in future.

Rev Dr Kasonga wa Kasonga from the DRC contends that conflict in one country can easily spill to another country and wreck havoc. "The case of the Rwandan massacre, many Rwandans ran into Congo as refugees," he notes, adding, "now we are suffering because they are interfering with our affairs." Rev Kasonga works in Nairobi with the All Africa Conference of Churches.

He regrets that involvement of Uganda and Rwanda in the Congolese territory is complicating the situation, saying, "Foreign interference is a big handicap to peace in Congo. They want control over territories in Congo, which are rich in mineral resources and this is fuelling the dispute." The two countries have been accused of supplying weapons to the rebels in DRC.

Rev Kasonga asserts that if these nations withdraw completely from the country, peace may return soon. "If they leave, the Congolese themselves can settle their own problems with the help of the UN," he argues.

He says the timing of the Conference could not have been better, but appealed to the participants to speak tersely against countries interfering in the affairs of others for their own interests, saying this was the genesis of trouble.

African Union envoy, Ken Walubita, said: "It is our hope that the region enters a new era of peace, security and development and we shall strive to see the region a war-free zone."

A series of meetings are taking place between national focal points of conflict resolution and members of the civil society in the six countries, to see how best to establish the process.

A first summit of Heads of State under the chairmanship of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and AU will be held soon, before a final summit to adopt policies and projects to be implemented across the region. (ENDS/IPS/AF/EA/IP/JM/SM/03)

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