Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide, which will soon be relocated to a new memorial site to preserve them. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Adam Bemma
KIGALI , Nov 26 2013 (IPS)

“There is a saying that all Rwandans believe in. You can’t forgive if you forget, but when you remember, you know what harmed you and you can forgive and move forward,” Honore Gatera tells IPS as he walks through the grounds of the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda’s capital. 

The museum was established in 2004, 10 years after the horrific Rwanda genocide. It is estimated that 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in the massacre that began after a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down over Kigali in 1994.

That year the international community failed Rwanda by failing to stop the genocide. It is almost 20 years later, and Rwandans believe international justice continues to fail them.

Angela Mbabaz, 27, is a Rwandan Tutsi. She spent her entire childhood in Uganda with her two brothers and younger sister. She now has a daughter the same age she was when her mother was killed inside a Catholic Church compound alongside family members outside of Kigali."It's been 20 years and things have changed. We no longer say Hutu or Tutsi. We're all Rwandans." -- Rwandan genocide survivor Angela Mbabaz

“I heard about my mom’s death when I was seven years old,” she tells IPS. “I wouldn’t want my daughter to know the masterminds of the genocide aren’t all in prison, so I still haven’t told her.”

Community courts in Rwanda, known as “gacaca” were formed in 2001 to provide justice for victims like Mbabaz who lost family members during the genocide. In the local language, Kinyarwanda, gacaca means to sit down and discuss an issue.

Last year, gacaca courts wrapped up. Human rights groups criticised the village-based process due to its falling short of international legal standards. According to government figures, 65 percent of the two million genocide suspects were found guilty in a speedy legal process in Rwanda.

But there is almost no opposition to gacaca within Rwanda, even from law experts. Sabine Uwase is legal advisor to AVEGA Agahozo, an association of genocide widows. She found gacaca to be highly effective in prosecuting perpetrators.

“I think the country needed justice quickly, as so many victims wanted to move on toward national reconciliation,” she tells IPS. “The international court is taking too long.”

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda or ICTR was established by the United Nations following the 1994 genocide. Based in Arusha, Tanzania, the ICTR will close in 2014, once the remaining appeals are finished. ICTR spokesperson, Rolland Amoussouga, believes criticism of the tribunal is unwarranted.

“Since it started in 2003, the ICTR has indicted 93 people. Eighty-three have been arrested. Seventy-five decisions have been reached with 12 acquitted and 63 sentenced to prison,” he tells IPS.

In international law, the ICTR has set many legal precedents including the first-ever judgement on the crime of genocide by an international court. A residual mechanism was put in place last year by the U.N. It will continue in Arusha following the completion of the ICTR mandate.

“It is a normal process, a normal feeling, for genocide survivors and victims to criticise ICTR one way or another. You can’t expect to have a perfect justice,” he says.

Ten indicted Rwandan genocide suspects remain at large. To Rwandans, this is not good enough. Naphtal Ahishakiye is the executive secretary of Ibuka, which means “remember” in Kinyarwanda. Ibuka is a national organisation representing genocide survivors and the most powerful civil society group in Rwanda.

“These perpetrators of the genocide need to be caught and brought to justice here in Rwanda, not taken to the ICTR or The Hague,” he says. “Gacaca was participative justice. Everybody in Rwanda came together to hear how the genocide was planned and executed.”

Mbabaz wants Rwanda to move on from the genocide, as she has. She believes the international community will apprehend the remaining perpetrators and let them face justice.

“It’s been 20 years and things have changed. We no longer say Hutu or Tutsi. We’re all Rwandans,” she says. “I want my daughter to understand what happened in the past, and be willing to forgive what happened to our family.”

The national day of remembrance is on Apr. 4. Next year’s event will mark 20 years since the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus took place. National reconciliation efforts have worked to erase tribal affiliations, officially replacing them with a modern, post-genocide Rwandan identity.

Gatera concludes his tour of the Kigali genocide memorial. He says he would like to put an end to this terrible chapter in the country’s history.

“It’s been so long. The ICTR is closing next year and there are still many open cases, there are still many other perpetrators running around the world,” he says. “Once these figures are caught, they must be brought to Rwanda, as we’ve shown the international community we can treat everyone fairly.”

Even if these fugitives are arrested and sent to Rwanda to face justice, there is no telling if they will, in fact, receive a fair trial by international standards. But according to Rwandans, they believe real justice can, and must, be demonstrated to the international community to show they do not need outside help any longer.

Healthcare systems in Eastern Europe and Central Asia remain woefully unable to cope with HIV/AIDS as the region’s raging epidemic – the fastest growing in the world – takes on a new dimension, a senior UN official has told IPS.

Until now the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) epidemic had been driven by injection drug use. But data and anecdotal evidence has shown a strong rise in the spread of the disease through heterosexual transmission as well as via men who have sex with men – potentially throwing up a new set of challenges for governments and healthcare ministers.

But, says the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Michel Kazatchkine, until a new approach to treating the disease is taken in countries worst affected by it, the response to the epidemic will continue to be poor and largely ineffective."In some countries it will probably take a wave of deaths, or the death of someone famous or a prominent member of the Church for anything to change.”

He told IPS: “HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia needs to be taken out of the medical ghetto which it is in at the moment.

“Regardless of whether it is driven by heterosexual transmission or drug-injection, I am afraid that until the disease gets visibility and health systems get geared up to take it on, it will not be dealt with properly. In some countries it will probably take a wave of deaths, or the death of someone famous or a prominent member of the Church for anything to change.”

For many years Eastern Europe and Central Asia has had the world’s fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemic. The estimated number of people with HIV has grown by 140 percent in the past ten years, according to UN figures. Russia has 70 percent of all people living with HIV in the region and together with the Ukraine accounts for 90 percent of the region’s HIV infection cases.

The epidemic remains primarily linked with injection drug use with over 35 percent of case reports in the region associated with drug use.

But in the last five years, there has been a marked increase in heterosexual transmission which now accounts for 30 percent of reported cases, according to Kazatchkine. Much of this is believed to be between male drug users and women.

However, the exposure route of 40 percent of infections in the region is classified as ‘unknown’. It is thought that most of these are among men who have sex with men.

Discrimination, persecution and stigmatisation of homosexuals, drug users and people with HIV/AIDS means that it is impossible to collect accurate data on the spread of the disease.

Gay men are often fearful of admitting to doctors how they became infected and instead say that they contracted it through heterosexual sex. Drug users, who can face long prison sentences in some countries in the region, do the same.

Recent legislation banning the promotion of same sex partnerships and long-standing travel restrictions in some parts of the region for people with HIV have only further marginalised groups in which the disease is spreading rapidly.

This presents a major problem in effectively dealing with the epidemic, say doctors, as it adds to existing barriers to the prevention and treatment of the disease.

Prof. Jens Lundgren of the European Aids Clinical Society (EACS) told IPS:

“What we know is that any policies, anywhere in the world, which are introduced and which marginalise or stigmatise people with HIV are counter-productive to treating the disease.

“A good, rational health policy is one that involves a clear view of a disease’s epidemiology – where, in what communities and how it is being spread.”

This comes on top of what has been repeatedly criticised by international bodies as a continuingly poor healthcare response to the disease in many countries.

Access to anti-retroviral treatment is very low – with as little as eight percent of all those in need of it being able to obtain it in Russia, for example.

Systematic care of those diagnosed with the disease is also inadequate.

“One of the problems in Russia is that there is no integration of a patient with HIV into the primary health care system,” said Kazatchkine. “When someone is diagnosed they are simply referred to a special centre and passed on. It is as if they are something to be got rid of. No one follows up on them and they are essentially forgotten.”

There are fears that news of the changing nature of the epidemic’s spread could be used by some authorities to push their own political agendas on how to deal with the epidemic.

International bodies have urged countries in the region to adopt harm reduction programmes, including needle exchanges and drug substitution therapy, which are recommended best practice in the West as a front-line measure to help prevent the spread of the disease.

While some countries, notably the Ukraine, have had some success in rolling out these programmes and helping bring down new infection rates, others, such as Russia, are apathetic or even hostile to harm reduction.

Drug substitution therapy is illegal in Russia as political and medical authorities refuse to sanction it and there are no state needle exchange programmes.

The vast majority of funding for prevention programmes has come from foreign organisations, but some of these have left the country as its regime has become more authoritarian.

Some of the few organisations in Russia offering harm reduction services, such as the Humanitarian Action NGO in St Petersburg, have told IPS of the problems drug users face in accessing harm reduction programmes and of the difficulties they have in providing them, from almost absent funding to hostile police and societal attitudes.

That the disease is being spread more and more by sexual behaviour could provide ammunition to those who argue harm reduction programmes are a waste of resources.

“There are some authorities in the region which take every opportunity to use something that takes attention away from the need for continued harm reduction strategies and programmes and I fear the fact there is a rising heterosexual spread of the disease could be instrumentalised to attack harm reduction programmes among drug users,” Kazatchkine told IPS.

This would further hamper efforts to combat the epidemic as injection drug use is expected to remain the main route of transmission of HIV in the region for some time to come.

“There will continue to be an increase in sexual transmission while the epidemic among drug users will not slow down,” said Kazatchkine.

Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide, which will soon be relocated to a new memorial site to preserve them. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Edwin Musoni
KIGALI , Apr 7 2013 (IPS)

Bernard Kayumba, the mayor of Karongi district in western Rwanda, remembers just what it was like to be caught up in the genocide that claimed the lives of almost one million people in 100 days 19 years ago.

While there are no conclusive figures of the number of people killed, it is estimated that 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives in the massacre that began after a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down over Rwanda’s capital Kigali on Apr. 6, 1994.

Most of the dead were Tutsis, and most of those who perpetrated the violence were Hutus. But according to a report titled “Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda”, published by Human Rights Watch in 1999: “Many Tutsi who are alive survived because of the action of Hutu, whether a single act of courage from a stranger or the delivery of food and protection over many weeks by friends or family members.” Karongi, which was formerly known as Kibuye prefecture, was the site of two massacres in 1994 that resulted in the deaths of thousands of people over just a few days.

Many fled to the town for shelter in its churches and schools. But some 30,000 Tutsis fled to the hills of Bisesero, about 40 kilometres from the town, in the hope of escaping the violence.

Kayumba was one of them. But while there is no official death toll of the massacre there, it is believed that tens of thousands of people were killed in those hills. Kayumba survived.

He was 19 at the time, but he has not forgotten the massacres and their aftermath.

Rwandan genocide survivors exhuming the bodies of their relatives killed and buried in a mass grave during the 1994 100-day massacre. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

“I know what it means to miss school, I know what it means to be hungry myself. So when I am allocating support to the vulnerable in my district (as mayor), I am the most impartial,” he told IPS as the country starts its commemoration week of the genocide from Apr. 7 to 13.

Kayumba said he is mayor of Karongi today thanks to the assistance he received for his university fees from the government project, the Genocide Survivors Support and Assistance Fund, known by its French acronym, FARG.

The fund was set up by the government in 1998 to support the almost 300,000 genocide survivors and receives about six percent of Rwanda’s annual budget.

“I am thankful indeed, because FARG made me what I am today. The fund paid my university school fees. Without it, I don’t know what I would have become,” Kayumba said.

Since its establishment, FARG has spent a total of 127 million dollars, mostly in tuition fees for the 68,367 pupils in secondary schools and more than 13,000 students in higher learning institutions that it supports.

The Rwandan government only introduced free primary and secondary education here in 2010. And according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, about 60 percent of the country’s population lives below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day.

The fund also aids survivors with access to health care, while providing new homes and social assistance.

However, it has not been without its controversies. There have been reports of mismanagement of the fund.

In 2011, the local New Times newspaper reported that FARG was forced to drop some 19,000 beneficiaries – 30 percent of the total beneficiaries at the time – who were found not eligible.

It has also come under scrutiny for the quality of its housing projects.

In 2011 the Rwandan Auditor General said the homes were not worth the money spent by FARG on their construction. The audit had been carried out between 2006 and 2007 and the report had also stated: “A significant number of genocide survivors and other targeted needy people who had been earmarked to benefit from this funding still need help with shelter since some of them did not actually benefit.”

However, fund officials said that of the 300,000 genocide survivors, all but 500 families had been provided with new homes. They said that by December 2013, the remainder would have their homes. Fund officials also told IPS that of the 40,000 houses that have been built for survivors, 15,000 were built with money from FARG. The rest were built by government sponsors, which include NGOs, embassies and churches.

“Some houses were built in a hurry in 1995 by well-wishers since providing shelter was a big priority, so not as much attention was placed on the contractors’ (quality of work),” Theophile Ruberangeyo, the director general of FARG, told IPS.

“We also agree that we were cheated in 2003 when entrepreneurs just could not deliver good services while building our houses,” he said of the claims of badly constructed homes.

Jean Pierre Dusingizemungu, the president of IBUKA, an umbrella of genocide survivors’ associations and a high-profile lobby group, told IPS that many people were moving on with courage and determination. Ibuka means “remember” in the local Kinyarwanda language.

“Survivors have learnt that hatred and discrimination lead to death. So they have chosen the better way of building a united community for a brighter future of this nation,” he said.

But this is not the case for all. Some survivors still live with the trauma, anger and fear of what happened to them. Josée Munyagishari, 51, from Murambi in western Rwanda, was speared in the back of her neck in 1994 during the violence. The injury left her paralysed. She was also forced to have her right leg amputated – it had developed an infection after she was attacked with a machete.

“I got treatment, I got a house, my son is getting free education but all this cannot bring back my leg, neither can it make me stand on my legs,” Munyagishari told IPS. Her three-room house was constructed by FARG and her son benefits from the fund’s tuition scheme. But it is obvious that this has not been enough to heal the past.

“The people who did this to me were released from jail and since then I have had nightmares. I see them coming to kill me,” she said, pointing to a house about 100 metres away from her own home, where the accused apparently live.

Rebels in Central African Republic have said they have halted their advance on the capital, Bangui, and would participate in dialogue, as head of regional African forces warned them against making further moves.

The announcement on Wednesday gave only a limited reprieve for President Francois Bozize as the rebels told Reuters news agency they might insist on his removal in the negotiations in Gabon’s capital Libreville.

“I have asked our forces not to move their positions starting today because we want to enter talks in Libreville for a political solution,” Eric Massi, rebel spokesman, told Reuters by telephone from Paris.

“I am in discussion with our partners to come up with proposals to end the crisis, but one solution could be a political transition that excludes Bozize,” he said.

On Wednesday, the commander of the regional African force, FOMAC, warned rebels against any attempt to take Damara, the last strategic town between them and the country’s capital Bangui.

“Let it be clear, we will not give up Damara,” General Jean-Felix Akaga said.

“If the rebels attack Damara that would amount to a declaration of war and would mean that they have decided to engage the 10 central African states,” he told reporters in Bangui.

More than 30 truckloads of troops from Chad now line the two-lane highway just outside of Damara, to support government forces.

The rebels, who began their campaign a month ago and have taken several key towns and cities, appear to be holding their positions up until Sibut, which is 112km further north fram Damara.

‘Religious links’

In a bid to avoid being overthrown, President Bozize has promised to form a coalition government with rebels and to negotiate without conditions.

It’s a sign of how serious a threat is now being posed by the rebel groups who call themselves Seleka, which means alliance in the local Sango language.

They have accused Bozize of failing to honour a 2007 peace deal.

“There is a little bit of hope as rebels have stopped their advance on the capital,” Lydie Boka, Africa analyst, director of Strategic Co, told Al Jazeera.

“And really they didn’t have much of choice given that Chad, which is a big player and a master of the game in the region, has warned that they should not go beyond Damara.”

There is also speculation about religious links between rebels and some of the neigbouring countries like Sudan and Chad, she said.

The landlocked nation of 4.4 million people is rich in diamonds, gold and uranium and yet remains one of the poorest countries in the world.

Central African Republic has suffered many army revolts, coups and rebellions since gaining independence from France in 1960.

“Central Africans are tired of somebody who came by force in 2003 and didn’t really share power. Basically, his (Bozize) party, KNK, took over everything in the country. The last legislative elections were virtually fraudulent,” Boka said.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Ishmael Beah, UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War, visits Central African Republic and talks to released child soldiers in Akroussoulback. Courtesy: Brian Sokol/UNICEF

By Kristin Palitza
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Aug 28 2012 (IPS)

The protection of children remains critical in the Central African Republic, where parents willingly give their children to armed groups in exchange for protection and services.

This is according to United Nations Children’s Fund(UNICEF) ambassador Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier from Sierra Leone, who spoke to IPS during his visit to South Africa.

Beah had just returned from a trip to CAR where he witnessed the release of 10 child soldiers in the conflict-ridden, northeastern town of N’dele by the rebel group the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP).

The move comes after the CPJP signed a peace accord with the government on Aug. 25 – yet another small step towards ending years of violence in the country. The release of the children was the group’s show of commitment towards peace. However, more than 2,500 boys and girls are thought to still work for various armed groups in the Central African nation.

Seven years of civil war have led to food scarcity, a collapsed economy and limited access to healthcare and education. Despite its mineral wealth, CAR remains one of the world’s least-developed countries. In 2011, CAR ranked 179 out of 186 countries in the U.N. Human Development Index.

“In CAR, parents willingly give their children to armed groups in exchange for protection and services, even though it’s against the children’s human rights. That makes it very difficult to negotiate the release of children,” Beah told IPS.

One of the armed groups operating in CAR is the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by internationally hunted Joseph Kony. Two LRA leaders under Kony, Dominic Ongwen and Okot Odhiambo, who are sought by the International Criminal Court, are reportedly hiding in CAR.

The LRA has increased its attacks in the country since early 2012 and continues to abduct children as fighters.

Beah was himself forcibly recruited into Sierra Leone’s civil war, in which his parents and two brothers were killed, when he was 13. He fought alongside rebel groups for two years until he was removed from the army and placed in a rehabilitation home.

He now lives in New York, where he works as a human rights activist. His book “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” has been translated into 35 languages and was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 50 weeks.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: You witnessed the release of 10 child soldiers in CAR, one of the world’s poorest nations. What is life like there?

A: The government of CAR only has control over the capital city, Bangui. When you arrive in N’dele you understand how it is possible for an armed group to operate there; it is because the government is not providing social and economic services. Poverty is very stark, there are no resources or opportunities.

So it’s the armed group there, the CPJP, which provides some services. That’s why the group is very entrenched in the community. You see them walk around with weapons everywhere.

Q: Armed groups are part of the social fabric?

A: Yes, exactly. Still, the kids don’t want to fight. Once you take them away from the commanders, they tell you “I don’t want to do this.” But there are no alternatives beyond joining the armed group. The community relies on them. And the rebels have all the opportunities.

Q: How does a release operation happen?

A: The military doesn’t want to release the kids. They hide them. When you arrive at a military camp, the children who were identified are nowhere to be found. There are negotiations with the commanders until, slowly, they bring the kids out. After that, you have to leave immediately, because some of the children’s families live within the communities (and belong to the rebels).

The children are brought to a transit and rehabilitation centre in N’dele, where they receive psycho-social therapy as well as vocational training or are sent back to school.

Q: It sounds like a long, difficult process.

A: Yes. Added to that is that the rebels have weapons and ammunition, while you don’t have any protection. You rely on them keeping their promises. Everything about the situation is dangerous. When we landed in N’dele, the whole airport was surrounded by rebels with brand-new, sophisticated weapons, guarding the place. You are very exposed.

Q: What will happen to the rest of the estimated 2,500 child soldiers in CAR?

A: Right now, the rehabilitation centre takes care of 35 kids, and I witnessed the release of 10 more. Slowly, more and more are being released. All (three) rebel groups in the country have signed action plans to release children. But if nobody forces them, they will not do it.

Q: Visiting N’dele was to some degree a return to your past. How did that feel?

A: It brought up a lot of memories. I was driving in the car with the child soldiers who had just been released and could feel their uncertainty about being removed from what they know. I was in that same position (when I was a child soldier). I told them: “Things will be difficult, but you’re going to get through this.”

Once they understood that I had the same experience, there was a kinship that helped ease the situation a little. It’s such a daunting situation. You had this power of the weapon – some of them were lieutenants – and all of a sudden you’re just a child again, trying to figure out what to do with your life.

Q: How did they react when they heard your story?

A: They asked me questions repetitively. “Is it really possible to get through this? Can we actually have another life after this?” I was very honest with them. “It’s possible but it’s not easy. You’re going to be frustrated a lot. It’s not going to be as fast as you like.”

They are coming from an experience where they get things as fast as they like because they have a weapon. They understand these things when they come from someone like me.

Q: Are there viable alternatives for children in a poverty-stricken country like CAR?

A: There are viable alternatives, but they require long-term investment. If you want successful rehabilitation, you have to be willing to look beyond one year.

Q: What are the core demands of the CPJP and other armed groups?

A: During my visit, I talked to CPJP leader Abdoulaye Hissene. He said he started his group because of social-economic inequalities in the country. The official demand is for the government to provide services. Of course he is right, but he is using the argument to pursue his own, personal agenda. He is tapping into people’s needs, so they buy into his ideology. But then the only option he provides is armed struggle, which doesn’t solve people’s problems.

Q: What is Hissene’s hidden agenda?

A: He will not tell you, but from close observation you can tell that he wants to benefit from the natural resources in the area, the diamonds, the gold, and so on. In the end, all natural resource wealth goes to the armed groups or the government, but never reaches the people. That’s the problem.

Q: What presence does the LRA have in CAR?

A: The LRA is very strong in the southeast of the country. A lot of work needs to be done in that area to protect children. Since the beginning of this year, there have been frequent attacks and abductions (of children) by the LRA. Already, the government has no capacity to fight the armed groups in the country. Now there is this foreign group that has come in that is even stronger.

Q: Do you see any chance of the LRA agreeing to peace in CAR as well?

A: I am not sure. The LRA is very unpredictable. But what I do know is that many young people from this group would run away if they had a secure place to go to, instead of being arrested by authorities that try to get information out of them.

If there were a place that took them back as children and rehabilitated them, they would find a way to escape. You can’t just tell someone to put down a gun and then leave him out in the cold or throw him into prison. Structures need to be put into place for these children to leave. To get to the heart of the LRA or any other armed group you need to make sure that the candidates who can be recruited are not available.

Excerpt:

By Emmanuel Chaco and - -
KINSHASA, Mar 23 2012 (IPS)

A report by the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office has slammed the government and security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo, condemning electoral violence linked to the Nov. 30 elections which led to at least 33 deaths in the capital, Kinshasa.

The report, looking into serious rights violations committed by security forces in the capital alone at the end of last year, said a further 16 people had gone missing and that around 90 people were injured by live rounds fired by the police and army. All the presumed victims were civilians.

Published on Mar. 21, the report called on the government to “conduct an independent, credible and impartial investigation into all the cases of serious human rights violations committed in Kinshasa between Nov. 26 and Dec. 25, 2011, and to bring all the alleged perpetrators of the abuses to justice, whether they are members of the Republican Guard (the army unit closest to DRC president Joseph Kabila), other FARDC (national army) soldiers or PNC (national police) officers, irrespective of their rank.”

Addie Kitona, a mother of three, was personally caught up in violence that took place in Kinshasa’s Bandalungwa commune following the challenging of provisional results of the presidential elections.

“The police fired teargas at us, paying no attention to bystanders, who included children. As I was running away, I tripped and fell on top of my four-year-old. She broke her collarbone,” said Kitona. “After I fell, the police chasing after youth who had attacked them, trampled on me with their boots and struck me several times on the back and stomach.”

Annie Botendi, a law student at the University of Kinshasa, recalls seeing at least three bodies riddled with bullets lying on the ground along the road from Kimwenza, a neighbourhood in the Mont Ngafula commune where she lives.

“They were collected in the afternoon by people from the Red Cross to be buried… after having been identified by the municipal authorities,” she told IPS.

All efforts by IPS to get comment from the local authorities in the Kinshasa communes of Bandalungwa and Mong Ngafula failed.

Leila Zerrougui, the Deputy Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in DRC, responsible for human rights, said the numbers in the report should not be seen as final. “The figures presented in the report could yet be reviewed upwards, if one takes into account that there were many areas that were inaccessible due to the fear and paranoia that prevailed during this period as well as the fact that many medical facilities were ordered not to release information about victims they attended to.”

In response, the Congolese government said that it does not recognise the validity of the report, and noted several points of error. “This report is partisan, incomplete, and incoherent; it contains false numbers and it has not incorporated remarks from government, particularly regarding judicial processes that have already been opened in response to violations that are under investigation,” Minister for Justice and Human Rights Emmanuel Luzolo Bambi Lessa told IPS.

“There was a need for a joint inquiry involving the Congolese government, civil society, the judiciary and the United Nations in order to produce a credible report,” he added. “The United Nations did not do this.”

But Jean Claver Mudumbi, a human rights defender, disagreed. “The government is still making the mistake of rejecting all reports on violations of human rights. This is because it often does not have the same information as human rights defenders who are often on the ground, close to the people,” he said.

“There is no interaction between different local administrations, which themselves have neither the statistics for their own precincts, nor the means to document human rights violations committed there.”

Excerpt:

By Emmanuel Chaco and - -
KINSHASA, Mar 14 2012 (IPS)

The International Criminal Court delivered its first verdict Wednesday: Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was found guilty of recruiting children under the age of 15 to fight in a militia group in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The ICC, based in the Hague, found that in his capacity as leader of both the UPC (Union of Congolese Patriots) and its military wing, the FPLC (Patriotic Force for the Liberation of the Congo), Lubanga caused children to take an active part in hostilities in the eastern DRC region of Ituri between September 2002 and August 2003, including using them as bodyguards for himself and other members of the two organisations.

Sentencing is yet to take place, but according to lawyers, Lubanga now faces 30 years in prison or a life sentence.

Franck Luetete, who represented several victims in the Lubanga case, told IPS, “In line with the provisions of article 76 of the Rome Statute (which established the ICC) and Lubanga’s own request, the Chamber will dedicate its next session to determining a sentence and compensation for victims.”

Raphaël Wakenge, the president of the Congolese Coalition for Transitional Justice (CCJT), a local non-governmental organisation which has offered support for victims during the lengthy court case, told IPS, “The coalition is delighted with this first decision, which is also instructive with regards to all crimes committed in DRC since the ICC began its work.

“Unfortunately,” Wakenge added, “victims of rape and sexual slavery, as well as other sex-related crimes committed by Lubanga and his militia, will feel frustrated, as these crimes were not included in this case by the ICC prosecutor.”

Faïda Sady is a human rights defender with an NGO called Espoir Pour Tous – “Hope for All” – based in the Irumu district of the Ituri region. “One of my older brothers refused to join the militia, and Lubanga’s fighters cut off both his arms – he died several months later. Two of my sisters were gang-raped repeatedly by militia members. One died from the assault.”

Sady says the verdict handed down does nothing for her or her family. “The victims in my family were not called (as witnesses) in this trial. But NGOs in Ituri will continue to press the ICC to open a second case against Lubanga for the crimes and victims who have not yet been taken into account,” she said.

“The impact of this verdict is very weak,” said Guy Mushiata, the Kinshasa-based legal officer for the International Centre for Transitional Justice, a U.S NGO. “The verdict itself is not definitive.”

Mushiata has closely followed the case and submitted several opinions to the ICC prosecutor’s office dealing with reparations for victims. “By itself, this decision will still not satisfy since it could still be struck down on appeal. And it is not, in itself, a conviction with which victims can be satisfied.”

Observing the decision, military prosecutors in DRC feel that the ICC verdict has only demonstrated the court’s ineffectiveness. One of these prosecutors, Penza Ishay, told IPS, “The enormous financial and material resources available to the ICC have still not enabled it to produce a verdict in a reasonable time.”

Lubanga was transferred to the Hague, in the Netherlands, on Mar. 17, 2006, following the execution of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court; the warrant followed on a request from Joseph Kabila, the president of the DRC, to the ICC prosecutor to carry out inquiries into grave violations of human rights in the country and to open cases where the court was competent.

Ishay said that the majority of cases of grave violations of human rights in Ituri would have already been dealt with if the same resources were given to the Congo’s own judicial system.

“The ICC is not well-regarded in Ituri,” the military prosecutor said. “Instead of delivering justice, it has tried to walk a tightrope between the two largest ethnic groups (Balendu and Bahema), pursuing charges against two people from each side, even though the seriousness of the crimes is not necessarily the same, and members of these groups are not the only perpetrators – nor the most culpable – when it comes to violations committed in Ituri.”

Major Innocent Mayembe, a Congolese military lawyer, says military courts are the most effective means to fight against impunity for serious human rights abuses. “Many victims of these violations have had the moral satisfaction of seeing their aggressors convicted on the ground in Ituri where they once felt themselves to be untouchable.”

Excerpt:

By Arsène Séverin and - -
BRAZZAVILLE, Mar 13 2012 (IPS)

Five-year-old Vianey hasn’t seen his parents since a series of explosions ripped through an ammunition dump in Brazzaville on Mar. 4. A stranger, Jules Bomboko, said he found Vianey days later, wandering around the Tréchot neighbourhood, a few hundred metres from the site of the blasts.

“I’m hungry,” said the child, as though with his last breath.

The explosion at an ammunition store in the Congolese capital killed more than 200 people, injured over 1,500 and left thousands more homeless. Already-inadequate medical and social welfare systems are struggling to deal with the aftermath of the accident, with children amongst the most vulnerable.

Gervais Bouity, in charge of a shelter that was set up at the city’s cathedral, said when Vianey was brought there, he was tired and very dirty, his clothes in tatters.

Twelve-year-old Lucie, who suffered injuries to her skull and right arm, was brought to the Albert Leyono Municipal Clinic on Mar. 5. “When the explosion happened, we all ran,” she said. “I don’t know what became of my parents and my two brothers.”

About fifty survivors of the blast are being cared for at the clinic. One of them, Julien Amona Ngari, told IPS, “Lucie is still traumatised. She needs time to recover. She has nightmares after everything she has seen.”

Across the city, there are dozens of other children in situations similar to those of Vianey and Lucie. One shelter, the Moungali nursery school, had 33 lost children at one point – eleven were still there at the end of the week. At another nursery in the Makélékélé neighbourhood, four of the seven children who were brought in had been reunited with their parents, according to officials.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and its Congolese counterpart have put up noticeboards with information about lost children in front of the shelters. “At this point, 20 children taken in by our teams are waiting for their parents to come for them,” said Anne-Céline Moiraud, responsible for child protection at the ICRC.

“We encourage anyone who has found a child separated from their family to get in touch with our volunteers at these sites,” she said.

The various United Nations agencies have received about a hundred inquiries from parents who have lost touch with their children.

“Since that day (Mar. 4), I haven’t seen either of my two kids. I have been to visit all of the sites, but I’ve found nothing,” said one mother, near tears.

According to hospital records, children made up roughly a third of those treated for injuries – 338 of the 866 people who received medical care at the Makélékélé and Bacongo hospitals, and at Brazzaville’s University Hospital.

The quality of care available to these children since the disaster has been mixed. “My son, who was wounded on the head, hasn’t received any care,” complained Nicole Ibondo, mother of an eight-year- old boy.

“We are doing what we can with our own means, because we have still not gotten any assistance,” said Suzanne Maleka, director of the Makélékélé nursery. “The children who we’re hosting are showing numerous signs of illness like malaria or malnutrition.”

At the cathedral, where around 5,000 people affected by the disaster – including 120 unaccompanied children – have been sleeping in the open air, a team from the local non-governmental organisation Médecins d’Afrique (MDA) fears there are already cases of malnutrition.

“We’re seeing children who are beginning to have problems with malnutrition. But we lack medicine and other things to properly respond,” MDA coordinator Sara Pillar told IPS. She said that of the 200 health check-ups that the organisation’s staff carry out each day, a third involve children.

At certain shelters, such as at the Albert Leyono Clinic and the Marchand Stadium, children are being fed bread and sardines. “They will leave here suffering haemorrhoids,” said a Congolese Red Cross staffer.

Thanks to support from international organisations, centres specifically caring for children are now being set up. The United Nations Children’s Fund has also sent teams to the sites and to health centres to help children deal with their traumatic experience.

“When they got here, some of the children didn’t speak. Since we’ve been working with them, there has been a slight improvement,” said Martial Lounoungou, a specialist in childhood trauma.

Also affected, if less immediately, are nearly 20,000 schoolchildren – and 470 preschool-aged children – according to UNICEF. Their schools were destroyed by the explosions, and around 6,000 desks will be needed to accommodate them temporarily in other schools.

Students who are preparing for final exams will be placed in schools that were unaffected, with the authorities committing to paying for transport so they can continue their studies.

The government has also decided to allocate a grant of roughly 6,000 dollars to each family affected by the disaster.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents and - -
KIKWIT, DR Congo, Mar 8 2012 (IPS)

The outlook for people living with disabilities in the Democratic Republic of Congo remains bleak, despite a variety of efforts to improve their lot and bring them in from the margins of society.

“There are roughly 9.1 million people with disabilities in Congo, 11 percent of the total population of 60 million,” said Patrick Pindu, coordinator of the National Federation of Associations of People Living with a Disability in Congo (FENAPHACO).

Pindu, who was speaking on the occasion of the first “Day of Sharing and Solidarity”, organised in Kikwit, in southwestern DRC in February, said, “Amongst people with disabilities, 90 percent are illiterate, 93 percent are jobless and 96 percent live in an unhealthy and inhumane environment.”

Godefroid Kiyaka gets around the N’djili neighbourhood of the capital, Kinshasa, on his hands and knees because of the extreme deformity of his legs.

“I don’t have a wheelchair to go longer distances,” he told IPS. “Many people turn away from me when I ask them for donations.”

In Kikwit, 22-year-old Alphonse Mumbaka relies on crutches for limited mobility. His father died when he was young, and left to his own devices, Mumbaka never went to school or learned to read. “No one educated me.”

Jolie Apelo is one of around 350 members of the Association des handicapés et personnes invalides de Kikwit – the Kikwit Association of Disabled Persons. “As you see me here, I don’t eat properly due to a lack of financial resources. I’m unable to buy clothes so I can present myself like a human being worthy of the name, even if I am a member of an association.”

Apelo’s association is one of 226 that are part of FENAPHACO, an umbrella group working for the defence, promotion and protection of the rights of the disabled.

FENAPHACO coordinator Pindu laments the fact that the DRC is yet to ratify the 1993 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, though the country’s 2006 constitution offers at least paper guarantees.

“Both the elderly and people with disabilities have the right to specific protections with regards to their physical, intellectual and moral needs,” says article 49 of the constitution.

“The government has a duty to promote the presence of people with disabilities in the heart of national, provincial and local institutions.”

There are several initiatives – both public and private – to try to address the challenges faced by this community.

“We set up the National Training Institute for People with Disabilities more than three years ago, where they can learn appropriate technology for the production of soap, perfume, improved bread and so on. This will help them to care for themselves,” said Jean Etienne Makila, the institute’s director general, who is himself disabled.

“In Bas-Congo Province (in the west of the country), the provincial government has, for the first time, released two million Congolese francs (around 2,180 dollars) to create micro-credit facilities dedicated to associations of people with disabilities,” he said.

“If I couldn’t fend for myself selling the bread I make at the market, I wouldn’t be able to provide food for my children,” Madeleine Murakupa, a disabled mother of two, told IPS. “It’s rare to find people with disabilities who are in business.”

According to Makila, there is also a “Women, Families and Children Living with Disabilities Unit” in Kinshasa, which provides training and support for women and young girls to strengthen their self- esteem and livelihood prospects.

The Catholic church also runs several projects. Five years ago, the Diocese of Kikwit set up two schools for the disabled. One, called “Bo ta mona” – meaning, “they will see” in the local language, Kikongo – teaches blind people to read and write Braille. The other, “Bo ta tuba” – “they will speak” – is a school for people with hearing or speech disabilities.

But observers feel that despite these efforts, the situation for people with disabilities remains very worrying given their large numbers across the country.

“It’s not acceptable that the government still doesn’t get involved in resolving the problems facing the disabled. These people must enjoy their full rights like everyone,” said Cyrile Mupasa, from the League for the Defence of the Rights of Children and Students in the Central Africa zone.

Kaseya Kibishi, secretary general for the Ministry for Social Affairs, said the newly-elected parliament will ratify the U.N. convention. The ministry, he added, “already supports many associations of people with disabilities in Kinshasa and in several provinces,” although he declined to give further details.

Excerpt:

Governments and civil society organisations in Central Africa are slowly developing strategies in response to global warming. But specialists say the steps being taken seem hesitant in the face of emerging realities.

Forest elephants in the Mbeli River, Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, Congo. Central African countries are developing strategies against climate change. Credit: Thomas Breuer

For some time now, smallholder farmers in many parts of Africa, but particularly in the Congo basin, have noted with alarm a slump in farm output that can be linked to climate change.

“Before 2010, we would harvest, 1,200 kilogrammes per hectare of Kasaï 1 variety of maize, for example, or 1,000 kilos of the jl24 variety of groundnut. But beginning in 2010, yields per hectare fell to 600 kg for groundnuts and 700 kg for maize,” says a worried Jean-Baptiste Mbwengele, president of a production and sales cooperative which groups forty smallholder organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mbwengele explains that the drop in production has been caused by disruptions to the agricultural calendar, due to both unusually heavy or prolonged rainy periods which make fungal, bacterial and viral plant diseases worse, and to drought – which he linked to the clearing of forests.

In partnership with the United Nations Development Programme, the DRC has initiated PANA-ASA – the Programme of Action for Adaptation and Food Security – designed to counter the threat that climate change poses to agricultural output and food security.

“This project will facilitate access to genetic material (improved seed) better adapted to the anticipated climatic conditions as well as the adoption of better practices for water management and soil fertility,” explains Jean Ndembo, the national coordinator for PANA-ASA.

Reducing deforestation is also a necessity, both to bolster the resilience of local farmers and to contribute to global mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in the form of carbon stored in healthy forests.

For several years, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been carrying out reforestation programmes as part of its Agricultural and Rural Sector Rehabilitation Support Programme, known as PARSAR. Supported by the African Development Bank, PARSAR has reforested some 600 hectares in the western provinces of Bandundu and Bas-Congo, planting 2.2 million trees, mostly acacias, according to the programme’s coordinator, Albert Luzayadio.

Smaller areas have also been rehabilitated by PARSAR in the east, in Orientale Province, where 44 hectares have been planted in Kisangani; and in the southeastern province of Katanga, 25 hectares in Pweto have been reforested.

The programme works in concert with civil society. Célestin Awiwi Mimbu, the national coordinator of non-governmental organisation Action de Reboisement au Congo, says his organisation has planted more than 900,000 trees across the Democratic Republic of Congo, mainly fast-growing eucalyptus and acacias – the latter tree’s leaves offer the additional benefit of fertilising the soil.

Mimbu explains that besides acacia and eucalyptus, umbrella trees – Maesopsis eminiii, a tall, fast- growing species widely found across tropical Africa – and various fruit trees have been planted at several sites in the southwestern DRC province of Bandundu, including 34 hectares at Ndunga and Ngulambondo, and another 56 hectares at Masimanimba.

“We have managed to carry out this reforestation work since the start of 2011, thanks to the National Forestry Fund established by the government. The aim is to build up resilience, support green growth, and fight global warming, which has many negative impacts,” he told IPS.

But he regrets that no budget was allocated for the care of these trees once planted, and some have been lost due to bushfires. Mimbu’s NGO is a member of the Natural Resources Network (la Réseau Ressource Naturelles), an umbrella organisation for civil society across Central Africa which works for the defence and promotion of better governance of forest resources.

“Armed conflict remains one of the major challenges in adapting to climate change in the Congo Basin. In the provinces of Maniema and North and South Kivu, in the eastern DRC, which have been plagued by conflict since 1997, shelling by armed groups has caused the degradation of forests, destroying soil fertility with the chemicals found in artillery shells,” said Corneille Lebu, a Congolese ecologist.

“The shelling cuts the leaves which in principle absorb carbon, leaving the soil bare, leading to the leaching (of nutrients) and destroying micro-organisms. There is a marked acceleration in the loss of moisture from the soil and the rapid release of greenhouse gases,” Lebu told IPS. “Since 1997, conflict in DRC have resulted in more than five million deaths.”

Lebu believes that for adaptation measures to succeed, it is essential to bring peace to war-ravaged zones, and to restore the soil using manure.”

Cameroon, the DRC and the Central African Republic have all begun implementing their National Adaptation Programmes, according to a 2010 report of COFCCA, the Congo Basin Forests and Climate Change Adaptation project.

Launched in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in 2008, COFCCA aims to identify and set joint priorities at the national and regional levels for forests and forest services that are vulnerable to climate change. The project also supports the sharing of experiences on adaptation strategies for a transfrontier resource such as the Congo Basin forests.

Elsewhere in the region, in 2010 the Gabonese government established an agency for research and observation of the climate from space, involving a tripartite accord with the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) and the Brazilian Institute for Space Research.

Gabon has set up a station to receive satellite images, with the primary task of monitoring the state of health of tropical forests of the Congo Basin – 1.8 million square kilometres of forest, and constituting a “green lung” for the planet, second in size only to the Amazon.

In Burundi, deforestation is being countered by planting jatropha. Since 2010, the shrub has been planted on dozens of hectares in the Rukoko conservation area, which lies on the country’s border with DRC. The work has been done by the Tubane Association of Gikuzi with support from the Congo Basin Forest Fund.

A second phase of the project will be supported by the African Development Bank; the aim is to simultaneously combat poverty and protect the environment, with an integrated plan for exploitation of jatropha helping to bring an end to the present “anarchic” clearing of forest in the Rukoko Nature Reserve. The jatropha will reduce the impact of forest cover already lost while reducing pressure to cut down even more trees. People living in areas adjacent to the park will gain from the harvest and sale of raw jatropha seeds – which yield a valuable oil – as well as local production of soap and fertiliser from the seeds.

It’s in line with the government’s commitment to limit the impact of climatic changes due to deforestation, which is a growing problem Burundi. In November 2011, the country’s first vice president, Thérence Sinuguruza, called on the Environment Ministry to draft a law forbidding the unregulated cutting down of trees.

But even taken together, the actions of governments and civil society in Central Africa so far are inadequate, as they have not yet produced the desired results, says Odon Munsadi, a Congolese ecologist. “Communities in our respective countries are not yet applying agro-ecological practices, and the effects of climate change remain unchanged.”

“Sub-Saharan Africa produces less than four percent of greenhouse gases, this is much less than North America, Europe, Asia and other industrialised regions,” according to experts. But, “Africa is already suffering the effects of climate change will only suffer more in the years to come.”

* This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

(END)

Governments and civil society organisations in Central Africa are slowly developing strategies in response to global warming. But specialists say the steps being taken seem hesitant in the face of emerging realities.

Forest elephants in the Mbeli River, Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, Congo. Central African countries are developing strategies against climate change. Credit: Thomas Breuer/Wikicommons

For some time now, smallholder farmers in many parts of Africa, but particularly in the Congo basin, have noted with alarm a slump in farm output that can be linked to climate change.

“Before 2010, we would harvest, 1,200 kilogrammes per hectare of Kasaï 1 variety of maize, for example, or 1,000 kilos of the jl24 variety of groundnut. But beginning in 2010, yields per hectare fell to 600 kg for groundnuts and 700 kg for maize,” says a worried Jean-Baptiste Mbwengele, president of a production and sales cooperative which groups forty smallholder organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mbwengele explains that the drop in production has been caused by disruptions to the agricultural calendar, due to both unusually heavy or prolonged rainy periods which make fungal, bacterial and viral plant diseases worse, and to drought – which he linked to the clearing of forests.

In partnership with the United Nations Development Programme, the DRC has initiated PANA-ASA – the Programme of Action for Adaptation and Food Security – designed to counter the threat that climate change poses to agricultural output and food security.

“This project will facilitate access to genetic material (improved seed) better adapted to the anticipated climatic conditions as well as the adoption of better practices for water management and soil fertility,” explains Jean Ndembo, the national coordinator for PANA-ASA.

Reducing deforestation is also a necessity, both to bolster the resilience of local farmers and to contribute to global mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in the form of carbon stored in healthy forests.

For several years, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been carrying out reforestation programmes as part of its Agricultural and Rural Sector Rehabilitation Support Programme, known as PARSAR. Supported by the African Development Bank, PARSAR has reforested some 600 hectares in the western provinces of Bandundu and Bas-Congo, planting 2.2 million trees, mostly acacias, according to the programme’s coordinator, Albert Luzayadio.

Smaller areas have also been rehabilitated by PARSAR in the east, in Orientale Province, where 44 hectares have been planted in Kisangani; and in the southeastern province of Katanga, 25 hectares in Pweto have been reforested.

The programme works in concert with civil society. Célestin Awiwi Mimbu, the national coordinator of non-governmental organisation Action de Reboisement au Congo, says his organisation has planted more than 900,000 trees across the Democratic Republic of Congo, mainly fast-growing eucalyptus and acacias – the latter tree’s leaves offer the additional benefit of fertilising the soil.

Mimbu explains that besides acacia and eucalyptus, umbrella trees – Maesopsis eminiii, a tall, fast- growing species widely found across tropical Africa – and various fruit trees have been planted at several sites in the southwestern DRC province of Bandundu, including 34 hectares at Ndunga and Ngulambondo, and another 56 hectares at Masimanimba.

“We have managed to carry out this reforestation work since the start of 2011, thanks to the National Forestry Fund established by the government. The aim is to build up resilience, support green growth, and fight global warming, which has many negative impacts,” he told IPS.

But he regrets that no budget was allocated for the care of these trees once planted, and some have been lost due to bushfires. Mimbu’s NGO is a member of the Natural Resources Network (la Réseau Ressource Naturelles), an umbrella organisation for civil society across Central Africa which works for the defence and promotion of better governance of forest resources.

“Armed conflict remains one of the major challenges in adapting to climate change in the Congo Basin. In the provinces of Maniema and North and South Kivu, in the eastern DRC, which have been plagued by conflict since 1997, shelling by armed groups has caused the degradation of forests, destroying soil fertility with the chemicals found in artillery shells,” said Corneille Lebu, a Congolese ecologist.

“The shelling cuts the leaves which in principle absorb carbon, leaving the soil bare, leading to the leaching (of nutrients) and destroying micro-organisms. There is a marked acceleration in the loss of moisture from the soil and the rapid release of greenhouse gases,” Lebu told IPS. “Since 1997, conflict in DRC have resulted in more than five million deaths.”

Lebu believes that for adaptation measures to succeed, it is essential to bring peace to war-ravaged zones, and to restore the soil using manure.”

Cameroon, the DRC and the Central African Republic have all begun implementing their National Adaptation Programmes, according to a 2010 report of COFCCA, the Congo Basin Forests and Climate Change Adaptation project.

Launched in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in 2008, COFCCA aims to identify and set joint priorities at the national and regional levels for forests and forest services that are vulnerable to climate change. The project also supports the sharing of experiences on adaptation strategies for a transfrontier resource such as the Congo Basin forests.

Elsewhere in the region, in 2010 the Gabonese government established an agency for research and observation of the climate from space, involving a tripartite accord with the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) and the Brazilian Institute for Space Research.

Gabon has set up a station to receive satellite images, with the primary task of monitoring the state of health of tropical forests of the Congo Basin – 1.8 million square kilometres of forest, and constituting a “green lung” for the planet, second in size only to the Amazon.

In Burundi, deforestation is being countered by planting jatropha. Since 2010, the shrub has been planted on dozens of hectares in the Rukoko conservation area, which lies on the country’s border with DRC. The work has been done by the Tubane Association of Gikuzi with support from the Congo Basin Forest Fund.

A second phase of the project will be supported by the African Development Bank; the aim is to simultaneously combat poverty and protect the environment, with an integrated plan for exploitation of jatropha helping to bring an end to the present “anarchic” clearing of forest in the Rukoko Nature Reserve. The jatropha will reduce the impact of forest cover already lost while reducing pressure to cut down even more trees. People living in areas adjacent to the park will gain from the harvest and sale of raw jatropha seeds – which yield a valuable oil – as well as local production of soap and fertiliser from the seeds.

It’s in line with the government’s commitment to limit the impact of climatic changes due to deforestation, which is a growing problem Burundi. In November 2011, the country’s first vice president, Thérence Sinuguruza, called on the Environment Ministry to draft a law forbidding the unregulated cutting down of trees.

But even taken together, the actions of governments and civil society in Central Africa so far are inadequate, as they have not yet produced the desired results, says Odon Munsadi, a Congolese ecologist. “Communities in our respective countries are not yet applying agro-ecological practices, and the effects of climate change remain unchanged.”

“Sub-Saharan Africa produces less than four percent of greenhouse gases, this is much less than North America, Europe, Asia and other industrialised regions,” according to experts. But, “Africa is already suffering the effects of climate change will only suffer more in the years to come.”

* This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

By Correspondents
DOHA, Dec 22 2011 (IPS)

Security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been responsible for the deaths of at least 24 people since President Joseph Kabila’s re-election was announced on Dec. 9, Human Rights Watch says.

“At least 24 people were killed by security forces between December 9 and 14, including 20 in Kinshasa, two in (eastern) North Kivu, and two in (central) Kasai Occidental province,” HRW said in a statement on Thursday.

“Human Rights Watch also documented an incident in which local youth in Kinshasa threw rocks at a priest who later died from his injuries,” the U.S.-based rights group said.

Since the election commission issued results on Dec. 9 showing Kabila had won the Nov. 28 presidential vote, “security forces have been firing on small crowds, apparently trying to prevent protests against the result,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior Africa researcher at HRW.

The victims include a 21-year-old woman who was shot dead as police fired on crowds of opposition supporters in the capital, according to the group. The woman’s eight-year-old niece was also shot in the throat and is undergoing hospital treatment, it reported.

HRW said its information came from fieldwork, local human rights activists and witnesses.

Security forces appear to have tried to hide the killings by quickly removing corpses, the HRW report said, while sections of the military, including the presidential guard, were accused of detaining people in military camps in the capital.

“Several sources informed Human Rights Watch that the government had instructed hospitals and morgues not to provide information about the number of dead or any details about individuals with bullet wounds to family members, human rights groups, or United Nations personnel, among others,” the group said.

“The U.N. and Congo’s international partners should urgently demand that the government rein in its security forces.”

‘Bloody tactics’

Van Woudenberg said: “These bloody tactics further undermine the electoral process and leave the impression that the government will do whatever it takes to stay in power.”

The human rights watchdog said that after interviewing 86 victims and witnesses it had received “dozens of reports of other killings and attacks by security forces which it is seeking to confirm and is continuing its investigations”.

The latest death figures follow an earlier report by HRW saying that 18 people had been killed by security forces in the run-up to the polls, claims strongly disputed by the government.

DR Congo’s opposition has rejected Kabila’s victory in the poll over allegations of fraud, triggering some street protests. The election process has also drawn wide criticism from international and local observers for irregularities.

The country’s election commission issued results that gave Kabila 49 per cent of the votes cast while main opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi took 32 per cent.

Tshisekedi, 79, is challenging the outcome of the vote which the country’s supreme court and election commission said Kabila had won by a large majority.

Kabila was sworn in for another five-year term on Tuesday. There are now fears Tshisekedi’s plans to hold his own swearing-in ceremony on Friday could spark further clashes.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Excerpt:

Fears of violent demonstrations against the provisional results of the presidential elections – released on Dec. 9 by the electoral commission – have given way to terror in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has crackled with the sound of gunshots and the firing of tear gas canisters since Friday afternoon.

DRC held presidential and legislative elections on Nov. 28. Provisional results for the presidential poll were expected on Dec. 6, but only released three days later, after two postponements by the electoral commission.

The incumbent president, Joseph Kabila, was declared the winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) with 48.95 percent of votes, against 32.33 percent for his leading adversary, Etienne Tshisekedi.

Since Dec. 5, psychosis has reigned in the capital. Schools have been closed for more than a week and economic activity has been totally paralysed. In Kinshasa, stores and markets have been closed for several days and people have begun to run out of food.

On Saturday, government spokesperson Lambert Mende Omalanga appeared on RTNC, the national broadcaster, calling for calm and warning that anyone caught taking part in violent acts would be brought to justice.

But shots continued to be heard all over the city, notably in the posh Kinshasa neighbourhood of Macampagne, in the Ngaliema commune, and in Masina, a densely-populated area won by Tshisekedi. Across the city, nothing moved, as residents remained indoors.

Tshisekedi has rejected the results announced by CENI. But he has also refused to turn challenge them in the Supreme Court, instead declaring himself president, winning – by his own reckoning – 72 percent of the vote.

Another candidate, Vital Kamerhe, is also contesting the results; he alleges that electoral officials stuffed the ballot boxes with votes for Kabila even before polling started. “CENI must restore the victory stolen from Tshisekedi by Kabila,” he said.

“The fear of catastrophe is growing,” said Thiery Tomatala, a civil servant and resident of Kintambo, a crowded Kinshasa neighbourhood. “And we will not get a full account of the actions taken by the police and the army against demonstrators and Tshisekedi supporters.”

Tomatala says two Chinese-owned shops in the area were looted by armed men in civilian clothes, one in Kintambo on Friday evening, and another on Saturday morning in the Bandamungwa neighbourhood.

There have been other incidents. “On Saturday morning, around 8.30 am (7.30 am UTC), a jeep full of heavily armed policemen stopped outside my depot, looted it and relieved me of some two million Congolese francs (around 2,200 dollars),” said Yvonne Kinja, a bread wholesaler on Avenue de Libération, in Bandalungwa.

“No traffic is being allowed on Avenue Libération, the street on which the Kinshasa Penitentiary and Reeducation Centre (CPRK), the Colonel Kokolo military camp, the Ministry of the Interior, Security and Decentralisation, as well as the Palais de la Nation, the president’s office – it’s been entirely taken over by the army and heavily armed police,” said Addée Ngudi, who lives along the avenue.

A police colonel speaking on condition of anonymity told IPS, “The police have the obligation to protect strategic locations in the country, including the CPRK, the military base and the president’s office.”

“It’s necessary at all costs to avoid crowds around the CPRK,” Dido Kitungwa, director general of the prison, told IPS over the phone, without offering further detail.

The CPRK holds two classes of prisoners, according to a May 2011 study carried out by the University of Kinshasa, “soldiers and members of the security forces, sentenced by military courts between 1997 – when the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFLD) of Laurent Désiré Kabila seized power – and 2001, when he was assassinated.”

Former president Laurent Désiré Kabila was the father of the incumbent, Joseph. The senior officer who spoke to IPS said police were simply trying to disperse crowds, and people should remain calm and go about their usual business.

“But how can we go about our business when for the past six days, the police themselves have been building up psychosis and fear in the population?” said Guy Mamboleo, a Tshisekedi supporter and resident of Bandalungwa, not far from the CPRK. “A heavy military and police presence, and the firing of tear gas and live ammunition… it is not reassuring,” he told IPS.

Nadine Mbwol suffers from konzo, an epidemic paralytic disease that affects the lower body. “I lost my marriage because of this disability,” she says sadly.

Many people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) believe that this disease, which affects many young, female victims like 20-year-old Mbwol, is caused by witchcraft.

“But it’s not true,” says Dr Pierre Makadi-Nkeni, who works at the hospital “Le bon berger”. “Konzo is not caused by a curse or witchcraft as many people believe in all the provinces where the disease occurs,” he says. In the DRC, many rural territories like Kahemba, Feshi or the province of Bandundu are severely affected by konzo.

“Konzo is a spastic (sudden and painless) paralysis which causes permanent and incurable paralysis of the lower body,” says Dr Banea Mayambu, the director of the National Nutrition Programme (PRONANUT).

The disease occurs mainly during the dry season when the rural population is primarily eating a bitter form of insufficiently processed cassava. The first outbreak of the epidemic disease was reported in 1936.

According to Dr Emery Kasongo, head of the konzo study project at the NGO “Action contre la faim” (ACF), about 60 percent of total daily energy in the DRC is provided by fufu, a cassava-based pasta.

Konzo is caused by the regular consumption of cassava, which exposes the human body to cyanide, a poison contained in cassava. Up to now, this disease has reportedly affected about 70,000 people.

Dr Makadi-Nkeni explained that konzo is not an infectious disease caused by a virus or a bug of some kind. “There is no medical treatment or any traditional healing. It is currently incurable and the only way to stop the disease is prevention.”

Unfortunately, “the local belief that considers konzo a disease caused by witches is a real barrier to effective action against the disease,” says Damien Nahimana, head of the surveillance and research division at PRONANUT. As a result, konzo remains a major public health problem in the areas where it occurs.

Speaking about the nutritional situation in the DRC, Cesarine Kuwa, konzo nutrition expert at PRONANUT who worked previously with ACF to conduct a study in Bandundu province, underlined that the situation is worrying, particularly for children under five.

“Eleven percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition, 43 percent from chronic malnutrition, while 24 percent are underweight. These deficiencies are the result of insufficient calories, and especially a lack of micronutrients and protein due to poorly diversified meals based on cassava.”

Bernard Masukidi, a shopkeeper, adds: “For economic reasons, the cassava chips we buy in some villages are not very well treated.” Indeed, people usually shorten the duration of steeping (putting cassava in water to remove toxic elements), which should be four days during the rainy season and five days during the dry season.

“By means of an epidemiological survey and interviews about eating habits, I have established a link between the occurrence of konzo and the consumption of cassava.

“Thus, of the 6,764 people surveyed, we identified 110 konzo patients, and 24 deaths could be directly attributed to this disease,” says Dr Kasongo.

“It all started in 1974 with the paving of the road from Kinshasa to Kikwit, about 900 km east of Kinshasa,” local pastor Bernardin Mutombo told IPS. The new asphalt road cut the journey from Kikwit to Kinshasa from one week to just one day.

The road resulted in an immediate increase in demand for cassava. Facing the pressure of the market, traders have forced the villagers to change their working methods.

“Konzo disease often affects children and women of childbearing age since the ethnological and sociological considerations surrounding the distribution of food, through their standards and taboos, maintain too many privileges for men,” says Kuwa.

Habits and taboos in some areas exclude women and children from the consumption of certain foods such as meat which may provide protein.

“To prevent konzo, it is important to consume foods rich in protein and other nutrients,” advises ACF expert Paul Bahati. Unfortunately, farmers in need of cash prefer to sell their products without keeping anything for their own households.

Bahati says the solution to nutritional deficiencies in the villages where konzo remains a major problem depends on development and diversification of agricultural systems and economic growth.

By Badylon Kawanda Bakiman and - -
KIKWIT, DR Congo, Nov 12 2011 (IPS)

The 11 candidates contesting presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo all pledge to improve peace and security in the country – promises received with varying degrees of scepticism by Congolese voters.

“Our ambition is to provide our country with 150,000 soldiers and 200,000 police officers – well- trained personnel – with a view to greater stability in terms of both national defence and public security,” declared Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito on Nov. 4, as he announced the campaign platform of the Presidential Majority, the group which is campaigning for another term for the incumbent president, Joseph Kabila.

Muzito believes that reforms of the army, police and security services which are already under way are on the right path. “The improvement in pay, with the objective of paying every last soldier and police officer more than 100 U.S. dollars (a month), as well as the cleaning up of staff, will contribute to the establishment of a strong army and national police.”

DRC’s army in particular includes large numbers of poorly-trained personnel, former members of armed groups who have been absorbed into the national army. Training – and in some cases dismissing – unsuitable fighters is a key task facing the government.

Meanwhile, insecurity remains a pressing problem, particularly in the east of the country. Members of the national army, as well as fighters belonging to the country’s myriad rebel groups, have been implicated in widespread assault, murder, rape and terrorisation of the population.

The National Strategy for the Fight Against Gender-Based Violence, a document published in 2010 by the Ministry for Gender, the Family and Children, estimates that six million people have been killed or displaced by DRC’s successive wars, the majority of these women and children.

“The growing number of attacks by armed men against civilians has forced tens of thousands of people in (the eastern provinces of) North and South Kivu to flee,” notes the DRC chapter of the International Committee of the Red Cross on its website.

According to an independent study carried out recently for the ICRC, 76 percent of the country’s population has been affected by the armed conflict. Fifty-eight percent have been displaced from their homes; nearly half have lost a close relative; and more than one in four people know someone who has suffered sexual violence.

Working with responses provided by a nationwide sample of more than 3,400 women in the country’s most recent Demographic and Health Survey, U.S. researchers calculate that between 1.7 and 1.8 million Congolese women have been raped in their lifetime: over 400,000 reported having been raped in the year preceding the data collection in 2007.

In an article published in the American Journal of Public Health in June, the study’s authors – Amber Peterman of the International Food Policy Research Institute, Tia Palermo of the School of Medicine at Stony Brook University and the World Bank’s Caryn Bredenkamp – also report that more than one in five women surveyed reported suffering sexual violence from their husbands or partners – leading them to suggest future policy.

Yet Muzito did not set out clearly what President Kabila will do to fight against gender-based violence, if he is re-elected.

“The improvement of working conditions for magistrates and measures to boost morale in the justice sector aims to establish a judicial system better able to guarantee the rights and freedoms of citizens, and to put an end to the impunity that has been so widely condemned,” he explained.

Vital Kamerhe, who is running against Kabila as the presidential candidate for the opposition Union for the Congolese Nation, has offered a more concrete proposal: “If we are elected, we will put in place a joint international court to try and severely punish the perpetrators of rape and violence against women.”

Kamerhe, a former ally of Kabila who served as president of the National Assembly from 2006 to 2009, says the joint court would have competent and incorruptible judges who would be well paid – all part of measures to ensure the judicial system is well equipped to end impunity.

“For good security, we will have a well-trained army and police, strong and very well paid,” he adds.

“The 150,000 troops and 200,000 police called for by (Kabila’s Presidential Majority) will prove insignificant for a country of 2,245,000 square kilometres and around 63 million inhabitants,” says Viviane Lengelo, president of the Network of Women in Action for Integrated Development in DRC. However, she strongly supports the creation of a joint international court for gender-based violence. “Women have suffered so much for nothing.”

Politicians’ promises don’t seem to have convinced a sceptical public. “Simple demagoguery,” says Rose Muntupanza, a farmer in Bandundu, in the southwest of DRC. “For years now we have heard so many honeyed words – but without concrete actions.”

“Promises are only promises,” agrees Mbuta Mwashi, a member of the Union of Mobutuist Democrats, one of the 400+ political parties. “We are waiting for concrete action.”

“To ensure security for all citizens in a country as large as the DRC is not easy – a country where women suffer from violence of all kinds,” says Laurent Bwenia Muhenia, of the African Association for the Defence of Human Rights, a local civil society organisation. The winner of the elections must respect his promises, “if not, that will not go down well with the population, above all with women,” he added.

Excerpt:

By Emmanuel Chaco and - -
KINSHASA, Nov 10 2011 (IPS)

“In truth, none of the candidates and none of the parties have a programme for society,” asserts Mastaki Mushosi, one of the leaders of the National Union of Catholic School Teachers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Campaigning in DRC began at the end of October for the Nov. 28 presidential and legislative elections. The Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) has registered around 19,000 candidates for the legislative elections, and 11 contenders for the presidency.

However, the campaigning was marred by pre-election violence. News wire service AFP reported Monday that fighting between supporters of the ruling Party for Reconstruction and Democracy and the opposition Union for Democracy and Social Progress took place in Lubumbashi, the country’s second- largest city.

Despite the large number of candidates – representing no fewer than 417 political parties – only the People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), close to the incumbent president, Joseph Kabila; the Union for the Congolese Nation (UNC) led by Vital Kamerhe, the former president of the National Assembly now in opposition; and the Union of Forces for Change (UFC) of Senate President Léon Kengo wa Dondo are truly campaigning.

Potentially one of the richest countries in Africa, DRC was ranked dead last in the 2011 Human Development Index published by the United Nations Development Programme.

Mushosi and others say that instead of “demagogic promises”, candidates should explain concretely how they plan to jumpstart the economy and address urgent problems of food production, unemployment, poverty, insecurity and a lack of respect for human rights in the country.

Despite the fragile political and security situation in DRC, the World Bank believes the country’s medium-term economic prospects are positive. Overall economic performance in 2010 showed clear improvement over the preceding year. In 2009, GDP growth slowed to 2.9 percent due to the effects of the international economic and financial crisis, but recovered to around seven percent in 2010. Inflation, which reached 53.4 percent in 2009, fell to below ten percent in 2010.

“The government accumulated fiscal surpluses in 2010 which allowed it to reduce pressure on demand for foreign currency and to maintain relative stability for the national currency, with only a slight depreciation of 1.4 percent in 2010 – compared to 29.2 percent in 2009,” according to the World Bank, whose DRC commitments are among its largest in Africa, involving more than 2.5 billion dollars.

The Bank’s analysts believe DRC’s economy must aim for a growth rate of around seven percent per year – in 2011 it was 6.5 percent, boosted by increased investment and activity in extractive industries as well as a strong contribution from public works projects and the service sector.

But macroeconomic performance does not seem to have translated into improvements in the lives of most Congolese. Government sources indicate that while per capita income is growing, it remains very low at 220 dollars per person.

“No one remembers that civil servants, doctors, nurses, teachers have not received their salaries for months,” adds Mushosi, who believes the candidates are all promising the same things.

As in 2005, the ruling PPRD’s campaign has centred on job and infrastructure creation, improvements to housing, and the provision of water, electricity, health and education, as set out in the “Five Worksites of the Republic” development programme.

“Believe that if you will,” says Joe Mazambi, a resident of Kindu, in Maniema, in the eastern DRC. “Five years after Kabila’s promises (at the last election), we still don’t have roads here. We’re dying of hunger. There are practically no schools and most of the youth are unemployed. The public hospital is a place where we go to die.”

Kizito Nfundiko, who says he has been assaulted three times for being a member of the opposition UNC, adds: “Even the pacification programme here in Bukavu (in the eastern DRC) is an illusion. There have been many attacks against opposition figures here in Bukavu.”

Espérance Mawazo, director of DRC’s Parity Observatory, an NGO based in Bukavu, says: “In a situation of generalised poverty, the candidates must engage in demagoguery less than they did in 2005. They continue to promise things they have failed to deliver since 2005, including parity of women’s representation in public institutions.”

According to the Permanent Framework for Dialogue for Congolese Women, a gender equality pressure group, only 42, or 8.4 percent, of the 500 members of the current National Assembly – the lower house of parliament – are women. With women making up roughly 12 percent of candidates standing for election this year, this seems unlikely to improve significantly.

The polls are tilted in favour of those with access to substantial resources.

A press release issued at the end of October by the Kinshasa-based African Association for the Defence of Human Rights noted that “Only the party activists of the PPRD, the UFC, and those closest to them have the (financial) means to campaign, probably because they benefit from the positions they hold in (government) institutions.”

Jacques Djoli, vice president of the electoral commission, has called for candidates who are also officials and public office holders to resign from their present positions to level the playing field: “We must protect the ethics and decency which characterise public office and political engagement.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents and - -
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 9 2011 (IPS)

They should be wary of each other. The historical conflict between their ethnicities has resulted in Africa’s largest genocide.

Refugees say Rwanda's problems do not stem from economics, access to land – but rather a lack of peace. Credit: Wendy Stone/IRIN

This is because Kayitare is Tutsi and Nshimyimana is Hutu. In 1994 an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutus in just 100 days. Both men have since fled Rwanda and become refugees living in exile in South Africa, enjoying the freedom of expression and association that South Africans take for granted.

Nshimyimana and Kayitare are discussing the possibility of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) recommending a cessation of refugee status for Rwandan refugees. A cessation of refugee status is a legal avenue open to states and the UNHCR as a way of recognising changed circumstances in refugee- producing countries.

Since this meeting, Geneva has indicated it will move to recommend implementation of the cessation clause for Rwandan refugees by December 2011.

Designed to be narrowly interpreted, cessation requires a fundamental and profound change in the country conditions that provoked the need for asylum. Based on the Geneva convention, the premise is that political, social and other changes in country conditions enable its citizens to seek the protection of their own governments once again.

This renders refugee status – protection stemming from a host government – obsolete. It also requires that the change is demonstrably enduring.

The UNHCR can recommend cessation, yet it is up to individual states to agree and enforce the cessation clause. Exceptions to the clause are yet to be finalised, and some such exceptions include those who are in Hutu-Tutsi life partnerships or marriages.

But Nshimyimana has no faith in such exceptions. “On paper, there may be exceptions. But in practice, the implementation is this: the cessation clause allows countries to remove foreigners. We will be forced to go home.”

Many non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations and Rwandan refugees themselves have raised numerous questions about Rwanda’s applicability under these conditions.

Since it was announced in 2009 that the UNHCR was considering recommending cessation, Rwanda has been under increased scrutiny by human rights institutions. The information coming out of the country is not encouraging.

Kayitare left Rwanda in 2003, as a direct result of his involvement with the Rwandan army. “I am from the Rwanda Patriotic Army. As a soldier, I worked for the Department of Military Intelligence (DMI).”

He goes on to disclose that the government uses the military to eliminate opposition in the form of political opponents, media critics and even civilians who did not toe the line.

“(Rwandan President) Paul Kagame achieved 95 percent of the votes in the 2010 presidential election. Is such a majority likely in any election? Imagine you are going to vote. You stand in your booth with a soldier and his gun. Now imagine your fear if you think the soldier has seen you have not put your cross by Kagame. You might imagine the soldier would check your ballot after you left. You would fear getting home safely that night,” Kayitare says.

Kayitare and Nshimyimana are able to cite many examples of how Kagame’s authoritarian governing style has created a military state that uses fear and intimidation to control the population. Kayitare explains that the DMI has extensive networks of civilian informants that the government can use to monitor its population.

Nshimyimana was a personal victim of this process. After fleeing Rwanda for the second time in 1994, he was forced to return home due to the spread of disease and cholera in the Democratic Republic of Congo refugee camp he was living in.

“I arrived home safely, but my family felt they would be forced to declare me, a refugee returning home, to the administration if I stayed. The government keeps tabs on all of those who speak out against it – my father feared being killed if I was discovered in our home,” Nshimyimana says.

Kayitare shakes his head angrily and corroborates this. “It is a cut-throat environment. It is kill or be killed. I have been sent to clear the bones of people who have been killed.”

These are not merely the reports of scared and traumatised men. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and church groups have submitted recent reports that detail incidences of political disappearances, arbitrary arrests and prevention of opposition politicians to register their political parties.

These facts are a strong contrast with the international image Kagame has developed of himself and his country. The organisation Kayitare represents, the Rwandan Platform for Dialogue, Truth and Justice, states that Kagame has focused on improving his international image and building a veneer to present to the West – an image of a well-functioning state.

Kayitare and Nshimyimana are both quick to point out that when high-level visitors arrive in Rwanda, they are well managed. “You can never be left alone to see whatever you (want to). You are guided,” explains Kayitare.

Which leads to what Kayitare and Nshimyimana fear as Kagame’s biggest public relations exercise – the return of Rwandans who still remain refugees in countries like South Africa, Zambia and Tanzania.

“Refugees are a blot on his public image. He wants us to come home to resolve this damaging situation where refugees speak out against his politics. He builds a good image overseas and then calls us dogs, flies and frogs to his parliament at home,” says Kayitare.

Indeed, Paul Kagame has been recorded as stating that Rwandan refugees are akin to human waste that must be excreted.

“Repatriation means Kagame finally gains access to us. He gains access to the people he wants to silence.”

His opinion about the cessation clause is summed up as he explains his emotions. “Do you think I need to consult with someone else about going home? If I could go home, I would not even be here talking to you. I would be long gone,” Nshimyimana adds.

It is clear that years of suspicion, fed and watered at the very grassroots of Rwanda’s society, in the way neighbours and families are intimidated by fear and distrust, have not been effectively dealt with.

Kayitare states that Rwanda’s problems do not stem from economics, access to land – but rather a lack of peace.

“Instilling fear in citizens runs so deep that Kagame will continue in power. That is what dictatorship is – people so scared they cannot imagine anything different,” Kayitare says.

Excerpt:

Murhula’s* life changed forever when he was nine years old. It was the year that he learned to kill, torture and rape.

Former child solider Mulume* (far left) feels hopeless about his future. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

It was the year militia entered his school in a small village near Bukavu, South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and forced him and several others to follow them into their camps in the forest, where they trained them to become soldiers. “Many bad things happened that I cannot talk about. It was very dehumanising,” remembers Murhula, who is now 25. For nine years he fought for different military groups: first the Rally for Congolese Democracy, then the Mudundo, the Maï-Maï and eventually the Congolese national army.

An estimated 30,000 children in the DRC, more than a third of them girls, have been turned into child soldiers to help fight a war for political and tribal power as well as natural resources in which four million people have died to date.

The DRC has ratified a number of international treaties to protect the rights of children. In 2001 this Central African nation signed the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1341, which demands an end to the recruitment of child soldiers and their demobilisation and rehabilitation. But there is little the Congolese government has done to implement those agreements, says Amnesty International.

After the DRC’s 2006 democratic elections and especially the 2008 Goma peace accord, which brought some measure of peace to eastern DRC, international aid organisations such as the U.N. Children’s Fund, catholic humanitarian agency Caritas, and others jumped in to help demobilise child soldiers. (The country goes to the polls on Nov. 28 for its second democratic election since independence.)

But the psychological support the thousands of traumatised and brainwashed youth need in order to return to a normal life is not part of the demobilisation.

The DRC is left with a generation of children and young adults that cannot remember a life without violence. Traumatised by events that neither adults nor children should ever have to experience, former child soldiers have become feared aggressors, thieves and addicts who struggle to reintegrate in society.

Even parents often refuse to take these children back into the folds of their families because, as Murhula’s example shows, there is a dark truth lurking in many a former child soldier’s past.

Utterly brainwashed by years of strict, hierarchical militia ideology, the boy started to enjoy inflicting pain, justifying his acts as being “normal in a war.”

“I liked being a soldier. I don’t know how many people I killed. In any case, I was just following orders,” he says defiantly.

It is an astounding contradiction to come to terms with – most child soldiers are traumatised victims and vicious perpetrators at the same time.

How this conflicting profile plays out on their psyche and how it needs to be treated is now being researched by German psychologists Tobias Hecker and Katharin Hermenau from the University of Konstanz. They currently work with soldiers at a rehabilitation centre in Goma, the regional capital of North Kivu in eastern DRC.

“We realised that those who had fun being violent suffer less from post-traumatic stress but are more difficult to integrate into society, because they are ready to become violent again,” says Hermenau.

Based on more than 200 interviews, the researchers found that a shockingly low number of former soldiers – 25 percent – experience post-traumatic stress disorder. This means three out of four continue to link positive emotions to violence.

“We see a lot of pride, lust for vengeance and power. Many tell of bloodlust,” explains Hermenau.

The research findings highlight how problematic it is to reintegrate child soldiers back in society.

One organisation that has given itself this difficult task is the Centre for Professional and Artisanal Apprenticeship (CAPA) in Bukavu, the provincial capital of South Kivu, which lies a good 100 kilometres south of Goma. The non-profit organisation teaches ex-child soldiers a multitude of crafts including bricklaying, carpentry, leatherwork and upholstery.

CAPA director Vital Mukuza has no illusions about what it means to rehabilitate former child soldiers.

“It’s extremely difficult. They are aggressive, irritable and prone to violence and vandalism, constantly posing a threat to others.

“They don’t respect rules or authority and are used to taking whatever they want,” he adds. “It takes months for them to adapt to normal life.”

It is here that Murhula is trying to start a new life by learning how to build guitars.

For the past couple of years he has thrown himself into learning this new profession, hoping he will be able to open a small shop some day, maybe even start a family.

“I don’t want to think about the past anymore,” he says.

But most of Congo’s 30,000 child soldiers lack such a network of psychological, social and economic support. Once demobilised, they have to fend for themselves and often lead isolated, poverty-stricken existences.

Mulume*, 22, who was forcibly recruited by the Maï-Maï when he was 17, is now unemployed and admits he feels quite lost. Although he was allowed to return to his home village of Kahungu, 65 kilometres north of Bukavu, he can sense deep distrust all around him.

When asked if he sees a future for himself, he shakes his head “no”.

“I simply have to accept my fate,” he says.

*Surnames withheld to protect identity.

By Jessica McDiarmid
FREETOWN, Oct 31 2011 (IPS)

The adoption of international guidelines to regulate so-called land grabs has been pushed to next year after negotiators failed to agree on conditions for large-scale land investments and enforcement.

There are fears that a "land rush" in the developing world is leading to hunger, conflict and human rights abuses. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

The guidelines, in the making for several years, were sparked by fears that a “land rush” is leading to hunger, conflict and human rights abuses.

More and more investors have flocked to the developing world over the past decade, snapping up huge tracts of farmland. Investment has intensified since the 2008 food and fuel price crisis.

Once in place, the United Nations’s Committee on World Food Security guidelines are meant to protect people, mainly in poor countries such as Sierra Leone, from “land grabbing”.

Earlier in October, a brief flurry of attention from media and civil society surrounded the sessions of the Committee on World Food Security in Rome, where a stamp of approval on the guidelines on tenure of land, fisheries and forests was expected.

However, Olivier De Schutter, the U. N. special rapporteur on the right to food, said in an email following the meetings that details of conditions for large-scale investments remained an unresolved sticking point.

“Another major potential difficulty will be how the (voluntary guidelines) shall be followed up on,” said De Schutter.

Another week of negotiations should take place in January or February to hammer out a consensus on guidelines that will “hopefully” be adopted early next year.

“These are complex issues and I’m not surprised more time is required than expected,” said De Schutter. “I think it is remarkable we are heading towards a very detailed text despite the wide range of interests involved, in which decisions are made not by vote but by consensus.”

A September 2011 report by Oxfam International estimated as many as 227 million hectares of land in developing countries has been sold or leased since 2001. Most of that acquisition has occurred since 2008 and most has been into the hands of international investors, says the Land and Power report.

“There is a fear that arable lands will be scarce in the future and the price of land will continue to increase,” said De Schutter. “There is a sudden realisation that land is something that is in increasingly short supply.

“So there is now a rush for land.”

De Schutter said developing countries agree to sell or lease out large amounts of land in exchange for infrastructure and agricultural development – things cash-strapped governments could not afford on their own.

“They (feel) they have no choice,” said De Schutter.

And corruption remains rife in many countries, with local elites receiving kickbacks for land and inking agreements that benefit their own interests. Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer reported that 15 percent of people dealing with land administration services had to pay bribes.

Foreign direct investment to Africa continues to rise to unprecedented levels. The growth in production of biofuels, as well as carbon credit mechanisms and speculation, are key driving forces.

The majority of land deals in Africa are for export commodities, including biofuels and cut flowers, rather than food production, according to Oxfam International‘s report.

In Sierra Leone, a small West African country of about six million people that emerged from a long civil war in 2002, the democratically elected government of President Ernest Bai Koroma makes no secret of its desire to lure foreign investment.

In a recent presidential address, Koroma pointed out that agriculture contributes to nearly half the country’s GDP and a quarter of its export earnings, as well as employing about two thirds of the population.

While touting the government’s small-scale farming programmes, Koroma hailed “huge investments” by the private, mainly foreign, sector.

“These private sector enterprises have not only made substantial investments in the agricultural sector but have created thousands of jobs for our people,” said Koroma, whose government offers an array of incentives and tax breaks to foreign investors.

According to a report by the California-based Oakland Institute in early 2011, nearly half a million hectares of Sierra Leonean farmland had been leased or was under negotiation, while the World Food Programme estimates that about half the population remains food insecure.

The Sierra Leone country report of Oakland Institute’s Understanding Land Deals in Africa series suggested that large-scale land acquisition is characterised by a lack of transparency and disclosure, weak legal frameworks and confusion surrounding land availability.

“Land is being cultivated for agrofuel production as opposed to food production for local markets, raising serious doubts about the value of investments for local food security,” says the report.

The report stressed the conditions “are ripe for exploitation and conflict” and called for international institutions and donor partners to withdraw support for large-scale land acquisitions in the country.

Earlier in October, dozens of people were arrested in southern Sierra Leone following protests against a land deal. Locals said they were not consulted or given information regarding the deal, which leased 12,500 hectares to a Belgian company, Socfin. More than 100 protesters blocked access to the site.

Joseph Rahall, of the Sierra Leonean non-governmental organisation Green Scenery, said local government and landowners are vulnerable to exploitation.

“Sierra Leone is very new in this business, the business of large-scale investment in land,” said Rahall. “I know there could be a balance, if it is properly thought out. But we have not, we’re just jumping into it without critical analysis, without proper research.”

He stressed any principles adopted internationally need enforcement in Africa and cannot be something companies just say they adhere to.

Employment and economic development is simply “the bell they ring to sweet talk people into accepting these things,” said Rahall.

A 2009 report, “Land grab or development opportunity? Agricultural investment and international land deals in Africa”, noted land acquisitions have the potential to result in loss of land for large numbers of people.

“As much of the rural population in Africa crucially depend on land for their livelihoods and food security, loss of land is likely to have major negative impacts on local people,” said the 130-page report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the International Institute for Environment and Development.

“These may only partly be compensated by the creation of permanent or temporary jobs.”

De Schutter said benefits are rarely spread across the board to the most needy and decisions are not necessarily transparent or in the interests of the poor.

“In general, the development of plantations increases inequality, instead of decreasing it,” said De Schutter.

“The majority will not benefit.”

The guidelines on the security of tenure of land, fisheries and forests “could be a significant advance,” said De Schutter. “It can make it more difficult for governments to ignore the demands of the local community.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents and - -
KINSHASA, Oct 28 2011 (IPS)

Women make up just 12 percent of the roughly 18,000 candidates who will stand for election to parliament in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Nov. 28 elections.

The leading parties are doing little to ensure greater numbers of women are elected to parliament, but Congolese women are acting for themselves. Credit: Aubrey Graham/IRIN

And there are just five women in the 108-member Senate, representing 4.4 percent, while the provincial legislatures have a total of 43 women representatives, or 6.8 percent of a total of 632.

Leading parties ignoring parity

The Southern African Development Community’s Gender Protocol, adopted by member states including DRC in 2008, calls for 50 percent of decision-making positions to be held by women by 2015.

The Protocol commits governments to not only raise public awareness of the link between good governance and equal representation of women in decision-making, but to take legislative and other measure including affirmative action. But there are precious few signs that the leading parties are committed to meeting these goals.

In his campaign platform, announced in September in Kingakati, near Kinshasa, President Joseph Kabila – who is running for re-election on Nov. 28 – described DRC as an “emerging” nation, possessing a reserve of intelligence and know-how, and a regional power at the heart of Africa, but said nothing explicit about addressing women’s demands.

The same can be said of the programme put forward by the principal opposition leader, Etienne Tshisekedi, head of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress party, who has stressed patriotisim, national unity, development and change to improve governance of the country.

Françoise Ikwapa, from the League of Women for Development, Education and Democracy, believes that the platforms of the two leading presidential candidates guarantee nothing for gender equality and parity, even though Article 14 of the constitution requires the government to work towards this.

Women need better representation

Congolese women face major challenges, according to Jacquie Rumbu, director of the National Agency for Combating Violence Against Women and Girls, confirmed the numbers. “DRC is characterised by a feminisation of poverty and armed conflicts have aggravated existing inequalities.”

Despite the presence of the U.N.’s largest peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Congo (MONUSCO), armed groups including the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (an exiled Rwandan rebel group known by its French acronym, FDLR) and the DRC’s own armed forces, are accused of continuing to commit rape with impunity, particularly in the east of the country.

An article in the February edition of a magazine published by MONUSCO said, “Around 200,000 women were raped in DRC over the last 12 years of war.”

On other fronts, early marriage and inadequate access to healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth puts women’s lives at risk.

“In DRC, the maternal mortality rate is 549 deaths for every 100,000 live births,” says Dr Protais Musindo, Assistant Director of the National Programme on Health and Reproduction, referring to the last demographic and health survey, carried out in 2008.

Confident women stepping forward

Women candidates are increasingly finding their voice on these and other issues as various non- governmental groups have redoubled their efforts to increase the number of elected women, including setting up women’s leadership circles and an electoral clinic which supports candidates in their campaigns. Several forums were organised with this aim across the country between 2010 and 2011.

“Once elected as a member of parliament, I will try to propose laws that will enable the economic independence of women and fight against poverty,” says Georgette Biebie, a candidate in the constituency of Kikwit, in the southeast of DRC. She is a candidate for the Alliance for the Renewal of the Congo.

Interviewed by IPS in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, Biebie also promised to be an active participant in parliament in order to spur the government into action to reduce maternal mortality and more effectively apply laws that protect children, women and people with disabilities.

Biebie adds: “I’m going to try to take action in the fight against violence against women, in the struggle against climate change, and to gain access to Green Funds to encourage women to develop their agricultural output while protecting forests.”

Jeanne Lembwa Kabange, a candidate standing for election in the southeastern city of Lubumbashi for the Movement for the Integrity of the People, plans to lobby for legislation that protects women, but says women should not see men only as opponents. “Women must not neglect their male partners. Together, they will develop the country through complementary action,” she says.

Chantal Malamba, an Action for Development Party candidate in Mabimba, in the southwest, says if she is elected, she will prioritise the questions of livelihoods, security and development. “DRC faces serious problems of access to water and electricity, aside from the thorny problems of poverty and unemployment.”

Mixed response from voters

Asked what she thought of the promises made by these female candidates, Yvette Mova, a housewife in the Kinshasa district of N’djili, says women candidates’ plans of action are attractive.

“Women mustn’t go backwards, because they are just as capable of working hard as men. I will vote for one of them on Nov. 28. I would even have wanted us to have a female candidate for president of the republic to make changes in this country. But there isn’t a candidate for this post,” she tells IPS.

Solange Mukwanga, a vendor in the Liberté market in the Masina district of the capital, is less enthusiastic. “I don’t have confidence in women. They are vain and too weak despite their programmes,” she says.

For Didier Mboma, a civil society activist, women candidates stand a good chance in the elections. “They can readily win seats if other women, who make up more than 51 percent of the electorate, choose them. Some men could also vote for them if they can be won over,” he tells IPS.

Excerpt:

By Zukiswa Zimela and - -
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 21 2011 (IPS)

With six weeks to go before the presidential and parliamentary elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, civil society organisations say the elections will not be fair, as many doubt the ability of the country’s electoral authorities to ensure transparency.

The DRC is set to go to the polls on Nov. 28, in the country’s second democratic elections since 2006.

The Central African country of 71 million people was the scene of what has been called Africa’s World War – a conflict that saw the death of approximately five million people between 1998 and 2003.

However, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), committed to deepening democracy, protecting human rights and enhancing good governance in the region, says the DRC’s National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) has not yet released information that will be vital to ensuring a credible election.

Specifically, there are still insufficient details regarding the location of polling stations and the plan for how these will be made secure for both voters and ballot boxes.

OSISA also says the electoral commission has not said anything about the provision of election monitors and observers, both from the international community and local civic actors, how the results will be tallied, or the process by which ballot boxes will be transported to the vote counting centres.

Several irregularities, including a spike in the number of people on the voter rolls, have caused members of the opposition to protest the legitimacy of the elections.

Leonnie Kandolo, founder of Cadre Permanent de Concentration des Femmes Congolese, a network of women’s organisations in the DRC, says after coming out of civil war the numbers should be down, not up.

“Why has the number increased because we are in a war? A lot of people have died. Now the number of voters has increased very much – and they have increased especially in the provinces that agree with the president,” she said at a briefing in Johannesburg on Thursday.

Kandolo said in 2006 almost 26 million people voted during the country’s first elections. This year the number stands at an estimated 32 million. The country’s constitution does not permit the military, police, foreigners or minors under the age of 18 to vote. But there is suspicion that some of them have been registered.

Jean Robert Efalema, deputy director of the Congolese Media Observatory, a self-regulatory media body which investigates public complaints about press coverage in the DRC, says that when civil society asked the government to clean up the system, it refused.

OSISA says the police also appear to be using excessive force, including live ammunition to manage political demonstrations. Efalema says the ruling party is using young people to try and sabotage the opposition.

“They loot the offices of the opposition parties and they have burnt the opposition party television station,” he said.

Efalema added that both opposition and civil society suspect that the CENI is not independent and is supporting the people in power.

Jonas Tshiombela Kabiena, founder of a national network of 200 associations called “The New Civil Society on the Congo”, says the composition of CENI disregards civil society organisations. The board of the electoral commission consists of four representatives from the governing party and three from the opposition.

“They tried to push civil society organisations to align themselves with one or the other camp, but this is not the case – we are independent and we are outside; our presence is very critical for greater transparency in this process,” he said.

As a post-conflict country, the DRC needs the elections to be fair. Several areas in the eastern part of the country are still at war. Kabiena says there are fears that if the elections go ahead with the current insufficient measures in place, the country could be plunged back into civil war.

“We are very, very afraid to go back to a cycle of violence; if the election goes ahead there will be cries of illegitimacy and we don’t want to go back to that kind of thing,” he added.

The 2006 presidential and parliamentary elections were monitored by many international observers to ensure that the elections were free and fair. Efalema says the international community needs to be involved with these elections as well.

“We are launching a cry of distress on behalf of the people of the Congo. We ask that governments not be distracted by what others are saying; we need help,” he said.

“It is the wish of the Congolese people for the international community to be there, to support free and fair elections,” he added.

Nick Elebe, programme manager in OSISA’s offices in the DRC, says it is time for the country to embrace democracy, and that it is important for CENI to deal properly with these elections and to ensure that they are free and fair.

“We have to make progress. These elections are an opportunity for the Congolese to prove that they now understand that they cannot go back to war and clash continuously any more, that now they have to build on new principles of good governance – and all of these principles start with having a free election.”

Despite the protests by the opposition and calls by civil society for them to be postponed, the elections are scheduled to take place on Nov. 28.

Excerpt:

By Kristin Palitza
BUKAVU, DR Congo, Oct 17 2011 (IPS)

Angeline Mwarusena, 61, sits on a small wooden bench in front of her hut, head bent, shoulders slumped. Her voice is barely audible. Four years ago, three soldiers from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) entered her home, hit her and raped her repeatedly. One after the other.

The village of rape survivor Angeline Mwarusena continues to be threatened by militia. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

For a long time, the militia returned every two weeks to steal the villagers’ harvest and livestock, raping and killing everyone in their way. They still descend upon the village regularly, says Mwarusena.

The trauma has left both emotional and physical scars. For three long years, Mwarusena had to be treated for vaginal fissures, so roughly was she violated. Since the rape, Mwarusena, who used to be a cassava vendor, has been living in utter poverty, as she does not dare leave her village to work in the fields.

“It’s a miserable life. I would prefer to die,” she whispers.

About 50 kilometres south, at Bukavu’s Panzi Hospital, the wards are filled with survivors of sexual violence. Each of them has a similar story to Mwarusena’s.

Although no reliable rape statistics exist for the DRC, the hospital director Dr. Denis Mukwege can reveal that in 2010, 4,500 raped women checked in to Panzi Hospital alone. He believes there are thousands more who never report the crime or seek medical assistance.

“The majority of women will never appear in any statistics,” says Mukwege.

Years of bitter war was waged between the Congolese national army and a wide range of militia groups from the DRC and neighbouring countries that tried to gain control over political power and the country’s natural resources. The conflict left four million dead and traumatised large parts of the population, especially in the eastern part of the country, which shares a border with Rwanda.

Even though the DRC has been officially at peace since December 2002, when warring parties signed a peace deal, followed by a second peace accord signed in North Kivu in June 2008, the fighting in the Central African nation has not come to an end.

Conflicting national and international interests in the country’s vast mineral wealth keep the country, and particularly eastern Congo, unstable. The DRC has a third of the world’s cobalt and diamonds, 70 percent of the world’s coltan, used to produce electronic components in computers and mobile phones, as well as large amounts of gold and copper.

But there are also political reasons for the ongoing violence. The Rwandan rebels of the FDLR have remained operational and withdrawn to the forests and mountains of eastern Congo, preparing to return to power in Rwanda one day, from where they fled after the country’s 1994 genocide. As an isolated group, the FDLR relies on looting villagers’ livestock and harvests to feed its troops.

“Rape is used as a means of psychological warfare to terrorise the population, make people submissive. There are regular mass rapes of entire villages, while the men are being killed,” explains Zawadi Nabintu, the manager of Dorcas House, a facility for abused women adjacent to Panzi Hospital.

With the help of counselling and psychosocial therapy that includes income-generating activities, Nabintu’s team tries to help survivors of violence to reintegrate back into society.

“We are dealing with a double problem here, because most women are rejected by their families after being raped. So we are trying to help them to become (financially) independent,” says Nabintu.

One of her patients is 17-year-old Sarah (not her real name). Three years ago, militia broke into the girl’s home in Bunjakiri, 80 kilometres northwest of Bukavu. The soldiers raped her and murdered her parents in front of her eyes.

“The men abducted me, repeatedly raped and beat me and held me hostage as a forced labourer in their camp,” she says. By the time Sarah managed to escape, a month later, she was pregnant.

Today, the teenager lives at Dorcas House with her two-year-old daughter, who she has named Baraka, “Blessing” in Swahili, despite the baby being a product of rape. With the help of a psychologist, Sarah tries to work through her trauma and has returned to school.

The support she received at the facility has given her new hope. “After I graduate, I want to study medicine so that I can heal people,” she says.

But most women and girls need to cope with less support. According to a yet unpublished 2011 United Nations Population Fund report, 17,500 people have been raped in the DRC in 2009, or 48 were raped per day.

“Which makes it the country with the highest number of rapes in the world,” says Audrey Shematsi, women’s rights manager at Action Aid Goma in North Kivu, a province equally affected by rape and violence as South Kivu.

Most cases go unreported, while only roughly 10 percent are referred to criminal courts, with even less ending in convictions, adds Shematsi: “There is no justice for women. The justice system isn’t accessible. Corruption is a fact. Cases are drawn out over weeks, months, if they are finalised at all.”

Without justice or peace, women in eastern DRC remain one of the most vulnerable population groups in the world.

Excerpt:

By Kristin Palitza
GOMA, DR Congo , Oct 16 2011 (IPS)

Five years into democracy, with the elections just a few weeks away, the majority of Congolese children continue to face a bleak future.

Years of war forced Passion, 13, to live on the street. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

Naino Riziki sits on the only chair in her small, rickety shack built from planks and rusted, bent-open petrol cans in Kabutembu informal settlement, one of the worst addresses in Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu in eastern DRC.

The 34-year-old mother and her five children have been struggling to survive ever since her husband was killed in military crossfire about 10 years ago. The family lost their main income earner and with him their house and land.

Riziki, who sleeps with her children on straw mats on the clammy mud floor of her shack, tries to earn money by washing her neighbours’ clothes, but the income hardly feeds her children, and certainly cannot pay for their school fees of 20 dollars per trimester.

“The war destroyed my family. My children lost hope,” the mother says.

One day, Riziki’s two eldest, Passion and Elia, then 10 and 12 years old, decided to run away in search for a better life. They ended up on the streets of Goma where they slept under discarded cardboard boxes, became thieves and addicted to Marihuana and alcohol.

“We stole whatever we could. We were aggressive and violent. We did many bad things,” admits Passion*, today 13, whose growth was stunted by malnutrition.

The two boys belong to an entire generation of orphaned and poverty-stricken youth who have lost all hope for a better future. Located in the East African Rift Valley, Goma lies in a region that has been wrecked by years of fighting between the DRC national army and various armed groups, including Rwandan Hutu militias.

According to the 2009 United Nations Human Development Index, almost 80 percent of households in this Central African nation now live on less than two dollars a day. Child poverty is estimated to be even higher, says the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with eight out of 10 children not having access to basic services, such as education, health, nutrition or safe drinking water.

“The situation of Congolese children is worrisome. Only about a third of children of primary school age attend primary school,” says UNICEF DRC monitoring and evaluation specialist Bertin Gbayoro.

Yet, going to school is the foundation stone for building a next generation who has the education to pull itself out of the poverty and suffering created by war, believes Désiré Safari, director of faith-based non-profit organisation Diakonie. The organisation recently launched a programme to rescue street children, reintegrate them with their families, offer psychosocial support and place them in schools in Goma.

“The lives of our children have been sacrificed by the war. Now the fighting is almost over, but the Congo’s problems are not solved,” explains Safari. “Those street children have become a danger to the whole society.”

There are no reliable statistics on the number of street children in the DRC, but Safari estimates that several thousand roam the streets of Goma alone, a city of about two million. Through the programme, Diakonie has managed to rescue a couple of hundred street children so far, says Safari, among them Passion and Elia, who have recently moved back home and started attending school.

Reintegrating street children in society is not easy – and certainly not always successful. Katsuva Siluhwere, headmaster at Mont-Goma primary school knows only too well how much work and patience it takes to work with children who are traumatised and often violent.

“They don’t know discipline. Some hit other children, some steal from them. It takes months for them to adjust to normal life, if at all,” explains Siluhwere, a short man in a well-worn, black suit. But when one of the former street children does well, all the sweat and tears have been worth it, he adds.

Only six months ago, 15-year-old Prince*, a shy, lanky boy in worn-out tennis shoes, belonged to a gang of street kids who “tried to survive somehow”, he explains in a low voice. “Not even the police helped us. All they did was threatening to arrest us, and then just stole the little money we had.”

Today, Prince lives with his parents, attends grade four and has big plans for the future.

“I want to become a lawyer, maybe even a judge,” he says, to help create a world that is a little more just.

But only a very small percentage of the DRC’s tens of thousands of street children have the opportunity to receive outside help. Aid programmes remain far and few in-between, and even Safari has to admit that Diakonie’s project has its limits and, perhaps most importantly, lacks sustainability.

“We need sound poverty alleviation and income-generation projects to link in with our programme if we want to keep children permanently off the street,” he explains. “We simply can’t pay school fees for all children in need.” At the soaring poverty levels the DRC experiences to date, however, this goal lies far in the future.

*Surname withheld to protect child’s identity.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
KINSHASA, Sep 27 2011 (IPS)

“Every quarter, more than a hundred women with fistulas – including many younger than 20 years old – are admitted for surgery in Maniema province,” says nurse Julie Mawazo. “The number of affected women who don’t have the means or awareness to come in must be far greater.”

Each year, sexual violence, early marriage and complications in childbirth lead to some 12,000 recorded cases of vaginal fistulas – in which a hole develops between either the rectum and vagina or between the bladder and vagina – according to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ministry of Public Health.

“A quarter of the national total is recorded in the province of Maniema alone, in the east of the DRC,” says Jules Mulimbi Kaboyi, who directs the United Nations Fund for Population office in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital. UNFPA works to provide medical care and support for these women.

This assistance is badly needed: just 3.5 percent of the DRC’s national budget is allocated to health, and in a country facing massive challenges from diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS, this leaves scant resources to treat women suffering from this debilitating and stigmatising condition.

Bernadette Kabukulu is a shopkeeper in the Bandalungwa neighbourhood of Kinshasa. “For nearly two years, I had persistent pain in my abdomen, and a reddish discharge from my vagina. And a smell, especially when I went to the toilet or if I remained seated for even a few minutes,” she told IPS.

“I had to wash all the time. I avoided drinking or eating in order to avoid going to the toilet. I was ashamed to go out, I felt as though people could smell the odour that I carried with me.”

“Vaginal fistulas are accompanied by the deformation, followed by abnormal swelling, of the private parts of a woman and the creation of openings – in the form of small abnormal ulcers – between the vagina and the anus, creating a connection between the pathways for urine and faecal matter,” says gynaecologist Elie Makuza.

“These ulcers and deformations produce strong, persistent odours in the lower parts of the sufferer,” Makuza adds. “This smell is often the cause of rejection or stigmatisation by the community.”

Fistulas can be caused by extended pressure against soft tissue in the pelvis during childbirth – young women or girls giving birth are particularly vulnerable – or by extreme sexual violence.

Relief for the afflicted

Germain Musombo, a human rights defender with the non-governmental organisation Maniema Libertés, says poor education plays a key role, particularly in Maniema where he estimates that nearly half of women have little or no formal education. “In Maniema Province, the increase in the number of affected women is essentially due to four causes. Poverty, early pregnancy, sexual violence, as well as women’s poor education and ignorance (of factors that put them at risk).”

“Thanks to awareness campaigns organised by the UNFPA, in collaboration with the government, women are becoming more aware of the dangers of this condition,” says Jean Bertin Epumba, Director of Research and Planning at the Ministry of Public Health. Modeste Shabani, a campaigner at the Sauti Ya Mkaaji community radio station in Kasongo (the name means “voice of the peasants” in Swahili) is less upbeat.

“Here in Maniema there is a practice against which public education can make little headway: early marriage. And once a little girl is married, often as the second or third wife, it is difficult to speak to her about the negative effects of this issue.”

Mawazo, who works at the general hospital in Kindu, Maniema’s provincial capital, says she herself developed a fistula after the birth of her first child. She was only 15, and went through the delivery without medical assistance. She went through reconstructive surgery two years ago at the Kindu hospital, thanks to doctors brought in with support from the UNFPA.

“I’m happy to serve other women who suffer from fistula now, and help them to quickly get screening and care, so they can avoid the worst consequences,” she told IPS.

“Too often, poverty and ignorance puts young girls without resources in a position of weakness with regards to men or young boys…, to the point where many get pregnant or marry early, or give birth in dangerous conditions which can be at the root of fistulas.”

Excerpt:

Sometime in the next two months, activists and survivors of horrific violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo will find out if Callixte Mbarushimana will stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Defence lawyer Nick Kaufman (l) and Callixte Mbarushimana. Kaufman argues prosecutors have no evidence of his client's responsibility for atrocities. Credit: Courtesy International Criminal Court

Mbarushimana is the executive secretary of the FDLR – the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda – a rebel movement which has operated in the eastern part of the DRC since 2005.

The prosecution alleges that he directed FDLR fighters to murder, torture and rape civilians in the provinces of North and South Kivu in 2009, as a strategy to strengthen the rebel movement’s hand in negotiations with the Rwandan government. Judges will confirm or reject each of eleven charges before the end of November.

“He was the linchpin, the man who could transform crimes committed in the Kivus into political leverage in Rwanda,” International Criminal Court deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told judges at the opening of a confirmation of charges hearing in The Hague, which opened Sep. 16.

“The hearing builds up hope for thousands of victims like me,” says Nestor Habamungu, a geography teacher at the Mwanzo Institute in Bukavu, in South Kivu. “During an FDLR raid in Walungu, in South Kivu in February 2005, my parents were killed, fighters ransacked our house and burned the neighbours’ house down with three people inside. I survived because I was staying with a family friend in a nearby village.”

Survivors impatient

But if some are celebrating progress, others worry that the pace of prosecution of crimes in DRC is too slow. Marie Claire Mwilarhe, a teacher in the Kalamu commune of the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, told IPS her father was killed by machete-wielding FDLR fighters in Mwegerera, South Kivu in 2006.

Pointing to another ICC prosecution, that of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, who was arrested in 2006 and charged with recruiting child soldiers in the northeast of the country, she said she fears the ICC’s lengthy processes will achieve nothing in the end, and only discourage victims of violence.

“The case of Thomas Lubanga has been pending for years now,” she said. Charges were confirmed in January 2007; the trial only began two years later and is still under way.

Desiderata Boji, president of the Kinshasa-based rights group Women in Solidarity for Peace and Development, adds: “There are many victims who have died in the meantime without being compensated. Their neglect won’t encourage other victims to become civil parties to the court cases at the ICC, or to cases in the Congolese justice system.”

Civil participation hampered

A Sep. 15 press release issued by the DRC office of the CICC admits that there have been problems with the participation of victims in this case.

The communiqué says the decision allowing 130 victims to participate in Mbarushimana’s confirmation of charges hearing was made only one week before the hearing was initially scheduled to begin in August, and that hundreds of other survivors who had asked permission to participate were omitted simply because the ICC’s Registrar was unable to handle requests from 470 victims in time.

But Congolese lawyer Maurice Kanyama is more forgiving of the ICC. “Beyond the difficulties posed by gaining access to the zones where these crimes took place, the limited participation of victims in pending ICC cases is not due to the slowness of the court,” he told IPS.

“Above all, it points to the internal weaknesses of the NGOs who are working to identify victims on the ground,” says Kanyama. “Budget constraints are no longer an excuse, since there is a ‘Victims’ Fund’ that covers the cost of participation and legal representation, which is provided by member states and other donors.”

By IPS Correspondents
KINSHASA, Jul 25 2011 (IPS)

Major operational shortcomings are behind the recent spate of crashes at airports around the Democratic Republic of Congo, raising questions about safety for aircraft and passengers in the central African country.

A child walking through the Bangboka airport. Credit: Gwen Dubourthoumieu/IRIN

“The equipment in the control towers and weather stations, which is supposed to give precise, real-time information on the weather, the atmosphere, the temperature, does not meet current standards for air travel, and this constitutes a serious failure,” says Ndagano.

The most recent crash, of a Boeing 727 belonging to the Hewa Bora airline, took place on Jul. 8, as the aircraft approached the Bangboka Airport, in the northeastern city of Kisangani. It was the third crash suffered by Hewa Bora within a two year period. Seventy-three people were killed, with 47 more seriously injured, according to the report published by the Congolese government.

On July 13, five days after the crash, Stavros Papaioannou, the chief executive of Hewa Bora told a press conference that “responsibility for this crash rests with the RVA [Congolese Air Transportation Board], which on the day of the accident, had assigned trainees to the control tower rather than qualified professionals”.

Responding to Papaioannou’s accusations, Justin Okana N’Fiawi, the managing director of the RVA, told IPS: “No trainee had access to the airport services involved, much less to the control tower, on the date of the accident.”

Martin Kabwelulu, the interim minister of Transport and Communication, said that the plane was overloaded and the RVA’s staff had effectively given the plane the wrong guidance [ie, miscalculated the aircraft’s approach path].

Both versions of events were formally refuted by Godard Mamba Makola, from the Congolese Assocation of Air Traffic Controllers, who told IPS, “Until the final report of the inquiry is made public, responsibility cannot be properly established.”

According to MP Hubert Pierre Moliso, a preliminary report on the crash revealed that the airport’s fire truck took hours to come to the assistance of victims after the aircraft crashed in flames, even though the truck is supposed to follow the aircraft from the moment it touches down, along a road parallel to the runway.

“What were the consequences of this failure and who is responsible?” said Moliso.

Independent sources are also talking about “the disappearance of tape recordings of the conversations between the pilots and the control tower at the Bangboka airport”.

“If in addition to the lack of equipment and adequate infrastructure, there is no principle of accountability for those involved, there will be no way to assign blame,” Moliso continued. “And the distasteful polemic that has erupted between the airline owner and the government on the question of responsibility for the last crash, on Jul. 8, only hides another malfunction in our airports.”

Minister Kabwelulu said that whatever actually transpired in July, “this crash shows that the security of air travel falls far short of meeting the standards for the protection of human life from takeoff to landing of aircraft in DRC”, adding that measures to put safety mechanisms in place in all the country’s airports are urgently needed.

A study conducted by the RVA confirms that most of the country’s airports “suffer from a lack of, or aging, equipment in their control towers and technical departments; [and] from the lack of, or insufficient, fire-control arrangements as well as from inadequate apron areas for parking aircraft”.

According to the March 2011 document, “the electricity supply is not stable, and the systems for refilling fire trucks with water and fire-fighting foam as well as the access routes to the runways in case of a fire fall badly short in most airports, where the aircraft parking areas neither have the required dimensions nor are they set up according to the rules”.

Excerpt:

By Anselme Nkinsi
KINSHASA, Jun 27 2011 (IPS)

In recent months, no one in the Congolese capital has been spared the effects of water shortages. Where spending entire days criss-crossing Kinshasa in search of water with battered containers in hand was previously the unhappy task of women and children, now men in suits have joined the fray.

Just 22 percent of Congolese have access to safe drinking water. Credit: Julien Harneis/Wikicommons

Fidèle Mwaku, an associate professor at the National Pedagogy University, agrees. “I had a friend from the Plateau des Professeurs neighbourhood [popular for university lecturers] come to draw water at my house in Lemba.”

Mwaku says households across the city are doing the same to deal with the situation. Kinshasa’s poorer residents have long been resigned to this state of affairs.

“We’ve been waiting a week for water, and the last time we had it, it came at three in the morning only to stop again a few hours later,” complains Judith Kapenda, mother of four, in the Kinshasa commune of Kintambo.

“I spent a day in Selembao [another area of the city] and what I saw there was terrible,” says Michel Kalumvueziko, the provincial executive secretary of the Action Committee for Water and Sanitation. “Men, women and children in the street searching for water. The situation made me feel sick, to see so many people in the street, all searching for water.”

The impact of water scarcity is manifested in waterborne diseases which affect many poor families.

Water, water everywhere, but…

The water supply problems in Kinshasa are a painful irony, since the city and the Democratic Republic of Congo as a whole have ready access to immense water resources: the Congo River, the world’s second largest river system, discharges itself into the Atlantic at Kinshasa.

Many residents also find it hard to understand the severe shortages in light of the numerous water treatment plants operated in and around the city by the public water utility, REGIDESO – Kinshasa boasts six such facilities.

“I live in Bumbu, a commune in Kinshasa West,” says Fidèle Ipama, a leader in the Mbandaka district. “This part of the city doesn’t get potable water although there is a water reservoir in [neighbouring] Selembao.”

But the infrastructure is inadequate: Kinshasa’s population needs an estimated 700,000 cubic metres of water per day. The utility produces only 425,000 cubic metres.

REGIDESO says the water utility’s poor performance is partly due to aging infrastructure, such as the Lukunga waterworks. Lukunga, with a capacity of just 48,000 cubic metres a day, must serve a million residents in two districts of Kinshasa, according to David Ekwanza, director of operations at REGIDESO. The plant was built by the Belgian colonisers in 1939 and has not been substantially refurbished since.”

The World Bank-supported Urban Potable Water Supply Project (known by its French acronym, PEMU) was launched several years ago, but does not appear to have had a significant impact. PEMU proposed to increase access to water in urban areas by improving the utility’s technical and financial effectiveness, particularly relating to massive arrears in payments.

The project had a three-pronged focus: “the restoration of financial viability; the creation of conditions for dynamic management which will transform this public enterprise into a social entity designed to increase managerial autonomy; as well as the renewal and upgrading of facilities in the three centres most likely to generate the revenue needed to restore balance and help support secondary centres.”

No tangible progress

But two years later, large parts of the capital remain unconnected to the water infrastructure, and those lucky enough to have a water connection in their homes say they are not much better off.

“The water only comes at night,” says Joseph Lubamba, “if you don’t wake up in time, you miss it. And then my family is obliged to get water from elsewhere, and to pay around 100 francs Congolais – the equivalent of a U.S. dollar – for a jerry-can of 20 litres.”

Yet his bill from the utility company remains high. “I have to pay nearly 80,000 francs over ten months, that is 90 dollars. What is there to encourage me to pay so much money for a water supply that I can rarely use?”

Mwaku says even when the water flows just once a week, REGIDESO’s customers still receive large bills, and households which use very little water are asked to pay the same amount as those which draw a store for several days.

“It has become a serious problem for the city,” Franck Kimbembe, director of water distribution for Kinshasa West, told IPS. But he says the problem is linked to work on the “Cinq chantiers de la République” development initiative launched to coincide with the DRC’s 50th anniversary.

The five “chantiers”, or sites for development, cover infrastructure, health and education, housing, unemployment, and – ironically – electricity and water. According to Kimbembe, the city itself is a permanent construction site, with the work constantly in progress, sometimes forcing REGIDESO to suspend or move even the principal arteries of its distribution network.

“What’s more, the repeated interruptions to the power supply are a challenge to our efforts to maintain a consistent service to satisfy the needs of our customers, because our production relies on electricity,” he says.

Jean-Pierre Ntomobolo, responsible for communications at REGIDESO’s Water Projects Implementation Unit, believes that with time, the situation will settle down and improve as various projects are completed.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
ARUSHA, Tanzania, Jun 24 2011 (IPS)

Rwanda’s former minister of family and women affairs and the only woman to be indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide and rape, among other crimes.

The court handed the sentence down on Jun. 24.

Nyiramasuhuko (65); her son, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali; and former mayor, Elie Ndayambaje, were all given life sentences. They were convicted of extermination, rape and persecution as crimes against humanity for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide where over 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis, were murdered.

In a one-hour session, the presiding judge said Nyiramasuhuko was guilty of conspiracy to commit genocide for entering into an agreement with members of Rwanda’s interim government on or after April 9, 1994 to kill Tutsis in the Butare prefecture.

Nyiramahusuko was additionally found guilty of genocide and other offences including having ordered the killing of Tutsis at Butare prefecture, South Rwanda. Her son was found criminally responsible for killing Tutsis and aiding and abetting the commission of the crime.

Ndayambaje was convicted of direct and public incitement to commit genocide. Ndayambaje, according to the judge, was convicted of aiding and abetting the killing of Tutsis at Mugombwa Church and at Kabuye Hill and for instigating the killings of Tutsis after a swearing-in ceremony on Jun. 22, 1994.

“In considering sentencing, the Chamber has taken into account the individual, aggravating and mitigating circumstances of each. Considering all relevant circumstances, the Chamber sentences you to life imprisonment,” presiding Judge William Sekule declared.

Standing between two United Nation security officers, the accused appeared despondent as the sentence was pronounced before a packed courtroom. Ntahobali was a university student at the time the offences were committed while Ndayambaje was mayor of Muganza Commune in Butare prefecture.

The three were convicted alongside three other accused, two former governors of Butare prefecture, Sylvain Nsabimana and Alphonse Nteziryayo and the ex-Mayor of Ngoma Commune in Butare prefecture, Joseph Kanyabashi.

During the proceedings and closing arguments of the 10-year case the prosecution claimed that the six accused supported the mass killings of mostly ethnic Tutsis in Butare from April to July 1994. The case has been called the “Butare Trial”, the name of the native prefecture of all six convicts.

“The Butare six heeded the call of the then interim President (Theodore Sindikubwabo) to exterminate ethnic Tutsis (in Butare),” prosecutor Holo Makwaia, told the three judges during argument. Sindikubwabo’s call was made on Apr. 19, 1994.

“Pauline was in charge of pacification campaigns which meant killing the Tutsis,” Makwaia charged, adding: “Shalom (Ntahobali) was not very far from following his mother’s footsteps as he was a killer and rapist.”

Another prosecuting counsel, Canadian Madeleine Schwarz, who dealt specifically on Nyiramasuhuko’s alleged participation, said that the defendant was instrumental in giving orders to her son, the Interahamwe militia (a Hutu paramilitary organisation) and soldiers to abduct, rape and ultimately kill Tutsi girls, women and men.

“Instead of protecting the desperate families (as designated to her ministry), Pauline decided to exterminate the families,” Schwarz argued.

The defence called for the acquittal of their clients.

“To argue that Pauline Nyiramasuhuko distributed condoms is an insult to her and to the victims. And to argue that she even ordered her own son to rape young Tutsi women is an abomination,” lamented the Canadian lead defence counsel, Nicole Bergevin in her closing arguments.

Canadian Normand Marquis, lead counsel for Ntahobali claimed during closing arguments that his client should be set free because “several prosecution witnesses failed to identify the accused in the court room and others lied.”

Nsabimana was sentenced to 25 years and was found criminally responsible for failing to discharge his legal duty and thereby aiding and abetting the killing of Tutsis taking refuge in the Butare prefecture office.

Nteziryayo was sentenced to 30 years for direct and public incitement to commit genocide for speeches he delivered at two commune meetings in the prefecture June 1994.

Kanyabashi was sentenced to 35 years for genocide. The judge found Kanyabashi criminally responsible for killing Tutsis at Kabakobwa Hill and Matyazo Clinic in the prefecture.

The judge said that all the convicts would receive credit for the time served since their arrest, where applicable. They will be kept in detention under their present conditions until transfer to their final places of imprisonment.

Delivery of judgment of the case comes 10 years since the start of the trial on Jun. 12, 2001 and 16 years after the arrest of some of the accused. Kanyabashi and Ndayambaje were arrested on Jun. 28, 1995 in Belgium.

Nyiramasuhuko and Nsabimana were arrested on Jul. 18, 1997, while Ntahobali was arrested six days later. Nteziryayo was apprehended on Apr. 24, 1998 in Bukina Faso.

The case is considered the longest, largest and probably the most expensive of all the international justice trials so far.

The prosecution and the six accused presented a total of 189 witnesses and almost 13,000 pages of documents were submitted into evidence, resulting in 913 exhibits. The proceedings have produced more than 125,000 pages of transcript.

The trial was also particularly long because of the difficulties with the witnesses and the extreme slowness of the questioning.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
KINSHASA, Jun 21 2011 (IPS)

Civil society and the government are agreed: the Democratic Republic of Congo must make public the details of all mining, forestry and oil contracts.

Martin Kabwelulu, the DRC’s minister for mines and petroleum, told IPS that the country’s prime minister, Adolphe Muzito, imposed this requirement in a May 20 decree that sets out an obligation to publish all contracts dealing with concessions to exploit Congo’s natural resources.


“This obligation is also found in the international agreements reached by the Congolese goverment with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank with the aim of cleaning up management of natural resources and the revenue they produce”, according to the strategic policy document of the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum.


“The publication of contracts and of resources comes from the obligation for transparency and sound management of resources in a general context of improving the macroeconomic framework of the country, supported by various development partners,” says Michel Nieukuma, a lawyer and expert in the mining sector at the think tank “DRC Green”, based in the capital, Kinshasa.

The decision to make contracts public was welcomed by Congolese civil society which has however criticised the reluctance of the government to publish details of all agreements as well as the revenue they generate.

“In terms of publication, more than 50 mining contracts remain in the shadows. Among these is the Sicomines agreement and the amendments signed in 2009, as well as many other oil contracts on Lake Graben,” said Elisabeth Caesens, head of the Mining Governance Project of the Jimmy Carter Centre, which specialises in mining issues in DRC and is based in the copper-producing area of Lubumbashi, in the southeastern province of Katanga.

“There is also the Sino-Congolese agreement exchanging infrastructure for minerals, which was signed in 2008 with a value of nine billion dollars, then renegotiated to six billion in 2009 under pressure from

the IMF,” she said.



In a press release published on Jun. 1, the non-governmental organisation Action Against Impunity on Human Rights (known by its French acronym, ACiDH), said that “even the reports on revenue from these contracts published so far are incomplete and hide certain payments made by investors, including the deposits [“pas de portes”] and royalties coming from the renegotiation of certain mining contracts.”



Kabwelulu told IPS that in line with the agreement with the World Bank, the prime minister’s decree requires contracts be made public within 60 days of their approval.

But Gaulois Maheshe, a geologist and mining agent, said the government must do better than restate its obligations. “It must carry them out. At this point, notwithstanding the publication of some mining contracts, the government has still not carried out its commitment to publish the rest of the contracts nor the details of concessions being exploited, much less, the revenue that they are generating.”



Opposition member of parliament Jean Claude Mvuemba is also critical. “Elsehwere, the government has agreed with the World Bank pass legislation to make such publication a permanent feature, but nothing has yet been put before parliament other than various decrees of which only the one signed in May 2011 was issued by the prime minister.”


ACIDH recommends that the government go beyond the prime minister’s directive and and enshrine, in

law, the obligation to publish the receipts from natural resources on a quarterly basis.


The Jimmy Carter Center says that there has been some positive progress on transparency in the resource extraction sector, demonstrating a will to improve, but it hopes that the government will engage more strongly.

“In particular, it remains to encourage the retroactive application of the decree, meaning to to publish contracts that are already in force, signed before the adoption of the prime ministers decree, the bulk of which have not been published,” said Caesens.

Excerpt:

Subsistence farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s southwestern Bandundu Province are seeing their harvests double, thanks to an ambitious programme of support by the government.

Drying cassava: improved seed varieties and agricultural extension are boosting farmers' yields in DRC. Credit: Ken Wiegand/Wikicommons

The Agriculture Sector Support and Rehabilitation Programme, known by its French acronym PARSAR, is providing smallholders with access to improved seed and advice on agricultural techniques as well as upgrading roads to ease their access to markets. The results have been strongly positive.

“Before 2008, our association worked hard and produced little: only one tonne of cassava or rice per hectare. But when PARSAR began to back us, the whole production picture changed. Every year since 2008, we have produced four or five tonnes per hectare of the Nsansa variety of cassava,” says Guy Lasere, coordinator of a group of 44 farmers in a district 140 kilometres from the provincial capital, Kikwit.

Lasere says the Mulele group belongs to a Village Seed Association, a grouping of 28 farmers’ collectives set up by PARSAR.

“PARSAR has set up 15 such seed associations, each comprised of between 20 and 40 smallholder organisations. These associations produce improved seed varieties and distribute them to farmers. They are coordinated by the Bandundu Smallholders’ Network which functions as a kind of union for these structures,” explains Amede Mungwele, another coordinator at PARSAR.

“We have four collective fields, each covering 16 hectares. Since 2009, with the j124 groundnut variety, we have produced three tonnes per hectare, compared to one tonne in previous years. The same thing happened with the irat12 rice variety, which is currently yielding four tonnes per hectare, compared to only or two tonnes in previous years,” says the president of Nsimulungu’s association, Nestor Nkama.

Unlocking farmers’ potential

The population of Bandundu province – and the DRC in general – has long endured food insecurity, despite conditions naturally suited to agriculture. This is due to long years of civil war as well as the lack of effective agricultural methods.

The 2008 strategy document that sets out the Congolese government’s national programme for agriculture through 2013 states that nearly 17 million people in the DRC are going hungry. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 73 percent of the Congolese population lives with food insecurity.

“The country has about 135 million hectares of agricultural land, which takes up 34 percent of the national land, and only 10 percent of this has been developed,” says the document.

It is in answer to this challenge that the Congolese government introduced the PARSAR development project in 2008.

“This project revolves around four components: institutional support, capacity building, support for agricultural production, and the rehabilitation of basic socioeconomic infrastructure. All this is being done thanks to the financial support of the African Development Bank amounting to nearly 30 million dollars,” explains Lambert Diango, president of PARSAR’s Bandundu branch.

“Every quarter, we show the subsistence farmers new production techniques,” says Jean Misiwense, a supervisor at PARSAR. “We give them the improved seeds provided by the National Agricultural for Study and Research in Agriculture, and monitored by the National Seed Service (SEMASEM). We also give them tools and equipment, and we carry out monitoring.”

According to Misiwense, the improved seeds have short growing cycles and high productivity levels. They are are also more resistant to plant diseases compared to other local seeds.

“At present, more than 200,000 households are benefiting from large quantities of good quality agricultural products. And more than 350 kilometres of road have been rehabilitated by the project to allow the smallholders to move their produce,” he adds.

The gleam of new corrugated iron sheets shimmers through the blue-green haze that veils Rwanda’s rural valleys and hillsides. It is a visible sign of Rwanda’s metamorphosis from a nation devastated by genocide seventeen years ago to the fastest modernising state on the continent.

But are the shiny roofs the jewels on Africa’s emerging bride, or the bling worn by a bully?

Most of the new houses are the result of a hugely ambitious plan to bring rural families, at present scattered across the countryside, together into villages called imidugudu, enabling the government to more easily provide electricity, water, schooling and security. But it is a smaller programme, the replacement of grass-thatched houses with more modern structures, which caught the attention of aid agencies when complaints emerged last year that the homes of the minority Batwa, former pygmy forest dwellers, were being destroyed by the government.

The issue is complex, encapsulating many of the tensions haunting Rwanda as well as the strides it is making towards prosperity.

Evident progress

In the capital Kigali, the tin or plastic-covered shacks so prevalent in developing cities are non-existent, despite an urbanisation rate of more than 6 percent per year in the city of 1.2 million people. The houses in Kigali’s poorest areas are small and densely-packed, but they are solid, permanent structures.

About 80 percent of Rwanda’s population of 11 million live in the rural areas, the most densely populated in Africa, where the houses are solid structures, the more sophisticated ones made of brick and roofed with rounded clay tiles, and the simpler ones of mud bricks with iron-sheet roofs.

Up until 2010, the poorest of the poor lived in grass-thatched mud-brick or wattle-and-daub huts known as nyakatsi. The last of these are being eradicated by the government campaign called Bye-Bye Nyakatsi with an efficiency for which Rwanda is increasingly becoming known.

The statistics roll off the tongues of the proud technocrats driving Rwanda’s grand development plan, Vision 2020. James Musoni, the minister of local government whose department is in charge of the anti-thatch programme, says when Bye-Bye Nyakatsi was launched in December 2009, Rwanda had 120 000 families living in grass-thatched houses.

“As of end last month, we are remaining with 18 000 families still in those houses… in the next three or four months we should be done with that exercise,” he says.

Kigali had 1,559 grass-thatched houses before the Bye-Bye Nyakatsi campaign started, says mayor Fidele Ndayisaba. So far, 1,093 houses have been built to replace them. By the end of April, the remaining families living in nyakatsi will be able to move into new houses.

Vexed question of thatch

Officials and politicians are somewhat less clear about the reasons for the removal of thatched roofs and their replacement with metal sheets if a family cannot be moved immediately into a “modern” house. Some mention the fire hazard, especially with mass electrification taking place in Rwanda, others point to the dangers of snakes and insects living in the roof, and the fact that maintaining a grass-thatch roof in rainy Rwanda drains the little resources available to those who live under these leaky canopies.

Generally, Rwandan policy makers seem to conflate the idea of living under thatch and the poverty of those who do. Replacing the thatch with metal sheets is therefore seen as an important step in upgrading their living conditions. As for the disadvantage of corrugated iron roofs – its lack of insulation – officials point out that rain is much more of a problem than temperature, which rarely leaves the range of between 15 and 25 degrees Celsius.

There is an argument that some government decisions are taken more for the sake of boosting the image of Rwanda as a modern society than in the interest of its people. A retired politician who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being branded unpatriotic, points to a recent decision to ban bicycle taxis from the streets of Kigali, leaving hundreds of young men out of work. This, he says, was done merely to improve the image of Kigali.

The permanent secretary of finance, Kampeta Sayinzoga, counters by arguing that the decision was taken to bring down an unacceptably high number of accidents involving the bicycles.

It is highly probable that the Bye-Bye Nyakatsi programme was conceived as a genuine and necessary step to raise the poorest Rwandans out of indigence. It forms part of a comprehensive approach which includes a one-cow-per-family programme, the subsiding of fertiliser and seeds, indigent grants and educational support.

But the issue of show over substance at the level of elected district leaders seems to have caused the problems of the Bye-Bye Nyakatsi programme.

Ildephonse Niyomugabo of Coporwa, a Kigali-based organisation advocating the rights of the Batwa, says the nyakatsi dwellers welcome the replacement of the thatch with metal sheets, and would gladly move from their imidugudu into modern houses.

The problem is that the authorities removed the grass roofs – and in some cases destroyed entire homes – of 720 Batwa families without first providing alternative accommodation or iron sheets to replace the thatch.

“It was catastrophic,” says Niyomugabo. To date, about 100 families have been able to move into new homes. The rest are housed in dreadful temporary conditions while their houses are being constructed – sometimes six families in one house without windows or doors. Such overcrowding worsens the already bad health conditions of the Batwa, who suffer from high HIV infection rates and cholera, he says.

What cannot be said

Coporwa’s efforts to raise the alarm about the demolitions throw an interesting light on the state of Rwandan public discourse. The organisation approached the state-owned daily newspaper, Rwanda Radio and the government television channel for coverage, but was rebuffed. A private station in Kigali, City Radio, gave them an airing, and the organisation commissioned its own documentary video to help persuade government officials of the harm caused by the campaign.

Faith Mbabazi of Rwanda Radio explains that her radio station did cover the story, but not through the prism of Corporwa, focussing only on the Batwa. Because the demolitions affected other Rwandans as well, the station covered the story inclusively without mentioning ethnicity.

This is in line with the extreme sensitivity around ethnic identity in the media and in politics, stemming from the 1994 genocide in which Hutu extremists, feelings stoked by years of racist “Hutu Power” hate speech spewed by Rwandan radio stations and newspapers, tried to exterminate the minority Tutsi population in a 100-day orgy of violence. Today, mass graves and scattered bones are still being discovered as Rwandans undertake their unprecedented building spree of roads, homes and agricultural terraces.

Against this background, the idea that the demolition of Batwa houses in the Bye-Bye Nyakatsi campaign could have anything to do with discrimination against them – a form of ethnic cleansing – is unthinkable.

But how could some of the district leaders get it so wrong? The answer to this question provides fascinating insight into how the Rwandan development miracle is being driven.

One element is the enormous pressure under which the country’s 30 district leaders work. They sign a personal performance contract with Rwandan president Paul Kagame, who has a fearsome reputation as a leader who insists targets are met. Come election time, it is not the voters who kick out the underperforming district leaders, but the ruling party that persuades them to withdraw their candidature, says a senior Rwandan journalist at a state-owned newspaper.

At the same time a carrot of extra allocations for well-performing districts is dangled in front of them, so that the districts compete with one another to score the highest in meeting their development targets.

Musoni explains the “decentralisation” system which allows the national government’s centrally-planned policies to be implemented in the remotest corners of the country: “You take elected (local) leaders, you take them for a seminar, you teach them, we show them the benefits, give them tools, kits, and they go back: you know that this is going to be done. They really do a great job.”

The result is that local leaders often err on the side of zeal rather than care. The Batwa made homeless have not been forgotten, say the authorities.

Local government minister Musoni says: “It was a mistake committed by some local leaders (in the east and south of Rwanda). They didn’t get the proper message. But I went out [in a] statement over the radio and warned them, and it immediately stopped. But there had been some families that have been really hurt.”

Niyomugabo confirms that, as far as Coporwa knows, the premature demolitions have stopped. Musoni says that the local leaders were ordered to rent houses on behalf of the affected families, or help them to stay with family members.

The Libyan government has agreed to a range of proposals from the African Union at a high level meeting held in Addis Ababa Friday, including democratic reforms and talks with the rebels.

“[Libya] is committed to a cease-fire,” reads a statement issued in the Ethiopian capital at the end of the meeting, “and the international community should impose the same obligations on the other parties. [Libya] is also committed to an observer mission of the African Union to monitor the cease-fire.”

Earlier in the week, African Union chief Jean Ping said the AU meeting aimed at coming up with a road map to resolve the crisis, including the formation of a transitional government, the holding of elections and the building of democratic institutions to meet the aspirations of all Libyans.

The meeting was attended by a wide range of interested parties, including the UK, France and other European countries that are part of the U.S.-dominated coalition carrying out air and naval strikes against Libyan government forces; the United Nations, which authorised a no-fly zone, an embargo and measures to protect civilians; Russia and China, which abstained from the vote on the U.N. resolution and have been critical of foreign military action thus far; and representatives of Libya’s neighbours, such as Algeria.

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi sent a delegation led by Mohammad Al-Zawi, Speaker of the People’s Congress, but the rebel Transitional National Council, crucially, declined to attend the meeting, demanding that Gaddafi’s stepping down be placed on the agenda. Direct talks do not seem an immediate possibility.

“We demand the cessation of the air bombardment and the naval blockade carried out by Western forces and the United States, for the invalidity of its argument to protect civilians since it is killing them by the hundreds and is attacking and destroying our armed forces, and paving the way for the other side to attack,” said al-Zawi.

Ping said the African Union is pushing for political reforms in Libya through dialogue, and called on all parties to immediately end hostilities, allow humanitarian workers to provide aid and protect all foreign nationals residing in the country.

The view from Africa

The civil war in Libya has provoked mixed reactions across Africa.

In Brazzaville, the government of the Republic of Congo has denounced the air and naval bombardment of Libya by the coalition. “We do not support the bombardments, and all that is taking place presently. We don’t think this will produce a solution,” Daniel Owassa, secretary general of Foreign Affairs, told IPS.

Congo is one of the five countries on the African Union panel formed earlier in March to establish a dialogue between the protagonists in Libya’s civil war.

“The bombardment will prevent the panel from working – it must stop,” said Owassa.

But Congolese public opinion is divided.

Roger Bouka Owoko, executive director of the Congolese Human Rights Observatory, is among those who approve the coalition’s military action. “All those who condemn the bombing – beginning with Congo itself – are those who have eaten with Gaddafi. He’s a bandit who has killed more than 10,000 people and there are heads of state who still support him. So those who are dead, are they dogs or rats?”

Mali is also a member of the AU panel. Though its government has not made a public statement on Libya, reaction in the street to air strikes in Libya has been powerful. Responding to a call from Islamist associations, thousands took part in a march supporting Gaddafi’s regime in Bamako on Friday, chanting slogans against French president Nicholas Sarkozy and U.S. leader Barack Obama.

Support for Gaddafi from Malian Muslims is not by chance. “Gaddafi alone does more for Mali than the entire West,” says Yacouba Berté, a resident of Bamako who did not hide his anger at the attacks. “He has built more than 300 Islamic schools and pays salaries for the teachers there.”

Malians are strongly represented among the thousands of African migrants who the war has forced out of their homes in Libya, the widely-reported involvement of mercenaries from south of the Sahara on Gaddafi’s side aggravating already-entrenched racism and discrimination against black Africans who have been threatened and attacked in rebel-held areas.

In Kampala, Ugandan Foreign Affairs Minister Henry Okello Oryem has addressed parliament on the implications of the Libyan war for safety of Ugandans living there, on regional peace and security, and confirmed that Libyan assets in Uganda will be frozen in line with U.N. sanctions.

President Yoweri Museveni has condemned the airstrikes in a lengthy statement, and in a debate in parliament, General Elly Tumwine – Uganda’s army is represented by its own members of parliament – described the coalition attacks as rape.

“Anytime a powerful person humiliates a weak one is similar to rape,” he said. “The methods used to reach the decision were unprecedented in terms of the time, in terms of the participation, and more boldly and missing was the African participation.”

This provoked protest from opposition MPs who said, pointedly, that the military action should be a warning against African leaders clinging to power or involved in human rights violations.

“If this House is going to condemn the Western world,” said Uganda Peoples Congress MP Livingstone Okello Okello, “that condemnation will be without me. I cannot condemn people who are trying to save lives from somebody who is killing his own people, not even foreigners.”

*Soumaïla Diarra in Bamako, Wambi Michael in Kampala and Arsène Séverin in Brazzaville contributed to this report.

By Isolda Agazzi
GENEVA, Mar 22 2011 (IPS)

Part of the delay in the finalisation of the economic partnership agreements (EPAs) is due to the so-called non-execution clause that gives the EU the power to take steps against its African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) trading partners if they violate human rights, democracy and good governance principles.

West African activists demonstrating at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal, earlier this year. Credit: Isolda Agazzi/IPS

“Furthermore, the clause is not reciprocal since West Africa would not be able to take steps against the EU if Senegalese immigrants in France are put in jail in violation of basic human rights principles, for example,” he adds.

The EPAs are the implementation of the trade chapter of the Cotonou agreement between the EU and the ACP, which already contains a strong non- execution clause that has been used several times. The Caribbean EPA – the only complete one to date – does contain a non-execution clause.

“Negotiations need a clear strategy,” adds Jacob Kotchao, the civil society representative of the Central African EPA negotiating team. “Our countries have a long way to go with respect to human rights but we don’t want these values to be used to the detriment of our development.

“We have economic and commercial interests and we don’t want to give our partners arguments to preclude them.”

Marc Maes from 11.11.11, a Brussels-based nongovernmental organisation (NGO) that works extensively on the EPAs, admits that European NGOs have not thought through this issue. “We don’t have a common position,” he told IPS in an interview.

In more general terms, he explains that the first time the issue of introducing human rights clauses into trade agreements came up was with the EU’s trade agreement with Colombia that has still to be ratified.

“There has been a huge outcry about this agreement because of the situation of human and labour rights in Colombia, the most dangerous country in the world for unionists,” he notes.

“The agreement replaces the GSP+ (generalised system of preferences plus) scheme that gives trade preferences to developing countries that commit themselves to actualising human rights and environmental and social standards.

“Since the EU would no longer have an instrument to put pressure on Colombia, European and Colombian NGOs have supported the idea of adding a human rights clause to the bilateral trade agreement.”

David Hachfeld, trade expert at Oxfam Germany, argues that trade agreements and human rights relate to each other.

“The problem is that you cannot heal a negative effect on human rights caused by a trade agreement – for example on the right to food – just with a human rights clause. But, clearly, if these clauses are really enforced, they can play an important role.”

He explains that the EU always tries to include clauses on human rights, environment and labour standards but to different degrees: “In the Korea trade agreement there is such a clause but it is quite weak, even weaker than in the GSP.”

Apart from the issue of the human rights non-execution clause, another problem pointed to by African NGOs is the signing by individual countries of interim EPAs – rather than full EPAs by the designated blocs — that jeopardises regional integration.

“The EPA in its present form is not good and it cannot be signed,” affirms Dieye. “But if we stop there, countries that have signed interim EPAs will have to implement them and we will lose regional integration. The challenge is: how to refuse a bad agreement while preserving our integration?”

He points to three possible scenarios: the first and feasible one sees the EU accepting a 70 percent tariff reduction, renouncing the non execution-clause and dropping the most-favoured nation clause that automatically would extend benefits in future ACP trade agreements to the EU.

In the second scenario, everybody sticks to their current positions: there is no regional agreement, three different commercial schemes are in place and it is the end of the integration – a catastrophe.

“The third possibility sees no need for the EPA,” Dieye explains. “We stop everything, Côte d’Ivoire denounces its interim agreement. But then we would need regional solidarity mechanisms.

“We are trying to evaluate how much Côte d’Ivoire would lose from preference erosion and how the region could help them. Our obligation is then to negotiate a follow-up to the Cotonou agreement, not to sign it.”

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Eleven soldiers found culpable in the rape of more than 50 women in the Congolese town of Fizi Centre in January, have begun serving lengthy sentences in the provincial capital, Bukavu. Their speedy trial and sentencing by a mobile court is a welcome sign of a new commitment to ending impunity for sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Poster in Goma, eastern DRC, warning of the penalties for rape. Credit: Roberto de Vido/IRIN

On the night of Jan. 1-2, a group of soldiers carried out a raid against the town of Fizi, 240 kilometres southwest of Bukavu, in retaliation for the killing of a soldier earlier. More than 50 women were raped, hundreds of people were injured.

But where tens of thousands of serious crimes are routinely left unaddressed in a country whose justice system has long ago been overwhelmed by years of civil war, the perpetrators were swiftly apprehended and investigations and a trial were concluded within two months.

This is thanks to a mobile gender justice court, created through the joint efforts of the Rule of Law Initiative of the American Bar Association and the Open Society’s Justice Initiative. According to Dr Kelly Askin, senior legal officer for International Justice in the Open Society Justice Initiative, the court handled 186 cases in 2010 – 115 of them dealing with rape – in remote areas of South Kivu where formal justice has been all but non-existent.

The convicted men will serve their sentences in the central prison in Bukavu, built during the colonial era. “Constructed to hold 300 inmates, this penal institution today houses more than 1,100,” says Dercy Muley, the executive secretary of the Network of Human Rights Association of South Kivu. The provincial justice minister, Sadock Biganza, told IPS that 40 percent of those inmates are soldiers.

The governor of South Kivu province, Marcellin Cishambo, was present for the sentencing. Interviewed by IPS, the governor called for a return to objective criteria for recruitment into the army, deploring the fact that the DRC had privileged the integration of militiamen from the former armed groups into the national army in the name of peace.

Cishambo confirmed the will of his administration to put an end to impunity and rape. “”It’s not the first time that the Congolese government has organised a trial to judge the authors of sexual violence,” he said. In October 2010, a military court sentenced 13 members of the Congolese army, the FARDC, in the Walungu area.

Muley congratulated the court for the speed with which it reached a verdict in Fizi. “We are now waiting for a repeat performance with the trials regarding the assassination of human rights defenders and journalists in Bukavu.”

Lieutenant Colonl Vianney Kazarama, army spokesperson for Operation Amani Leo (the military campaign against rebel groups with which the convicted soldiers were serving) in South Kivu, also welcomed the verdict. “This is an example that will spread. A policy of zero tolerance will be applied to all perpetrators.”   Writing in the International Justice Tribune, Open Society’s Askin said the trial demonstrates that cooperation between local government and justice systems, the U.N., NGOs and donors, prosecution of such crimes is possible even in a region racked by insecurity.

“With the ICC going after the highest level accused often out of reach of domestic jurisdictions – and the local courts, including mobile courts, going after lower level suspects – accountability can become the norm, and impunity the exception.” says Askin.

By IPS Correspondents
KIKWIT, DR Congo, Feb 24 2011 (IPS)

While discussion of hydroelectric power on the Congo River is dominated by the massive Grand Inga project and the dream of power for the entire continent, construction of a series of smaller dams to benefit local communities may produce tangible results much more quickly.

Kikwit student Mave Kube studies by the light from a paraffin lamp. Credit: Badylon K. Badiman

Too big to succeed?

But the Grand Inga project has already encountered setbacks and attracted criticism.

Westcor, a consortium of state-owned power companies from five Southern African states, had a proposed 10 billion dollar, 4,000 megawatt project for a site known as Inga 3 rejected by the Democratic Republic of Congo government in February 2010. The DRC authorities instead agreed to a smaller project with mining giant BHP Billiton on the same site that would principally supply a new aluminium smelter being constructed the company 150 kilometres away.

This project has been criticised by environmental justice groups such as International Rivers. Just six percent of Congolese have access to electricity, says International Rivers, and the BHP Billiton project would prioritise supplying energy-intensive industry rather than the needs of the population.

The environmentalists are also sceptical of the promise of the larger plans Aecom is now studying as well, arguing that the continent lacks a distribution network to carry power from a single mega-project to the majority of those who need it; they argue that the estimated 80 billion dollar price tag would be better spent on decentralised generation, including wind, solar and micro-hydro plants.

They also cite the risk of corruption and mismanagement, a warning given teeth by the 2008 disappearance of $6.5 million intended to rehabilitate one of the two aging power stations already in place at the Inga site.

A more modest solution

While the debate swirls around the larger projects, February finds work under way on a dam at Kakobola, one of the first of up to 315 much smaller dams planned for sites around the country.

The Kakobola dam will provide electricity for three built-up areas in the southwestern DRC province of Bandundu. V. K. Sharma, head of the Indian company Angelique International Limited, which will construct the dam, says the dam will have a generating capacity of 9.3 megawatts.

“We are working on this project for the well-being of the population in Gungu, Idiofa and Kikwit,” says Sharma. His company will draw on the experience of building similar projects in Afghanistan, Rwanda and Sudan.

“It’s easier to build a dam on a river where there are falls such as this one,” Sharma told IPS in an interview at the dam site at Gungu, some 200 kilometres from Kikwit, the provincial capital.

The dam is being built at a waterfall on the Lufuku river which has a height of 29 metres, according to Sharma. The Kakobola dam will have a reservoir just four metres deep, and its turbines will not eliminate the natural falls on the river.

“The dam will cost 53 million dollars,” says Remy Matala, from the DRC’s energy ministry, which is collaborating on the project. “The Indian government, through that country’s Export-Import Bank, will put in 42 million. The Congolese contribution of 10 million dollars comes from the 2011 budget.”

Serving local needs

Completion of the dam is eagerly awaited in the region. “I want the electricity supply to come quickly. It’s not normal for a city the size of Kikwit (around a million inhabitants) to be without electricity,” complains Mave Kupe, one of the many students in the city who must study by the light of storm lantern.

The project is scheduled for completion in January 2014. The more than three million residents of this area presently rely on paraffin lamps, candles or custom-rigged systems that power light bulbs from torches with a box containing a set of batteries.

The Kakobola dam will also contribute towards securing regular access to drinking water, particularly in Kikwit, where 800,000 people lack access to safe water.

When the contract for the dam was signed in Kinshasa in October 2010, the Congolese energy minister, Gilbert Thilongo, noted that the Kakobola project was first proposed in 1980. The installation is the first of an extensive series of small dams planned for the country. It will be followed by another dam in Katende, in Kasaï Occidental province, according to the minister.

“I hope that the work on this dam won’t stop mid-way,” said Emery Raphaël Mikolo, a nurse in Idiofa. “We have seen it many times in our country – the work starts briskly, but then a gloomy silence takes over.”

Louis Kasende, an opposition member of parliament who is the vice president of the Commission for Reconstruction and Development in Bandundu’s provincial assembly, wants the DRC government to state clearly when the money from India’s Import-Export Bank will be repaid.

Wire reports state the DRC will begin repaying the loan in 2016, and will then pay 1.75 percent interest over a 20 year period.

Maxime Pakumu, the director of the Gungu administrative zone, said the construction of the project will help to reduce employment in the region, as well as improving the quality of life, purchasing power, and even health outcomes thanks to electricity for health facilities in the area.

Though small-scale dams such as this one at Kakobola do not answer the question of powering energy-intensive industry in DRC and beyond, if the dam delivers the expected benefits for the region it sits in, it may create alternatives to a development path that relies so heavily on resource extraction.

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