Rose Fungulana, a 53-year-old farmer, fears that if DRC President Joseph Kabila is allowed to serve a third term of office, there will be a rebellion that will increase the risk of sexual assault against women. Courtesy: Badylon Kawanda Bakiman

By Badylon Kawanda Bakiman
KIKWIT, DR Congo, Jul 2 2014 (IPS)

Proposals to review the Democratic Republic of Congo’s constitution to permit President Joseph Kabila to seek a third term of office, if accepted, will only plunge the Congolese further into poverty and insecurity, experts warn.

“More than 60 percent of Congolese live on less than one dollar a day. Our compatriots are struggling to access our natural resources. DRC risks [looting] of stores as it was in 1991 in Mobutu [Sese Seko’s reign],” Raymond Kitako, a civil society leader in DRC, told IPS. Mobutu ruled the country for 31 years in a reign that was synonymous with corruption. In 1991 people looted stores and shops as the economy plunged.

Mobutu was overthrown in 1997 by current President Joseph Kabila’s father, Laurent Kabila, who was assassinated in 2001. Joseph Kabila replaced his father as head of state and was later elected president in 2006 and 2011.

“If this decision is applied, it places the country at risk for a serious political crisis,” Kitako added.

Article 70 of the constitution specifies that the presidential mandate of five years is only renewable once. And article 220 of the constitution specifically states there should be no review of the constitution when it comes to the presidential mandate. However, the ruling coalition Presidential Majority was said to be discussing the possibility of reviewing the limits placed on the term of office.

“If the presidential [term] is reviewed, the DRC will register a step backwards of 60 years. We don’t like it,” said Vital Kamerhe, Joseph Kabila’s main political opponent and chairman of the opposition Union for Congolese Nation, during a meeting with journalists.

Raymond Kitako, a civil society leader in DRC, said if DRC President Joseph Kabila is allowed to serve a third term of office, it would result in a serious political crisis. Courtesy: Badylon Kawanda Bakiman

For Kamerhe, “Burundi’s example where members of parliament refused to review the constitution [after being asked to do so] by President Pierre Nkurunziza must be a lesson to the presidential majority in DRC.”

Ernest Malonda, a member of the opposition Union for Democracy and Social Progress, told IPS that if the president was allowed to seek a third term of office, “DRC will lose its national unity. Congolese will not circulate freely. Bandits called ‘Kuluna’ will become very numerous and the people will suffer.”

“Where have you seen a country at war receive economic investors?” asked Germaine Tangolo, an economist.

Many here remember the rebellion of 1997 where more than six million Congolese died when Laurent Kabila overthrew Mobutu. And they don’t want to relive it.

“The war will start and as a consequence so will sexual violence and gender-based violence as people look for natural resources,” feared Rose Fungulana, a 53-year-old farmer.

She said that in the 1997 war, her 23-year-old sister was raped by Mobutu’s soldiers in eastern DRC.

A 2013 report published by Ministry of Gender, however, shows sexual violence remains very high in the country, as “29,354 cases of sexual violence and gender-based violence were registered in seven provinces of DRC from 2011 to 2013.”

Fungulana worries that women will be even more at risk should there be a rebellion against the president serving a third term of office.

Jean Claude Katenda, president of the African Association for Human Rights in DRC, told IPS that the “people will contest the results and people will die [protesting against it]. It’s dangerous for the democracy. Corruption will circulate.”

However, Luzanga  Shamandevu, spokesman of presidential majority, denied this would happen and said that they would accept the outcome if the constitution was reviewed.

However, some are willing to take their chances with a changed constitution.

“I don’t understand why political opposition and Presidential Majority are divided! Let us see what the country will become if the Congolese constitution is reviewed,” Simon Kapalay, a teacher at Kikwit, in the southwest of DRC, told IPS.

Thérèse Izayi, a Congolese engineer, invented two very unusual traffic robots. This one is situated at an intersection on Triumphal boulevard, near parliament in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital. Credit: Taylor Toeka Kakala/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo, Apr 30 2014 (IPS)

“There are several robots in the world, but that one which regulates traffic is made in Congo,” Thérèse Izayi, a female engineer and the Congolese inventor of two very unusual traffic signals, tells IPS.

Situated at an intersection on Triumphal Boulevard, near the Democratic Republic of Congo’s parliament in the capital, Kinshasa, the 2.5-metre traffic signal looks like an actual robot — with arms, legs, a chest and a head.

The breastplate pivots as the lights on it change from green to red. Then, it raises its arm to stop the traffic on one road, allowing vehicles from another to pass. The talking robot — it speaks both French and the local Lingala language — instructs: “Drivers, you can leave the road to pedestrians.”

It is made from aluminium to withstand high temperatures and humidity, and the heavy rains of this equatorial climate. There are cameras by its eyes and on its shoulders, which continuously film the traffic. It is also solar-powered to ensure its independence from electricity.

This robot is now a part of everyday life here and there is a second one on Lumumba Boulevard — en route to the international airport. Both are locally patented by Women Technology, an NGO that Izayi founded to give women engineers a platform.

“The robot captures images, which it sends using the antenna on his head to the [Women Technology] centre that stores the data. It is also equipped with an automatic detection system that tells it that pedestrians want to cross,” Izayi explains.

Izayi says that the recorded film could be sent to the traffic police, to allow authorities to prosecute drivers who have committed traffic offences.

Thérèse Izayi’s robot is situated at an intersection on Triumphal boulevard, near parliament in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital. Credit: Taylor Toeka Kakala/IPS

Kinshasa is a city where traffic lights are almost non-existent and the Highway Code is constantly violated. The capital city, with a population of  10 million, is known for its chaotic traffic.

“The robot just solved the problem of corrupt policemen,” a taxi driver tells IPS.

Traffic police, who earn small salaries, are often accused of extorting money from divers. They allegedly do this by stopping cars in the middle of the road to demand bribes, which results in constant traffic jams.

“Traffic jams are often linked to police harassment more than traffic density,” Val Manga, president of the National Road Safety Commission, known by its French acronym, CNPR, tells IPS. The robots on Lumumba and Triumphal ensure quick stops and no policemen.

According to CNPR, there are around 400,000 vehicles on Kinshasa’s roads. But of the total number of vehicles in the country, only five percent are new.

Each month, around 40 people are killed in accidents in Kinshasa, and 90 percent of these accidents are attributed to drivers’ faults.

Izayi dreams of being able to sell more robots and create manufacturing jobs throughout the country. She hopes that she will be able to market her robot internationally but points out that she is restricted by the country’s lax enforcement of laws, corruption and a very slow administrative system.

Izayi has tried numerous times to convince the government to support her project and still has not had much luck.

Obtaining a patent is a difficult process here. The costs vary and it takes six to 12 months to get approval.

Zacharie Kambale is a local inventor who has not been able to register a patent for his idea because he does not have the money for bribes.

“I have to pay money informally to officials to get things done,” Kambale tells IPS.

In 2012, Kambale developed Kongo Connect, a social network that is based in Goma. It has been nicknamed the “African Facebook”, and Kambale says it has more than 100,000 users.  The site is currently down as Kambale adds more functions to it.

Congolese economist Batamba Balembu tells IPS that he estimates four out of five companies in DRC have had to “give gifts” to get a business licence. He says that 55 percent of government revenue is lost to corruption.

There is also no enforcement of legislation relating to copyright protection here, says Chrysostome Kwede, a patent lawyer in Kisangani in northeastern DRC.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), legislation concerning industrial property was enacted here in 1982. Four year later, laws were put in place with regard to literary and artistic works.

However, WIPO says while there is legislation “from 1982 to date [1982 for industrial property and 1986 for literary and artistic works], legislative action in the DRC concerning both areas has stopped.”

“The legal vacuum is the basis of corruption in the Ministry of Industry,” Kwede tells IPS.

But government spokesperson Lambert Mende has told the media “the government’s view is very positive. But the administrative procedures [to purchase the robots] are very heavy.”

However, Izayi says interest has been expressed by the governments of Angola and neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville.

“But I am not ready to provide them with prototypes like those in Kinshasa because it is expensive,” Izayi adds.

The robots are expensive — around 15,000 dollars  — and they cost about 2,000 dollars a month to maintain.

National police arrive on a boat at Goma's port in DRC as U.N. peacekeepers look on. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 15 2014 (IPS)

The United States’ second-highest court has upheld most of a landmark U.S. law requiring companies to ascertain and publicly disclose whether proceeds from minerals used to manufacture their products may be funding conflict in central Africa.

The ruling, released Monday, means that U.S.-listed companies will need to file their first such reports with federal regulators by the end of May. The statute, known as Section 1502 and covering what are referred to as “conflict minerals”, became law in 2010, but the details of its actual implementation have remained up in the air ever since.The ruling is “a major step backward for atrocity prevention in the Great Lakes region of Africa and corporate accountability in the United States.” -- Holly Dranginis

“There are very encouraging aspects of this ruling, and the bottom line is that the rule hasn’t been overturned and now companies will need to move forward,” Corinna Gilfillan, head of the Washington office of Global Witness, a watchdog group that supports Section 1502, told IPS.

“The heart of this statute is companies carrying out due diligence on their supply chains so they can figure out whether their minerals are coming from conflict areas. Due diligence is a process – first knowing the supply chain and then taking action to address any problems. This ruling has upheld the due diligence and reporting aspects.”

The U.S. Congress hoped Section 1502 would help quell the violence that has wracked Africa’s Great Lakes region, particularly in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for the past decade and a half. Findings by the United Nations, rights groups and others have warned that rebels in these areas have funded their operations in part by mining and selling any of five minerals that have become particularly sought after by the international electronics industry.

The rule has come under attack by U.S. business groups who say the requirements would be onerous and infringe on their constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, by forcing them to label their products “conflict free”. But agreeing with previous rulings, a three-judge bench on Monday dismissed most of these concerns.

The dismissal included business concerns that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had not adequately analysed costs and benefits of the regulation.

“The rule’s benefits would occur half-a-world away in the midst of an opaque conflict about which little reliable information exists, and concern a subject about which the [SEC] has no particular expertise,” the court stated in its decision.

“Even if one could estimate how many lives are saved or rapes prevented as a direct result of the final rule, doing so would be pointless because the costs of the rule – measured in dollars – would create an apples-to-bricks comparison.”

Compelled speech

Yet the court also offered a split decision in favour of the manufacturers on the free speech concern, allowing both proponents and critics of Section 1502 to claim victory.

U.S. law allows for certain “compelled” public disclosures, but generally only if those are recitations of straight fact. However, the court found the issue of conflict minerals to be far more complex.

“[I]t is far from clear that the description at issue – whether a product is ‘conflict free’ – is factual and nonideological. Products and minerals do not fight conflicts,” the court stated.

“The label ‘conflict free’ is a metaphor that conveys moral responsibility for the Congo war. It requires an issuer to tell consumers that its products are ethically tainted, even if they only indirectly finance armed groups … By compelling an issuer to confess blood on its hands, the statute interferes with that exercise of the freedom of speech.”

It is unclear whether the SEC will appeal this part of the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court (the agency says it’s reviewing the ruling). For now, the decision undermines a key strategy for groups hoping to use a labelling requirement to shame companies into compliance, though related information will still be publicly available.

The ruling is “a major step backward for atrocity prevention in the Great Lakes region of Africa and corporate accountability in the United States,” Holly Dranginis, a policy associate with the Enough Project, an advocacy group here, said Monday.

“The court’s proposal that a conflict-free determination is ideological is unfounded and undercuts the power of society’s growing awareness that global markets and security in fragile states are in fact linked.”

Meanwhile, a separate case before the same court could soon undermine the free speech finding. A smaller bench has already ruled in favour of requiring meat producers to include “country of origin” information on their products, and the case is now slated to be heard by the full court in mid-May.

A dissenting opinion in the conflict minerals ruling noted that the meat-labelling decision could have a significant impact on Monday’s ruling.

6,000 reports

The complexities of implementing Section 1502 remain highly problematic in central Africa, and some are warning that the law could soon collapse under its own weight. Yet others say the regulation is already having a noticeable impact, with the Enough Project suggesting that “over two-thirds of tin, tantalum and tungsten mines [are] now free of armed groups.”

Monday’s ruling should now allow the U.S. side of the statute’s implementation to proceed. This means that around 6,000 U.S. companies will need to file reports with the SEC, and post them to company websites, by the end of May.

The lawsuit against Section 1502 was brought by three of the United States’ largest business lobbies, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. In a joint statement sent to IPS, the three lauded the decision.

“[W]e are pleased with the D.C. Circuit’s decision … finding the statute and regulation are unconstitutional,” the groups stated. “We understand the seriousness of the humanitarian situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and abhor the violence in that country, but this rule was not the appropriate way to address this problem.”

Yet other businesses are already complying with the spirit of Section 1502. Perhaps the most significant of these companies, Intel, is actually a member of NAM.

In January, the company pledged to remove all conflict minerals from its microprocessors. It says it now has no plans to change course.

“Regardless of this decision, we will continue to do our part to achieve conflict-free supply chains and to report publicly on these efforts,” Lisa Malloy, an Intel spokesperson, told IPS.

“The challenge of responsible minerals sourcing requires a comprehensive solution that involves government agencies in the U.S. and internationally, non-profit groups and industry. We urge all partners to continue the momentum towards a solution.”

The World Bank Thursday approved a 73.1-million-dollar grant in support of a controversial giant dam project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

With another 33.4 million dollars approved by the African Development Bank late last year, the grant, which is being provided by the Bank’s soft-loan affiliate, the International Development Association (IDA), will be used to help establish the legal framework and state authority that will oversee the dam’s construction and operations.“If leaders of emerging economies are truly interested in the welfare of their citizens, they are better off laying grand visions of mega-dams aside.” -- Atif Ansar

It will also finance a number of environmental and social assessments to shape the development of the multi-billion dollar Inga 3 Basse Chute (BC) dam project.

“By being involved in the development of Inga 3 BC from an early stage we can help ensure that its development is done right so it can be a game changer by providing electricity to millions of people and powering commerce and industry,” said Makhtar Diop, the Bank’s vice president for Africa.

“Supporting transformative projects that expand people’s access to electricity is central to achieving the World Bank Group’s twin goals of helping to end extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity,” he added.

But the Bank’s support for the project drew criticism from some environmental and civil-society groups that have long opposed a project that is expected to cost at least 14 billion dollars.

“By approving Inga 3, the World Bank shows it has not learnt lessons from the bad experience of previous dams on the Congo River despite its claims to the contrary,” according to Rudo Sanyanga, Africa Director of the California-based International Rivers (IR).

“The Bank is turning a blind eye to the DRC’s poor governance and is taking short-cuts to the environmental assessment of the project,” he added.

That view was echoed by Maurice Carney, executive director of the Friends of the Congo, a Washington-based organisation with ties to community and environmental groups in the DRC.

“We see this decision as consistent with past World Bank projects that wind up as white elephants,” he told IPS. “There are a number of other alternatives for developing the DRC’s enormous energy capacity, including solar, wind, smaller-scale hydro and biofuel.

“The project is being presented as if it will help the population, but more often than not, these big dam projects end up serving industry at the expense of local communities many of which will be displaced once Inga 3 is fully developed.”

As currently envisioned, the Inga III dam would be the first in a series of hydroelectric installations along the Congo River, collectively referred to as the Grand Inga project. This would include a single 145-metre dam, which would flood an area known as the BundiValley, home to around 30,000 people.

The full project could provide up to 40,000 megawatts of electricity, a power potential that has been eyed hungrily by the rest of the continent for decades.  The DRC’s total hydropower potential is estimated to be the third largest in the world after China and Russia.

While DRC’s chaotic governance, however, has stymied forward progress on the project for years, the Grand Inga vision received an important boost last year when the South African government agreed to purchase a substantial amount of power produced by Inga III.

The dam is now supposed to be built by 2020 and, according to Congolese government estimates from November, would produce around 4,800 MW of electricity. Of this, 2,500 MW would go to South Africa while another 1,300 MW would be earmarked for use by mines and related industry in the province of Katanga.

Construction is scheduled to begin by 2016. The Bank will rely heavily on its private-arm facility, the International Finance Corporation, to help DRC’s government establish an autonomous Inga Development Authority which will, among other things, be charged with deciding on construction bids and negotiating purchasing deals for the electricity generated by the dam.

According to Peter Bosshard, IR’s director, the selection of the contractor to build the dam could prove problematic.

He told IPS three consortia are currently in the running: SinoHydro and China Three Gorges Corporation from China, a Canadian-Korean consortium, and a third made up primarily of Spanish companies.

But one of the Canadian companies involved has been barred from receiving any support from by the Bank for past corruption, while SinoHydro has been suspended pending the outcome of a corruption investigation by the Bank, according to Bosshart.

“This means that, unless the DRC government picks the Spanish consortium, it won’t be able to get any World Bank Group loans for the actual construction,” he noted.

That could be a problem. According to Bernard Sheahan, the IFC’s director of infrastructure and natural resources, “the level of investment for Inga 3 BC is so high that neither the public sector nor the private sector alone could finance the full cost of development of the project.”

Huge hydro-electric dams have long been a controversial issue at the Bank which, for most of its history, was an enthusiastic supporter.

Protests by local communities and international human rights and environmental groups that documented the massive displacements and environmental damage these mega-dams often caused – not to mention their failure to deliver electricity to those most in need – resulted in a halt in approving new projects in the mid-1990s.

Indeed, while the 50-year-old Inga 1 and 2 dams were supposed to provide power to much of the country, only ten percent of DRC households have electricity.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Congress passed a landmark new law requiring the U.S. Treasury, which represents Washington on the Bank’s board, to vote against multilateral funding for large-scale hydro-electric projects in developing countries.

The U.S. representative abstained on the vote Thursday, according to knowledgeable sources.

Earlier this month, four researchers at Oxford Unversity Said Business School released a major study based on data from 245 large dams built since 1934 in 65 different countries.

It found that they suffered average cost overruns of more than 90 percent and delays of nearly 50 percent inflicting huge additional costs in inflation and debt service for the mostly public entities that built them.

“Proponents of mega-dams tend to focus on rare stories of success in order to get their pet projects approved,” said Atif Ansar, one of the Oxford researchers. “If leaders of emerging economies are truly interested in the welfare of their citizens, they are better off laying grand visions of mega-dams aside.”

Ireland’s former President Mary Robinson has been working hard to include women from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Great Lakes Region in the regional peace-building process. Credit: Matthew Newsome/IPS

By Matthew Newsome
ADDIS ABABA, Mar 12 2014 (IPS)

Ireland’s former President Mary Robinson has been working hard to include women from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Great Lakes Region in the regional peacebuilding process. Because without their involvement, she says, peace and security in the region will be unrealistic.

As the first female United Nations Special Envoy for the DRC and the Great Lakes Region, she strongly believes that women’s empowerment at a community level is critical.

Robinson, who was Ireland’s first female president from 1990 to 1997, told IPS that she has been taking steps to heighten the inclusion of women in the peacebuilding process and “expects people to start seeing a difference in their own lives, particularly women and girls.”

“And I want governments to continue to understand the importance of their role in implementing their Peace, Security and Cooperation action plan. Their commitments are very specific so we can mark and hold them to account and monitor how they are implemented. That is my task but I also need the support of CSOs, the media and everyone living in the region to make this happen,” she said."Progress would be limited if the vast potential and value of women was not incorporated into the search for durable peacebuilding solutions in the region." -- former Irish President Mary Robinson

Robinson spoke about her launch of the “Women’s Platform for the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework” in conjunction with the Global Fund for Women and other bodies promoting women’s rights and gender equality. Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: Why do you think it is important to have more women peace builders?

A: I subscribe to the view that more and more people believe that women and girls are central to peace and development in countries. They are the ones working on peace at a local community level and yet they have never properly been represented in the peace processes, which is usually “bad men forgiving other bad men in front of cameras” as we say.

We also know that women are agents of change and have a great capacity to organise their communities. Progress would be limited if the vast potential and value of women was not incorporated into the search for durable peacebuilding solutions in the region.

Q: You are the first woman to be appointed U.N. Special Envoy. Do you think that there are enough women peace builders in the DRC and the Great Lakes Region?

A: The more women that are involved the better. It is notable that the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appointed more women as special representatives in difficult countries like South Sudan or Liberia. They are doing a good job and making an impact because women understand profoundly the impact that fighting has on families. This is something that women have particular empathy for.

Q: How do you plan to engage non-state actors including CSOs and the media in the region’s peacebuilding process?

A: It’s very important for me to engage civil society and the media in what we are trying to do, which is bringing about peace security cooperation and development in the Great Lakes region – particularly the DRC and Eastern Congo where there has been so much suffering for so long.

I say that because governments have committed both at the regional level and at the national level to take steps on security and have committed to not encourage armed groups in another country, as well as not harbouring those who commit terrible crimes and to work together for development.

They have benchmarks now, which I think are too technical. They need to instead be held accountable by society. To help achieve this I have established a platform for women’s groups to achieve more visibility for what women are doing in tackling gender-based violence in their livelihoods and through greater access to clean energy, etc.

Q: Why is it important to engage non-state actors such as CSOs?

A: We are deliberately taking these steps to make the peace and security process more real for people in the region. We are also going to be working with young people – there is going to be a summit for young people hosted by Kenya in May. I want people to feel that this peacebuilding process is different from previous ones.

I believe that the governments are serious and I think they are also trying to be serious. We ourselves are also engaged, we know what to expect and we will be in a stronger position to hold governments to account because of our work with non-state actors, particularly women and youth.

Q: Do you think peace and security is improving in the DRC and the Great Lakes Region?

A: The framework that I work to, the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework, is one year old (Feb. 24) and I believe we have achieved a lot in this time period. We have managed to have the M23 rebel group defeated as well as establish a Kampala political agreement so that those who fled to Rwanda and Uganda, are able to return and go through a process of re-integration if they haven’t committed serious crimes. We also have the commitments on the development side.

I am organising a private sector investment conference in May together with the Great Lakes conference because we really need a peace dividend. The World Bank has been engaged, the World Bank president has promised to pledge a billion dollars to fund projects. Those are being worked on in the key countries in the region. I hope that in 2014 we will see a real commitment from governments in the region to end armed groups.

Excerpt:

The Inga III dam would be the first in a series of hydroelectric installations along the Congo River, collectively referred to as the Grand Inga project. Credit: alaindg/GNU license

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 11 2014 (IPS)

Watchdog groups here are warning that a deal has been struck that would see Chinese investors fund a massive, contentious dam on the Congo River, the first phase of a project that could eventually be the largest hydroelectric project in the world.

Discussions around the Inga III dam proposal, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have been taking place in some form for decades. They have picked up speed over the past year, however, under the auspices of the World Bank, the Washington-based development funder.“Handing the project over to a private investor will make it even less likely the country’s poor people would benefit from the project.” -- Peter Bosshard

On Tuesday, the bank’s board of directors were to have voted on an initial 73-million-dollar loan for the project, to be offered through the International Development Association (IDA), the institution’s programme for the world’s poorest countries. Last week, however, that vote was abruptly postponed.

Now, civil society groups are reporting that the project may be going forward instead under the World Bank’s private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), with the backing of Chinese investors. Yet critics, who have long worried about the local social and environmental impact of the Inga project, worry that greater involvement by the private sector will result in skewed prioritisation of beneficiaries.

“Handing the project over to a private investor will make it even less likely the country’s poor people would benefit from the project,” Peter Bosshard, policy director for International Rivers, an advocacy group, said Monday.

“The IFC deal was arranged behind closed doors without any accountability to the DRC parliament, the World Bank’s board of directors, or civil society … Non-transparent deals such as the Inga 3 Dam are the best recipe for deepening corruption in the DRC. They will not strengthen the public accountability that is necessary for social and economic development.”

Citing multiple sources within the bank, Bosshard says the decision to change the Inga III funding modality appears to have been made between high-level officials from the World Bank, the IFC and USAID, the U.S. government’s main foreign-aid arm, reportedly bypassing the bank’s board of directors. Thus far, none of these institutions have publicly confirmed any deal.

“The World Bank Group is fully committed to supporting the Inga III hydropower project, which has the potential to improve the lives of millions of Africans,” a bank spokesperson told IPS in a statement. “We postponed presenting to our Board a Technical Assistance package related to the design of the project’s operation, but the project has not been cancelled, and our commitment to Inga III is unchanged.”

Primary beneficiaries

As currently envisioned, the Inga III dam would be the first in a series of hydroelectric installations along the Congo River, collectively referred to as the Grand Inga project. This would include a single 145 metre dam, which would flood an area known as the Bundi Valley, home to around 30,000 people.

The full project could provide up to 40,000 megawatts of electricity, a power potential that has been eyed hungrily by the rest of the continent for decades. While DRC’s chaotic governance has stymied forward progress on the project for years, the Grand Inga vision received an important boost last year when the South African government agreed to purchase a substantial amount of power produced by Inga III.

The 12-billion-dollar dam is now supposed to be built by 2020 and, according to Congolese government estimates from November, would produce around 4,800 MW of electricity. Of this, 2,500 MW would go to South Africa while another 1,300 MW would be earmarked for use by mines and related industry in the province of Katanga.

“There is little indication that the dam development schemes underway would address the issue of access to electricity for the population at-large; industrial users stand to be the primary beneficiaries,” Maurice Carney, executive director of Friends of the Congo, an advocacy group here, told IPS.

“Only 10 percent of Congo’s population has access to electricity and the situation is even worse for rural population, where only 1 percent has access to electricity. For a country like the DRC that is endowed with a plethora of alternative energy options, smaller-scale renewable energy technologies would be the best way forward.”

Carney and others are calling for a cumulative assessment of the Grand Inga scheme, to include study of all social and environmental impacts. Indeed, these have been longstanding concerns, but now some development advocates worry that greater private sector involvement in the Inga III project will further exacerbate such issues.

“We have questions about whether the scheme can deliver any development at all in the hands of the private sector,” Joshua Klemm, manager of the Africa programme at the Bank Information Center, a watchdog group here that focuses on the World Bank, told IPS.

“For good or bad, if this project belongs to the Congolese government, there’s at least some hope to expand electricity access in the country. That would go out the window if we’re talking about a purely private sector project.”

Duelling U.S. stances

As the Inga III project picked up momentum in recent months, USAID too expressed its interest in the proposal. The agency’s administrator, Rajiv Shah, visited the Inga III dam site in mid-December, and stated that the proposal could be added to a new, large-scale initiative by the United States to significantly increase electrification across Africa.

Although USAID was unable to comment for this story by deadline, any involvement by the agency in brokering a deal with the IFC would be interesting. Just last month, the U.S. Congress passed a landmark new law requiring the U.S. Treasury to formally vote against multilateral funding for large-scale hydroelectric projects in developing countries.

The new provisions, contained in a huge appropriations bill funding the federal government, impact both on bilateral U.S. funding through agencies such as USAID, as well as on the significant contributions that the United States provides to multilateral development institutions, particularly the World Bank. (The U.S. Treasury was unable to comment by deadline.)

“Under the [appropriations] language, the United States will have to oppose the Inga III dam at the IFC as much as it would have had to do this if it were an IDA project,” International Rivers’ Bosshard told IPS. “There’s no difference there, but it is ironic that the USAID administrator would have pushed the deal.”

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

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 2014 (IPS)

On Jan. 11, 1994, Romeo Dallaire, force commander of the United Nations Mission in Rwanda, sent a fax to U.N. Headquarters in New York, telling officials there a source close to the government had confided to him that Tutsis were being forced to register themselves in Kigali.

“He suspects it is for their extermination,” wrote Dallaire.“Having 26,000 people running around [DRC] just with a rifle doesn’t mean you are going to actually have a solution." -- Romeo Dallaire

In five months, a million, mostly Tutsi, Rwandans would be dead, victims of a meticulously planned 100-day genocide unleashed by Hutu extremists after they shot down the plane of President Juvénal Habyarimana, fearful he would soon seal a lasting peace in the country.

On Wednesday in New York, the U.N. marks the sombre 20th anniversary of what most consider its greatest failure – and the lives that proved the price required to force peacekeeping into the 21st century.

“Twenty years ago, humanity turned itself inside out,” Dallaire told reporters Tuesday. “The international community did its best to ignore Rwanda. It wasn’t on their radar, it was of no self-interest, it had no strategic value.”

Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, who joined Dallaire and Rwandan ambassador Eugene-Richard Gasana, said the genocide, along with ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, was a turning point for the U.N.

Eleven years after the genocide, in 2005, the U.N. launched the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) initiative, obliging states to protect their own population from mass killings and holding the international community accountable for taking collective action to prevent genocide.

“Without the tragedy of Rwanda, we wouldn’t have had the Responsibility to Protect,” Adams told IPS. “There’s no way that would have happened without the process of sad reflection afterwards and the utter failure of the U.N. in 1994.”

Yet in 2009, the U.N. came under heavy criticism for not doing more during the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war, when up to 40,000 civilians were killed in a conflict which had, for most purposes, already been decided.

A 2012 internal U.N. report echoed investigations from the 1990s, finding “the UN’s failure to adequately respond to events like those that occurred in Sri Lanka should not happen again. When confronted by similar situations, the UN must be able to meet a much higher standard in fulfilling its protection and humanitarian responsibilities.”

Still, U.N. peacekeeping missions now prioritise the protection of civilians and sovereignty no longer takes precedent when they are targeted. Today it is expected that peacekeeping operations, such as recent interventions in South Sudan and the Central African Republic, will receive Chapter Seven mandates, authorising peacekeepers to use force in order to prevent the deaths of non-combatants.

Dallaire’s mission had no such mandate.

Coming a year after the disastrous failed mission in Somalia, countries were hesitant to send troops to Rwanda. Even when Dallaire asked the U.S. to jam radio transmissions emitting instructions to kill, Washington declined, afraid doing so would violate Rwanda’s sovereignty.

“The onus is on every sovereign state that makes up this U.N.,” said Dallaire. “Every sovereign state washed its hands, didn’t want to get involved, saw another Mogadishu catastrophe coming on line and did its best to avoid being engaged. So there was no prevention. There were words, but there was no prevention.”

Not only did the U.N. not heed Dallaire’s pleadings, but during the worst of the genocide, when seven Rwandans were being murdered every minute, the Security Council voted to cut its peacekeeping mission in the country by 90 percent.

Ordered to leave the country, Dallaire, along with several hundred soldiers, refused. They tried desperately to protect civilians, but the killing subsumed the ill-equipped and overwhelmed troops.

Only three weeks before Tutsi rebels took the capital and ended the genocide, the Security Council finally approved a French intervention force, but the 3,000 French troops soon after gave safe passage to fleeing interahamwe and Hutu soldiers, even allowing them to keep their weapons. Pursuit of the genocidaires continues today, both abroad and in the jungles of eastern Congo.

“History has judged the U.N. very harshly for its inaction in Rwanda, and we must learn the lessons of the past,” Adams told IPS.

In March 2013, the Security Council authorised the “U.N Force Intervention Brigade,” a rapid response force that aggressively and successfully pushed into submission the M23 rebels in Eastern Congo.

“The new force there, having offensive capabilities, is a significant departure from the mandates that were so restricted,” said Dallaire.

“Peacekeeping always suffers from a lack of rapid reaction,” said David Curran, lecturer in peacekeeping, peace building and conflict resolution at University of Bradford. “There is a strong need to examine concepts of rapid deployment.”

Curran says countries still complain about erratic mandates and many member states – mostly developing – are remiss to send soldiers on orders from a security council whose members offer few or none at all.

“Certain states, mainly from the non-aligned movement, find they are being pushed to provide peacekeepers in situations where there is little peace to keep,” Curran told IPS. “They say they are being given vague mandates pertaining to protection of civilians from the Security Council, which certainly has a majority of states who do not provide troops to peacekeeping operations.”

Dallaire says peacekeeping often is a question of money and resources, no more evident than in Congo missions, which for many years were seen as failures.

“Having 26,000 people running around there just with a rifle doesn’t mean you are going to actually have a solution,” Dallaire told reporters. “So until developed countries get reengaged in peacekeeping and peacemaking operations we will continue to have forces that are not necessarily effective on the ground but also we seem to also continue to have mandates that are so restricted.”

But, he added, there is “a whole new generation of conflict resolution in which peacekeepers can be deployed but with the ability to influence the situation and not stand there and observe it, report, a sort of referee without a red card.”

Recent mandated French-led interventions in Mali and Central African Republic – cheaper than full blue-helmet missions – have seen mixed results, but observers raise questions concerning those actions’ long-term viability and development prospects.

Dallaire spoke encouragingly of the recent deployment of troops from other missions to augment the peacekeeping force in South Sudan, which the Security Council voted to increase by 5,500 shortly before Christmas.

But Adams says the mission in South Sudan is tentative and unwilling to enforce its mandate. On Tuesday, gunfire burst through the walls of an UNMISS camp in Malakal but the U.N. did not report any engagement. Groups say 10,000 have died, many of them civilians.

“In the case of South Sudan, they have a responsibility to protect mandate, it’s written in there,” says Adams. “There’s no problem with doctrine, which is very different from 1994. I think what we see in South Sudan is a question of resourcing, political leadership and will.

“What we often lack in mass atrocity crime situations is not early warning but timely response,” he added.

Closer to Rwanda, Gasana said the interahamwe that the French let slip so easily through their grasp continue to operate as FDLR rebels in the Eastern Congo, and for that, celebrations were not yet in order.

“I don’t think that they’ve learned anything. MINUSCO’s been there 13 years. And everybody, all of us here, knows what FDLR represents and they are still there,” said Gasana. “But we learned a lesson, we are part of the U.N., we don’t want this to happen anymore and that’s why we contribute peacekeepers to see how we can do our duty and serve the people all over the world.”

Major manufacturing and business groups on Tuesday urged a court here to roll back a new U.S. regulation that would soon require major manufacturers to ensure that their global supply chains are free of minerals used to fund violence in the Great Lakes region of central Africa.

Former “blood diamonds” now provide employment in Sierra Leone. Credit: Tommy Trenchard/IPS

Yet the previous day, Intel, the major computer hardware manufacturer, announced the world’s first product formally dubbed free of such materials, stating that its microprocessors would no longer use “conflict minerals”. The announcement highlights trends that advocates of greater supply chain accountability say are already well underway, and which they suggest belie parts of the legal case against the rule.

“This provision has already catalysed reforms of the minerals trade in the Great Lakes region and has prompted both [U.S.] and Congolese companies to carry out supply chain due diligence and source minerals more responsibly,” Carly Oboth, an assistant policy advisor with Global Witness, a watchdog group, told IPS.

“According to consulting firm Claigan, in September 2013 2,946 companies were identified as having conflict minerals compliance programmes … Despite the appeal, many companies have already publically demonstrated the feasibility of the rule as they begin implementation to meet the May 31, 2014 reporting deadline.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the Business Roundtable, all major lobby groups, say the new rules impose an undue financial burden on companies and infringe on constitutional guarantees of free speech. The groups say they are supportive of the aims of the regulation, known as Section 1502, but want significant tweaks and the inclusion of certain exemptions.

But supporters counter that the Securities and Exchange Committee (SEC), the country’s lead regulator of publicly listed companies, has already thoroughly weighed these issues.

“Generally we’ve been supportive of the SEC’s position and think they did extensive analysis before adopting the conflict minerals rule,” Julie Murray, an attorney currently acting as counsel for Amnesty International, a rights group that has joined the lawsuit in support of Section 1502, told IPS.

“The SEC received some 13,000 letters urging it to promptly adopt this rule, and we think the commission did an exhaustive job of looking at the issues – taking into account the concerns that were raised by these groups, and trying to make the rule cheaper and easier to comply with.”

The appeal follows a detailed and strongly worded legal decision in July that upheld Section 1502, which was mandated by Congress in 2010 but only finalised last year. As the regulation currently stands, by June large companies will need to certify the sourcing of a handful of minerals sourced from central Africa, while smaller companies will have a longer timetable.

In the appeal, a central issue in the court’s decision-making will be the estimates the SEC used to figure out the financial burden that Section 1502 would place on companies, upwards of four billion dollars in initial compliance costs followed by annual costs of 200-600 million dollars. Yet Murray suggests that companies will be able to bring these costs down as they learn how to comply with the new regulations.

“In general we think that it’s important that companies learn about the source of the materials they’re using – most consumers say they should know whether the materials they’re purchasing are responsible for rape, torture and murder in the DRC,” Murray says. “At the same time, this rule isn’t just about human rights, but also serves an important role in informing investors and consumers.”

On Tuesday, however, two of the three judges hearing the case appeared sceptical of several aspects of Section 1502. They raised concerns about the precedent that the regulation would set, the SEC’s capacity to create such a rule, and even the scope of the underlying law.

Conflict-free microprocessors

In 2009, the U.N. Security Council formally recognised that revenues from minerals extraction were strengthening multiple armed groups operating in eastern DRC. The electronics industry has been one of the most significant users of the minerals that have been singled out for scrutiny, which include tin, gold, tungsten and others.

Supporters of Section 1502 say that many businesses are showing strengthening interest in doing the work necessary to comply with the rule, both for brand and financial reasons. In this, Intel is widely seen as having made a uniquely serious effort to clean up its global supply chain.

“Two years ago, I told several colleagues that we needed a hard goal, a commitment to reasonably conclude that the metals used in our microprocessors are conflict-free,” Intel’s CEO, Brian Krzanich, said Monday. “We felt an obligation to implement changes in our supply chain to ensure that our business and our products were not inadvertently funding human atrocities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

(An Intel executive sits on the National Association of Manufacturers’ board and is thus technically a party to the current appeal. While a company spokesperson declined to comment on the case, on its website Intel notes that its “positions do not always align 100% with those of the industry and trade organizations to which we belong.”)

Intel called the achievement a “critical milestone”, while Krzanich said the it was “just a start. We will continue our audits and resolve issues that are found.” He also urged the rest of the electronics industry to follow suit.

Others say industry leadership from other sectors is equally important.

“Now that Intel has released the first conflict-free product, it’s time for other companies to do the same,” Sasha Lezhnev, a senior policy analyst with the Enough Project, an advocacy group here, told IPS. “Particularly for gold – it’s important for jewellers to take action, while aerospace companies also need to step up. This problem won’t be solved by just one company.”

Lezhnev recently returned from the DRC, and notes that Section 1502, despite having yet to come fully into force, has already played a “backbone” role in defunding armed groups in the eastern part of the country. Such groups, he says, are also far less present today in the mining areas.

“Smuggled minerals are now about a third of the price of the [certified] minerals, so the new price this rule helped to spur is offering a strong incentive to build up a conflict-free trade,” he says. “You’re seeing the disarmament of many armed groups … and while that is not only because of the new regulation, this rule is offering a strong incentive for them to not restart again.”

Troops of the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) cheer after taking control, with assistance from the Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) of the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), of a highly strategic position of the M23, an area known as Three Towers on the hills of Kibati, five 5 kilometres north of Goma. Credit: UN Photo/Sylvain Liechti

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 13 2013 (IPS)

As U.N. peacekeeping operations assume a more agressive role in conflict zones, the first concrete results came last week when the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) defeated the M23 rebel group after a 20-month-long insurgency.

That victory was thanks in part to the support provided by the 25,240-strong U.N. Stabilisation Mission in DRC (MONUSCO), but more importantly, the 3,000-strong first-ever U.N. Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) created by the Security Council last March.

An African diplomat told IPS the success in DRC may change the dynamics of peacekeeping in some of the other U.N. operations in Africa, including in Darfur, South Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire.

But any change in the mandate of the 15 peacekeeping operations – eight of which are in Africa – has to be approved by the Security Council, he added.

By accident or by design, the United Nations is currently seeking to strengthen the military component of its peacekeeping operations with “force enablers”, including military and transport helicopters, armoured personnel carriers (APCs), night vision equipment and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Traditionally, U.N. peacekeepers were armed only with light weapons, never heavy artillery.

“I see several priorities for the year ahead,” said Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous.

One is to meet the shortfalls in equipment by strengthening the military and police capabilities on the ground, he said. South Africa, one of three countries in the FIB, along with Tanzania and Malawi, has already agreed to provide three of its home-made military helicopters and two utility helicopters to MONUSCO.

Two other countries, Bangladesh and Ukraine, are already providing attack helicopters to the same peace mission in the Congo.

Western nations are also providing military equipment, including 10 APCs each from the United States and the European Union, plus two from the United Kingdom. Sweden has provided a transport aircraft for a limited period of two months.

Asked if these weapons are being purchased or provided gratis, Kieran Dwyer, chief of the public affairs division at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support, told IPS the United Nations does not purchase military equipment such as attack helicopters.

“Member states provide these,” he said, explaining that troop-contributing countries also equip their own personnel.

Some worry that the shift from defensive to offensive operations, as in DRC, may create dangers for humanitarian organisations in conflict zones.

Michael Hofman, a senior humanitarian specialist with Doctors Without Borders, was quoted by the New York Times Wednesday as saying: “You can have a helicopter, one day used to deliver the Force Intervention Brigade troops to attack a village, and next day, to deliver aid to the same village.”

“In this case, it is not even a blurring of the lines,” he added.

Currently, the three major troop contributors to U.N. peacekeeping missions are Bangladesh (8,780 military troops and civilian personnel), Pakistan (8,200) and India (7,840).

In contrast, the five big powers in the Security Council are providing relatively small number of troops: China, (1,995 troops), France (1,770), Russia (362), UK (281) and the United States (82).

The supply of weapons by developing nations, along with their troops, is also providing a boost to their domestic arms industries.

Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Arms Transfers Programme of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS many arms and other military equipment used by South African armed forces are produced locally.

Some of them, like the Rooivalk helicopter used in DRC, have been designed in South Africa, and others are increasingly from foreign designs produced under licence in South Africa, he said.

India, the third largest troop contributor, has a large arms industry that assembles and produces Russian-designed armoured vehicles. It also produces its own helicopter based on European technology, but currently it is more likely to deploy helicopters supplied directly from Russia or produced under licence from Eurocopter, Wezeman said.

“India has a nascent UAV industry but I have not heard of Indian UAVs being operational because until now India relies mainly on UAVs supplied by Israel,” said Wezeman.

Pakistan has an arms industry that licence-produces items like armoured vehicles and small arms designed in a variety of countries, including the United States and China. But Pakistan imports its helicopters.

Bangladesh has a very basic arms industry and is very dependent on arms imports, including attack helicopters provided for U.N. missions.

Nicole Auger, a military analyst covering Middle East/Africa at Forecast International, a leader in defence market intelligence, told IPS South Africa has a fast developing arms industry capable of providing the type of weapons used in U.N. peacekeeping operations. These include helicopters, armoured vehicles and UAVs.

She said South Africa relies heavily on foreign partnerships and outside assistance; in many cases a South African defence company will exchange the ownership stake for technology or financial assistance.

UAVs, which were deployed for the first time by U.N. peacekeepers in DRC, seem to be a focus for the South African defence industry right now, she noted. Denel’s Seeker 400 is expected to fly later this year. And its Bateleur MALE is also under development.

Additional domestic UAVs with longer range systems are also under development in South Africa, she added.

As of now, the 15 peacekeeping missions have a total strength of 114,000 personnel and the U.N’s 2013-2014 budget for peacekeeping is about 7.5 billion dollars.

Artisanal diamond miners at work in the alluvial diamond mines around the eastern town of Koidu, Sierra Leone. So-called ‘blood diamonds’ helped fund civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, but now provide much-needed jobs as well as revenue for the government. Credit: Tommy Trenchard/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 12 2013 (IPS)

Countries in Africa’s Great Lakes region are moving too slowly on an international plan to certify the sourcing of “conflict minerals”, researchers here are warning, a failure that could threaten the entire certification process.

Recent international efforts have made important gains in cutting off militants in Rwanda, Congo and neighbouring countries from mining profits, while bolstering focus on ensuring clean supply chains, particularly in the global electronics industry. Today, for instance, far fewer rebel groups are present in mines in eastern Congo, according to new analysis by the Enough Project, a Washington advocacy group."The heart of this process is asking companies operating in the region to take responsibility for their supply chains." -- Annie Dunnebacke of Global Witness

Yet several key components of an international initiative aimed at systematising the global traceability of these “conflict minerals” have yet to be fully set up by the region’s governments. In a new report, the Enough Project suggests the certification process is today at a “crossroads”.

“Minerals can be a boon for peace in Congo and the region, not a conflict curse,” Sasha Lezhnev, a senior policy analyst with the Enough Project, said Monday.

“But if Rwanda, Congo and regional states do not take urgent steps to complete the mineral certification process in the next few months, multinational companies may stop purchasing many minerals from the region that cannot credibly be certified as conflict-free.”

One key deadline in this regard is now just months away. In May 2014, a landmark U.S. regulation will start requiring all U.S.-listed corporations to publicly report on the provenance of a list of minerals coming from the Great Lakes region.

And even as this U.S. provision – known as Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, massive financial sector overhaul legislation passed in 2010 – has proven to be a major global impetus, the European Union is currently working on similar legislation.

“Over the past two years, we’ve certainly seen increased interest by companies to strengthen the level of minerals traceability. Our member companies have been putting a lot of resources into due diligence, carrying out a tremendous amount of tracing very far up the supply chain,” Julie Schindall, director of communications at the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), an initiative that focuses on auditing smelters and refiners, told IPS.

“Yet it would be unfair to say that every company is doing this only due to action by regulators, though pressure from government, civil society and consumers is all vital. Companies also believe this matters, and some have been working on these issues far longer than they’ve been mandated.”

Safeguards lagging

The Enough Project’s warning comes just as a major conference is set to take place, later this week in Rwanda, among an international group of experts on responsible mineral supply chains.

Just ahead of the meeting, the certification process reached something of a milestone, with Rwanda last week issuing its first conflict-free certificate, known formally as an International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) Mineral Export Certificate. (Unlike the EICC, this certificate aims to audit operations at the level of extraction.)

The Congo government is reportedly preparing to do the same soon.

Yet there are concerns that these certificates have been prepared without mandated safeguards being in place. Enough Project researchers note that the process by which these initial certificates are being offered are “ad hoc”, with the governments focusing on mines that are particularly easy to certify.

“Interim steps will not work for all mines,” they write.

In the half-dozen years since the ICGLR Regional Initiative against the Exploitation of Natural Resources (RINR) was created, a rudimentary mine inspection system has been created and is partially functioning. Yet other important components of this framework – including a regional database to allow for the tracking of minerals from individual mines, disclosure requirements and critical auditing and monitoring systems – have yet to be finalised, in addition to more general deficiencies in capacity and public support.

While the governments of Rwanda and Congo have put in place interim measures to address some of these systemic gaps, these have been criticised for lacking transparency.

“Right now it’s a bit of a case of putting the cart before the horse – if you want a certification to be credible, then safeguards and monitoring have to be in place before you launch it,” Annie Dunnebacke, deputy campaigns director at Global Witness, a watchdog group that has been a key proponent of the ICGLR certification initiative, told IPS from Rwanda.

“At the same time, if this system launches before it’s ready, and at some point down the road is certifying actual conflict minerals, then we have a problem. The credibility of the system is the most important component.”

Yet Dunnebacke cautions advocates not to lose sight of the central priority: private sector due diligence. She says focus on this responsibility will ease concerns over the possibility of companies turning away from the region.

“The heart of this process is asking companies operating in the region to take responsibility for their supply chains, to identify and mitigate risks. Private sector players have to prove they’re carrying out due diligence,” she says.

“But companies can carry out due diligence, and can also source from the region, even if a fancy certification process is not up and running.”

Transformational development

Ahead of this week’s meetings in Rwanda, the Enough Project is now urging the United States, European Union, World Bank and electronics companies to strengthen technical assistance in several areas, in the hopes of expediting the formation of central components of the certification processes.

The World Bank has recently created a new project, the Africa Extractive Industry Trust Fund, through which it says it aims to work with African countries to provide advice on how to negotiate “fair and equitable contracts and deliver transformational development benefits.”

But the Washington-based development institution emphasises that certification remains a key requirement.

“Channelling revenues from Africa’s minerals into significantly improving people’s lives is an essential development investment in the continent’s future,” a bank spokesperson told IPS, “and so effective certification and traceability are vital steps in this process for countries, especially in the Great Lakes region.”

Former child soliders in the DRC. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Babatunde Osotimehin and Zainab Bangura
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 6 2013 (IPS)

Imagine an orphanage where over 300 children born out of rape have been abandoned because of the shame and stigma associated with sexual violence. Imagine a town where, in the last year, 11 infants between the ages of six months and one year, and 59 small children from one to three years old, have been raped.

What does the future of these children hold? The story of sexual violence in conflict is as old as war itself. It knows no boundaries – location, ethnicity, religion, or age. We must be loud and clear: it will be prosecuted. It will be punished.

The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) know all too well the pain and suffering that comes with sexual violence.  According to a recent report by the Ministry of Gender, in 2012 alone there were 15,654 reported cases of sexual violence – a 52 percent increase from 2011.

Of these, 98 percent were perpetrated against females. In conflict-affected contexts in DRC, the average age of survivors is less than 21, with a third of all survivors falling between 12 and 17 years of age. In 2012, 82 percent of all survivors had not completed primary school.

These are not just abstract numbers; these are children born of rape who are abandoned, women and girls who struggle with the debilitating physical and emotional repercussions day in and day out, and men and boys who suffer in silence because of the shame and stigma associated with this crime. All survivors must access lifesaving services and all partners must come together not only to prevent future attacks, but also  to enable survivors to rebuild their lives.

But this conflict did not create the scourge of sexual violence we face in DRC today. The roots of such widespread and rampant violence – specifically women’s inequality and the abuse of power – have been there for centuries. In the DRC and worldwide, gender-based violence is the most pervasive, yet least reported, human rights abuse. Conflict brings violence, insecurity and an environment of impunity, which in turn exacerbates the prevalence of sexual violence.

To effectively eradicate conflict-related sexual violence we must redouble our efforts to promote women’s rights as human rights and create viable systems that will end impunity for perpetrators and send a strong message that this most extreme and pervasive abuse of power will not be tolerated. We must be loud and clear: it will be prosecuted. It will be punished.

Sexual violence in conflict settings, particularly in Eastern DRC, presents unique challenges,  According to the latest secretary-general’s report on sexual violence in conflict, there are more than 44 armed groups operating in Eastern DRC alone, some of which are from neighbouring countries.

Nearly all of these groups have been implicated in committing sexual violence crimes. Elements of the armed forces and police have also been accused of such crimes. In this context, engaging a wide variety of state and non-state actors and ensuring that sexual violence is not used as a tactic of war for military advantage or political gain, is particularly complex.

The economic and human costs of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence on communities and countries are tremendous. Its impact is devastating, including the loss of lives and livelihoods, rejection by families and communities, and serious, often life-threatening reproductive and mental health consequences. However, sexual violence is not inevitable.

The government of DRC has recognised the devastating consequences of this scourge and taken steps to change the narrative of sexual violence in the country.  In 2006, it passed a law broadening the definition of sexual violence and promoting stronger penalties for perpetrators, one of the most far-reaching laws of its type.

In 2009, the country developed the National Strategy on Gender-Based Violence, and in March 2013 the Government and the United Nations signed a Joint Communique, outlining concrete actions the government would take to eradicate these offences.

These are all steps in the right direction, but much more needs to be done. Laws need to be enforced and aggressors must be prosecuted and convicted. Building the rule of law in an immense territory where customary laws are, in many locations, the only recognised authority represents an enormous challenge for the legal organisations and stakeholders engaged in fighting the impunity of perpetrators of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence.

The country is not alone in this fight, however.  The United Nations system, including peacekeeping forces, also has a direct responsibility to support and enable national initiatives.

We undertook this joint mission to the DRC to deepen political commitment by enhancing the participation of democratic institutions, political leaders and civil society.

Together, our goal is to make sure that the commitments that have been made and the work that has been done by the government and the U.N. make a difference in the lives of the women, girls, boys and men who live in fear every day.

We commit ourselves, our teams and our organisations to work towards the elimination of sexual violence in the DRC. To make significant progress, we need the support of the international community, of the entire U.N. system and of the government. We also advocate for greater donor attention to support basic services for survivors of sexual violence, including education, accessible health care and commodities, safe shelter, livelihood and other psychosocial interventions.

The story of sexual violence in the DRC is far from over, but working together we can end what has long been called history’s greatest silence and write the final chapter on this dehumanising and degrading violation. Eliminating gender-based violence and empowering women and girls is at the heart of this country’s path to peace and development.

Babatunde Osotimehin is a United Nations Under-Secretary-General and the Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. Zainab Bangura is a United Nations Under-Secretary-General and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

By Rousbeh Legatis
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 19 2013 (IPS)

Western analysts all too often take a distorted and reductionist approach to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), says Kai Koddenbrock, who analysed more than 50 policy papers for a study published in the journal International Peacekeeping in November 2012.

Courtesy of Kai Koddenbrock

In an interview with U.N. correspondent Rousbeh Legatis, Koddenbrock said the DRC is portrayed again and again as a “sick country” with “sick people” instead of accurately reflecting the diverse realities on the ground.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: The degree to which analysts and particularly Western think tanks have reduced realities and complexity on the ground in DRC “beyond what is required for description and intelligible communication”, as you wrote, results in a “functional pathologisation” of the Congolese society and its population. Could you elaborate on that?

A: Functional pathologisation refers to the relationship between the way think tanks and intervention actors analyse the Congo and the fact that simultaneously the assumption is made over and over again that Western organisations are urgently needed to deal with these self-identified problems.

Peacebuilding and other international actors approach the Congo and its people in a way that stresses their seeming problems and weaknesses and portrays it as a sick country with sick people only. By doing so, these outside actors create the impression that it is these outside actors that are urgently needed to overcome these supposed problems.

If policy papers and interveners were more respectful and appreciative of Congolese actors of all kinds, outside intervention would appear less natural and the abilities of the Congolese themselves to get things done would move to the forefront.

Q: What are the underlying reasons for this pattern you found in your analysis?

A: This is a difficult question. Racism and historical continuities in the ways of approaching the Congo and Africa more broadly probably play a role. The logic of the think tank market, where advice needs to be short and easily digestible, is decisive, too.

Think tanks sell ideas and decision-makers spend little time. For these reasons, reports have to reduce complexity. This is not a bad thing in itself, but the way this is done matters. If all kinds of rational and purposeful Congolese acts disappear in the course of simplifying, there is a problem.

I think that even all-out military occupations like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are not successful as long as they do not manage to take the existing priorities and ideas of the existing government and relevant powerbrokers into account. This is a tough thing to do – especially if the power structure of the country and the region is hard to understand.

Security sector reform (SSR) in the Congo, for example, has failed for many years because President Kabila was not interested in it. Maybe this is changing at the moment. This means for peacebuilding that the relevant actors need to be on board: the Congolese government, the Rwandan government, the Angolan government, the South African government, customary chiefs and influential business people and various armed groups of the East and the ordinary Congolese.

Q: What should be done differently when analysing DRC and its peacebuilding processes, with their local, regional and international implications?

A: Analysts and think tanks follow trends because new work needs to be different than prior work to grab the readers’ attention. This is very visible in current Congo analysis.

Thanks to the good work done by Séverine Autesserre, for example, analysts now focus a lot more on local conflict than 10 years ago. However, I would argue they might focus too much on local conflict, as the recent controversy about the latest ICG [International Crisis Group] report showed. International and regional factors do play a very important role still.

What remains the same throughout all these shifts in focus from “elections will build the Congo” to “local peacebuilding” or the “international brigade” now is that the government in Kinshasa and the provincial government remains a curious blind spot.

The examples I provide in the paper are quite concrete, I think. Kabila deals with IDPs, strikes deals with Rwanda and manages the mines to a certain degree. This is more than “Congo is a failed state” or has no government. Analysts have repeatedly assumed during cyclical violence in the East that now this will be the end of the Kabila government. He is still there. How come? No analyst really deals with that.

This is part of what I see as “functional pathologisation”, which I tried to show in the paper. That Congolese – even the government’s acts – might actually make sense is never considered. This renders the analysis very one-sided and helps to sustain the belief, again, that it is up to Western NGOs, or the U.N. to improve situation in the Congo.

Excerpt:

M23 rebels near Sake, Eastern DR Congo. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Rousbeh Legatis
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 13 2013 (IPS)

Despite existing local expertise and strategies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to build peace-supporting structures at the community level, official debates and media coverage continue to focus predominantly on military interventions.

“Local actors work in isolation and their actions are not part of a global peacebuilding process in the DRC. Their recommendations and their work on the ground are not taken into account,” Eric Malolo from Reseau Haki na Amani (RHA), a network of civil society organisations, told IPS.“Violence becomes a means of expression when there is no framework of reference." -- Suliman Baldo of ICTJ

As the coordinator of RHA, Malolo works in Orientale, a province in the northeast. RHA was founded in 2004 as a direct response to ethnic tensions between the Hema and Lendu communities in DRC’s Ituri region.

Its objective is to help reconcile these two tribes and to address frequent conflicts over land, with dialogue-supporting initiatives at the community-level.

“Barzas” – large community meetings organised by RHA – proved to be a very useful tool, enabling local populations to develop a deeper understanding of local conflict dimensions and how these are perceived by the different groups living in the same community.

“Most problems identified during these gatherings do not necessarily find a solution, but the main thing is letting the communities speak out and enter a process of intercommunity and pacific coexistence,” Malolo said.

Not only are locals working and living in the affected communities not sufficiently involved in ongoing peacebuilding efforts in the central African country, they often also lack political support.

In the context of property and identity-related conflicts, Malolo said, politicians are generally elected because they campaigned on a platform of protecting their own ethnic community’s interests.

“A latent intercommunity conflict is the reason for the presence of such extremist politicians,” he said. “To not risk these votes, they hinder decisively ongoing reconciliation process between communities.

“Even administrative staff receives instructions from politicians to stop the conflict resolution process started by some local actors. Or in other words, efforts started by local actors are often blocked by politicians who don’t agree with this kind of change,” he added.

Most experts agree that to be effective, peacebuilding requires intertwined processes and structures that run from the grassroots to the national level – especially in deeply fragmented and traumatised societies like the DRC.

But a look at official policymaking appears to prove Malolo’s point. The new Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework (PSCF) agreement for DRC, an accord signed by 11 African heads of state in Addis Ababa in February, has “no mention of local civil society and it was not prepared with any involvement of those local actors,” Maria Lange, DRC country manager at International Alert, a London-based charity, told IPS.

“The domestic oversight committee established by the DRC government for the implementation of the domestic commitments under the PSCF does not include any civil society representatives – these are limited to a parallel monitoring committee which has no decision-making authority,” she said.

A military emphasis

Even though the peace agreement represents an important milestone, Aloys Tegera from the Pole Institute regards the military approach backed up by the international community with scepticism.

The U.N. Security Council’s creation in March of its 3,000-strong “first-ever ‘offensive’ combat force“, alongside the 20,500 peacekeepers already in the country, was hailed by the political elite and raised expectations among Congolese “which cannot be met”, Tegera told IPS.

People are bound to learn that realistically, a political solution is the only way forward, said the research director at the Goma-based think tank.

“When I read the current military discourse of many Congolese, however, I am afraid to say that 20 years of suffering and wars have not taught us much,” he said.

For Tegera, the conflict is rooted in a “deadly triangle” of “identity, land and power”.

Where to find the most critical conflict-drivers – inside or outside the country – to what extent they matter and how to tackle them are still controversial questions. What is clear is that a myriad of local, regional and international actors pursue their own interests, and fall back on violence as an instrument to enforce them.

This is often carried out by local armed actors such as militias and rebel groups, who are characterised more often than not by a lack of political ideology, said Suliman Baldo of the New York-based International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).

“They are fictitious creations of whoever is intervening and mainly of these very greedy neighbours,” the director of ICTJ’s Africa Programme told IPS.

At the community and provincial levels, in an atmosphere of localised violence, these groups have gained the upper hand, overruling traditional leaders who would be more disposed to resolving conflicts “traditionally”, that is to say, through dialogue and accommodation with other groups.

“Violence becomes a means of expression when there is no framework of reference. There is no state to settle disputes among the population, there is no traditional authority to moderate tendencies towards violence and to find solutions and resolutions for problems within or among different groups,” Baldo explained.

Concluding that there is a power vacuum at the local level, however, is a false assumption. Where central authority collapses, other actors step in, creating alternative governance structures.

The evolving role of civil society

Over the years, many of the gaps left by dysfunctional or nonexistent state institutions have been filled by Congolese civil society groups, which provide essential social services such as healthcare and schooling. However, they have also been co-opted into transitional institutions – for example, holding a certain number of seats in provincial and national assemblies.

“It is precisely because civil society has been forced into this state-substitution role that many have lost their awareness and practice of its fundamental role of holding the government to account,” Lange said.

While there are hardworking civil society groups pushing to achieve lasting and sustainable peace, others show core weaknesses that prevent them from fulfilling their proper functions, she added.

Many are “politicised and riven by power struggles”, organised along ethnic lines, and “follow donor priorities instead of the priorities of the people and communities they are meant to serve,” she said, citing the study “Ending the Deadlock – Towards a new vision of peace in eastern DRC” by International Alert, which included the results of extensive consultations with local NGOs, representatives of local ethnic communities, and church and academic leaders .

The study recommends a dialogue that begins at the grassroots, is revised at the provincial level, and finalised at the national level.

A bottom-up dialogue in itself would not be enough, said Tegera, stressing the importance of making strides in three key development sectors: education, roads and energy.

“With these three in place, within 20 years, there is a chance to see an emerging middle class, able to ask for accountability and proper governance. This is the only way forward for DRC everyone should press for,” he said.

Former child solider from Democratic Republic of Congo, Mulume (front left) feels hopeless about his future. In DRC, child soldiers face the double challenge of starting life afresh and proving themselves in the community. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo , Aug 29 2013 (IPS)

Over 2,000 children are still being used as soldiers by 27 armed groups in North Kivu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo despite efforts by the United Nations Children’s Fund to remove them from the frontlines and return them to their homes.

Between January and July, about 1,700 child soldiers were part of the UNICEF demobilisation and reintegration programme. But at the end of July, UNICEF condemned the worrying increase of child victims in the ongoing conflict that has rocked North Kivu since fighting broke out in May 2012 between the Congolese armed forces and the M23 rebels.“I allowed my son to be reintegrated into my home because they promised him economic support. Now they have broken the promise, he is likely to take up arms again.” -- Father of a former child soldier

Basile Bashimbe is a legal expert on the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programme for former child soldiers at Caritas Goma, a division of Caritas International – the federation of Catholic organsations working with international development. He believes that the presence of former child soldiers within the ranks of M23 is only one dimension of the problem.

“Even though the DRC is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, our country is on the [U.N. child solider] ‘list of shame’ of armed forces and groups involved in recruiting and exploiting children,” Bashimbe said.

In a region where nationalist propaganda, ethnic claims, land disputes and minerals drive the war, “the militias use the children as a vulnerable and impressionable source of labour,” he elaborated.

Justin Akili, who participated in drafting the DDR operational plan for the DRC in 2003, said that former child soldiers who are “unleashed” onto families that are frightened of them because of their past, receive one goat as a “family reintegration” donation. Child soldiers of school-going age also receive school supplies and fees to pursue their studies until they obtain their state certificate (Baccalaureate).

When IPS met 16-year-old Maurice, he was seated under a tree, staring ahead into the distance with a dazed expression. The former child soldier, who fought on the side of both the armed forces and rebel groups, was pulled out of a North Kivu militia group called Nyatura. It was his second demobilisation after previously being removed from the Coalition of Congolese Patriotic Resistance.

“The economic hardships the first time I was reunited with my family were so hard that I decided to go back to fighting,” Maurice told IPS.

He was taken to Nyakariba Transit and Orientation Centre for former child soldiers, to be reintegrated into civilian life. And he too was given a goat by Caritas Goma for returning to his family. But, he said, his family ate it when he was away.

Child soldiers face the double challenge of starting life afresh and proving themselves in the community. So the DDR provides for their socio-economic reintegration through income-generating activities or apprenticeships.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visits each child soldier three months after they are reunited with their families to check on their reintegration and child protection issues, Rita Palombo the ICRC delegate in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, explained to IPS.

But “because of economic hardship and the persistence of militia, the children, who were previously armed fighters, can’t adapt to normal life, so they revolt and set their minds on returning to the bush,” Akili told IPS.

In 2003, the U.N. estimated that children constituted 40 percent of certain armed groups in the DRC. That same year, it was estimated that the DRC was home to half of the 130,000 child soldiers in Africa, out of a total of 300,000 worldwide.

According to UNICEF, by 2006, the government commission in charge of the DDR programme had only demobilised 19,000 former child soldiers before it ran into difficulties.

With the arrest of certain Congolese warlords for using child soldiers amongst other ranks, the International Criminal Court has created such alarm that the statistics have gone down, said Potient Bashonga, who is in charge monitoring former child soldiers at UNICEF, Goma.

But Bashimbe stressed that currently “the issue of socio-economic reintegration remains critical” in every village where children were recruited into the ranks of the Congolese army or armed groups.

“I allowed my son to be reintegrated into my home because they promised him economic support. Now they have broken the promise, he is likely to take up arms again,” said the father of a former child soldier who requested anonymity.

Analysts are concerned that there is a security risk in transferring power from the soon to built Inga Dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo to South Africa. Pictured here is the city of Atlantis, on the outskirts of Cape Town South Africa, where people access power illegally. Credit: Lee Middleton/IPS

By John Fraser and Maurice Wa ku Demba
JOHANNESBURG/LUBUMBASHI, Aug 17 2013 (IPS)

There are big aspirations for Africa’s largest hydroelectric project, the Inga III that is set to be built in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But analysts are sceptical that such an ambitious project will ever be realised.

In May, Congolese Minister of Energy Bruno Kapandji made the announcement that the project was moving forward, adding that that Inga III would generate 4,800 megawatts (MW). The project will be constructed on the site of two existing dams on the lower Congo River in western DRC. It will be built on one of the largest waterfalls in the world, the Inga Falls, where the Congo River drops almost a hundred metres and flows at an enormous speed of 43 cubic metres per second. South Africa is both a partner in and the major client of the project.

Independent economist Ian Cruickshanks praised the vision behind Inga III, but expressed concerns about whether it would ever go ahead.

“The potential of this project is enormous and exciting and could make a huge difference to sub-Saharan Africa,” he told IPS.

“It could provide cheaper and cleaner electricity than is currently produced in coal-fired power stations. The river is there – you need to put in the turbines and to build the power lines.”

Inga III will require 12 billion dollars in total, with dam construction costs estimated at 8.5 billion dollars of this amount. The project will take six years to complete.

As a first step, the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) have to approve a 63-million-dollar technical assistance package for the project. According to the World Bank information sheets on the project, 43 million dollars will come from its concessionary funding arm, the International Development Association, and the remainder would come from the AfDB.

However, Cruickshanks cautioned that it will be a challenge to transport electricity over the long distance to South Africa. “My one concern follows experiences of the Cahora Bassa Dam project on the Zambezi River in Mozambique. [It] generates electricity, but the transmission to customers in South Africa isn’t efficient,” Cruickshanks said.

“Then there is a huge security problem of giant power lines [running] across the DRC, which is at war with itself.”

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, the security situation in eastern DRC has been precarious since July 2011.

Fresh fighting between M23, an armed group started by former Tutsi soldiers who mutinied in April 2012, the DRC army, and other local armed groups, has uprooted thousands more. Some 2.2 million people were displaced internally.

Independent engineer and commentator on energy issues Andrew Kenny told IPS that regional projects are essential for developing Africa’s electricity supply, which are key for development.

“Transmission lines linking different countries are vitally necessary. Since actual demand in most African countries is so small, many generating projects will provide more power than the whole country needs, and the excess should be passed on the neighbours in need,” he argued.

“Grand Inga is only possible if it is a regional project providing power to many other countries. Similarly with a large coal station that Botswana was considering.”

He echoed Cruckshanks concern about the instability in the DRC.

“At the moment investors would fear political and commercial risk from an unstable government in a country wracked with bloody conflict.

“There would also be risks in payments for the electricity, operation and maintenance of the hydro plants, sabotage, confiscation, nationalisation and inability to repay debt. They would also fear risk from surrounding countries owning transmission lines: risks of confiscation, imposition of very high tariffs and incompetent maintenance.”

Senior research and strategy analyst at Frontier Advisory, Simon Schaefer, told IPS that he shares Cruickshanks’ concerns that such an ambitious project would be possible in a troubled part of Africa.

“I think the Inga III project has to be seen in the greater context of the political situation of the country and the region,” he said. “The DRC is very fragmented internally. It is questionable whether the government in Kinshasa actually exercises effective control/power of all parts of the country.”

He also noted that the project has been on the cards for many years. However, he suggested that the size of the project, the complex political landscape and problems of the DRC and the region were key obstacles to its implementation.

“The political situation in the DRC is instable and the country has often been described as a failed state. Other major problems in the DRC are rampant corruption and the lack of credible institutions. All these factors are not the ideal starting point for multi-billion dollar project with a long investment horizon,” he said.

However, he did emphasise the benefits of collaboration between African nations in tackling power challenges – an issue which was highlighted by U.S. President Barak Obama on his recent trip to Africa, when he pledged billions of dollars in U.S. funding to support energy infrastructure in Africa.

“I think African countries are well advised to tackle power deficits by developing cross-board projects and to focus on integrated transmission networks across multiple countries,” Schaefer told IPS.

“This would allow countries to share the financial burden of the project and ensure absorption of the generated electricity. South Africa’s commitment to purchase a set amount of electricity from the DRC is a first step to increased integration in the power sector. While the key objective of the DRC may be the generation of revenues and job creation from the construction of the dam, the country has to be realistic about the off-take of power by countries in the region.”

The World Wildlife Fund has declared the forest-dwelling Congo Basin elephants an endangered species. Credit: Richard Ruggiero/USFWS/CC By 2.0

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo , Jul 25 2013 (IPS)

At a popular tourist art market in Goma, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, paintings and art sculptures made from bronze, copper, malachite, stone or wood attract visitors. It seems like an ordinary tourist market. But only the regulars know that this is also a black market for ivory products.

“Even though it’s illegal, the ivory market still attracts art lovers, especially foreigners who hire brokers,” a craftsman who requested anonymity told IPS.

Although an almost blanket ban on trading in ivory has been in place since 1989, the black market trade in ivory from forest-dwelling Congo Basin elephants is alive and well in the DRC’s large urban centres.

Major John Bonyoma, a judge in the Goma Military Court, told IPS that poachers were generally  “rogue FARDC (the French acronym for the Congolese army) soldiers and militia commanders.”

As far back as 2010, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora accused the Congolese army of being “responsible for 75 percent of poaching in nine out of 11 sites” in the country. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has declared the forest-dwelling Congo Basin elephants an endangered species.“Deportation undermines the fight against poaching. Legislation should be applied scrupulously to protect the animals and arrest foreigners.” -- Goma Military Court Judge, Major John Bonyoma

The Congolese Nature Conservation Institute, known by its French acronym ICCN, estimates that around 1,000 elephants were poached in DRC between 2010 and 2013. The organisation also believes that local chiefs have been complicit in elephant poaching.

According to ICCN, 70 percent of the Congo Basin’s forests, home to the forest-dwelling elephant, are in the DRC. A WWF study published last May stated that there are currently only 7,000 elephants in the country, compared to the 100,000 that existed 20 years ago.

“The demand for ivory sculptures and curios in Asian markets is driving elephant poaching,” Emmanuel de Mérode, ICCN director in North-Kivu, told IPS. He added that a kilogramme of ivory sells for 1,500 euros on the black market.

He said that poaching has become “an organised crime network which is virtually using arms of war.” De Mérode was referring to a poaching incident in the Garamba National Park in the country’s north-east in March 2012. In that case a combat helicopter, manned by suspected Ugandan soldiers, was used to shoot dead 22 elephants.

The DRC has nine national parks and about 60 reserves and hunting grounds managed by the ICCN.

Altogether this represents 10.47 percent of the DRC’s territory, about 250,000 square kilometres, and includes five protected areas on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage List.

But the ICCN is powerless to secure these areas against heavily-armed poachers who regularly cross the DRC’s eastern frontier equipped with technology such as Global Positioning Systems and satellite phones.

Congolese law also hinders the attempts to save the country’s elephants as it allows for foreigners caught poaching to be deported.

“Deportation undermines the fight against poaching. Legislation should be applied scrupulously to protect the animals and arrest foreigners,” Bonyoma said.

Environmentalist Justin Mufuko told IPS that forest elephants play a vital role in preserving biodiversity. They distribute grains, roots and fruits from tropical trees through their dung, which is also compost for new plants.

He believes that the incentive scheme put in place by the ICCN in 2010 to protect DRC parks is the only solution to combat elephant poaching. The ICCN has been encouraging villagers to expose poachers and in turn provides financial grants to community-based organisations with viable projects.

“By financing small-scale agriculture and livestock community projects, the ICCN is discouraging villagers from becoming accomplices to poachers and getting involved in illegal activities,” Mufuko said.

The total amount provided in grants depends on the overall project cost, but most projects are relatively small.

Mufuko added that this awareness campaign has helped slow down the rampant rate of elephant shootings in the DRC.

The problems faced by the DRC affect the other Congo Basin countries of Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Equitorial-Guinea and the Central African Republic, De Mérode said. He added, “the elephant is a global heritage that is in danger of disappearing.”

WWF has warned that if nothing is done to stop this process of extinction, there will be no elephants left in Central Africa within the next few years.

A U.S. federal judge has upheld a key regulatory provision aimed at ensuring that the profits from products mined in central Africa are not used to benefit armed groups, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Artisanal diamond miners at work in the alluvial diamond mines around the eastern town of Koidu, Sierra Leone. So-called ‘blood diamonds’ helped fund civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, but now provide much-needed jobs as well as revenue for the government. Credit: Tommy Trenchard/IPS

Rights groups are lauding the decision, stating that the so-called “conflict minerals” provision has already led to positive impacts on the ground, both in Congo and in U.S. boardrooms.

“This is a major victory, and shows how important this rule is for holding companies to account and ensuring that they take responsibility for the impacts of their purchases,” Corinna Gilfillan, head of the U.S. office of Global Witness, a watchdog group that filed a court brief in the case, told IPS.

“This provision has generated unprecedented levels of attention towards the eastern Congo, significantly increasing scrutiny around supply chains. After all, what company wants to be associated with funding human rights violations in Africa?”

The rule, known as Section 1502 or the “conflict minerals” provision, was originally signed into law in 2010 as part of a massive piece of financial industry legislation known as the Dodd-Frank Act. Two years later, in August last year, U.S. regulators finalised details on how companies listed in the United States would be required to implement the provision.

Under Section 1502, starting in early 2013 companies using any of four minerals – gold, tin, tungsten or tantalum, widely used in modern electronics – sourced from the DRC or neighbouring countries would need to provide proof that they had carried out due diligence to ensure that these products were not benefiting armed groups.

Yet the rule immediately faced a lawsuit by powerful trade associations representing U.S. businesses and manufacturers. They claimed that the conflict minerals provision would impose inordinate costs that U.S. regulators had not fully analysed, among several other complaints.

Another Dodd-Frank provision, requiring large extractives companies to disclose any payments made to foreign governments, was struck down by the U.S. courts earlier this month.

On Tuesday, however, Judge Robert Wilkins rejected each of these contentions, finding the Security & Exchange Commission (SEC)’s economic analysis to have been “eminently appropriate”.

“Taking all of these elements of the disclosure scheme together, the Court finds a ‘reasonable fit’ between the relevant provisions of Section 1502 and the Final Rule and Congress’s objectives in promoting peace and security in and around the DRC,” Judge Wilkins wrote in a detailed 63-page opinion.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the main litigants in the case, told IPS in a statement that it is still “reviewing the court’s decision and our options going forward. We continue to believe this rule, while well intentioned, is unsupported by the Agency’s own record.”

‘Major opportunity’

For now, Tuesday’s fairly resounding decision clears the way for full implementation of Section 1502, with no other lawsuits on the issue currently pending.

Yet despite the legal uncertainty, this rule has already led to significant action from the Congolese government as well as several major U.S. companies – including those technically party to the lawsuit.

“There has actually been a rather strong disconnect between these big industry groups and their extreme positions and what we’ve been seeing individual companies doing to comply,” Global Witness’s Gilfillan notes. “Many have not been counting on lawsuits to get them out of this, but rather have been proactively working to comply.”

The utilities giant General Electric (GE), for instance, stated in May that it “shares … a commitment to take responsibility to alleviate suffering caused by the conflict in the DRC”, and noted that while it is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “the views and positions expressed by the Chamber are its own, and not GE’s.”

Other major electronics companies to break with the Chamber on this issue in recent months have included Microsoft and Motorola. International industry initiatives – such as the Conflict Free Smelter Programme – have likewise been started or strengthened in the aftermath of Section 1502’s passage.

“So now we’re calling on all of these companies to do everything they can to ensure that the minerals they’re using aren’t fuelling human rights violations,” Gilfillan continues. “We have a very difficult situation in eastern Congo, so we can’t afford any more delays.”

In addition, the Congolese government has sought to build on the groundwork laid by Section 1502. In late 2011, the country’s mining minister reportedly stated that the legislation offered a “major opportunity” to delink minerals and violence in Congo, which has been at the centre of natural resources-driven conflict for more than a century.

Last year, the Congolese government introduced legislation requiring companies using these minerals to undertake supply chain due diligence to ensure that the products weren’t funding rights violations. Since then, the government has suspended at least two Chinese export companies for failing to adhere to this process.

Global principles

Dodd-Frank is also catalysing broader global action on conflict minerals, with the European Union in particular currently considering adopting policies similar to Section 1502. A public consultation process on this proposal just closed, and some are expecting draft legislation by the end of this year.

But while the United States may be leading global policy in this particular area, some groups are frustrated that Washington has yet to implement nascent international guidance on the human rights-related responsibilities borne by multinational corporations.

On Wednesday, a dozen rights, development and environment groups, under the umbrella of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), sent a letter to President Barack Obama, calling on him to prioritise implementation of the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, passed in 2011.

During a fact-finding mission to the United States, the letter notes, a U.N. working group found “significant gaps” in the U.S. efforts to implement the Guiding Principles, as well as “little appreciation of human rights being material to the conduct of business”.

Tuesday’s court decision on Section 1502 “recognises that business has a responsibility to respect human rights, and that the government, including agencies like the SEC, can and should ensure that business operations do not negatively impact human rights,” Amol Mehra, director of the Washington-based ICAR, told IPS.

“In this regard, we are calling for the development of a government-wide approach to business and human rights, and for President Obama to use appointments to critical positions in agencies and departments to effectuate the U.S. government’s duty to protect human rights. We look forward to further engagement to ensure that precedents like the conflict minerals provision are defended, promoted and extended.”

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

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 2013 (IPS)

Despite the United Nations’ “zero tolerance” policy against sexual violence, there has been a rash of gender-based crimes in several of the world’s conflict zones, including South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Northern Uganda, Somalia, the Central African Republic – and, more recently, in politically-troubled Egypt and Syria.

Describing rape as “a weapon of war”, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council last month that sexual violence occurred wherever conflicts raged, “devastating survivors and destroying the social fabric of whole communities”.

“It was a crime under international human rights law and a threat to international peace and security,” he said.

Since most of the heinous crimes are taking place in conflict zones overseen by U.N. peacekeeping missions, the United Nations is unleashing an army of Women Protection Advisers (WPAs) to specifically curb sexual violence in war zones.

For starters, they will be deployed with peacekeeping missions in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Mali and Somalia.

Asked if these WPAs will be confined to Africa, Andre-Michel Essoungou of the Public Affairs Division at the U.N.’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support told IPS, “There is no restriction to a region of the world in this regard. But the process is starting with these missions for the time being.

“The recruitment procedures are currently underway,” he added.

Marcy Hersh, a senior advocate for women and girls’ rights at Refugees International, told IPS her organisation insists that prior to the further deployment of WPAs to peacekeeping and political missions, the United Nations should take urgent action to ensure that WPAs are trained before their deployment and encouraged to work collaboratively with already operational humanitarian structures.

Additionally, they should be held accountable to fundamental and non-negotiable ethical and safety criteria for investigating sexual violence in conflict, which preserves the safety and dignity of survivors.

She said the recently unanimously passed Security Council Resolution 2106 includes language that is in accordance with these recommendations in its calls for the timely deployment of WPAs, their adequate training, and their coordination across multiple sectors.

Given this strong language, combined with the statements from multiple member states that WPAs should be deployed to all peacekeeping and political missions, Hersh said, “I am confident that the United Nations will work urgently to improve the rollout of WPAs.”

She said she is also hopeful that the United Nations will ensure that WPAs collect timely, objective, accurate and reliable information as a basis for prevention and response programming and preserve the safety and dignity of sexual violence survivors.
The secretary-general said that U.N. Women and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) have developed, on behalf of the U.N. Action Network, the “first-ever scenario-based training programme for peacekeepers”, some of whom, along with aid workers, have been accused of sexual violence – specifically in South Sudan, DRC, Cote d’Ivoire and Haiti.

The United Nations will also set up a team of experts on “the rule of law and sexual violence in conflict”, described as an important tool for strengthening national justice systems and legal frameworks.

The team has already provided technical advice to governments in the Central African Republic, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Guinea, Liberia, Somalia and South Sudan.

Zainab Hawa Bangura, the U.N.’s special representative on sexual violence in armed conflict, points out that 20 years ago, the United Nations had provided “irrefutable evidence” of widespread and systematic rape in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

She said that during a recent visit to Bosnia – where an estimated 50,000 women had been raped or been victims of sexual violence – she discovered that, to date, only a handful of prosecutions had occurred.

“Thus the victims of those crimes continue to walk in shadow and shame, unable to lay the past to rest and move forward.”

More recently, in late June, the United Nations described as “unacceptable” several cases of rape of young girls in DRC.

Nine young girls, aged between 18 months and 12 years, were admitted to a hospital in South Kivu with marks of violence on their bodies and very serious internal wounds, resulting in the death of two.

“Such violence and abuse is unacceptable and must be brought to an end,” said Roger Meece, head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in DRC (MONUSCO).

“These abuses are said to be related to harmful traditional practices perpetrated by individuals who kidnap young children from their communities,” he said.

There have also been widespread reports of 135 women and girls allegedly raped by government soldiers in Minova in eastern DRC back in 2012.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France’s minister for women’s rights, told reporters at a U.N. press briefing last month that condemnation of such crimes was not enough and that perpetrators should be prosecuted.

“France was very disturbed by such atrocities, whether committed by a rebel group or by government troops,” she added.

In some Democratic Republic of Congo schools, teachers and senior authorities are using their status to abuse girls who do not know their rights, according to the African Association for the Defence of Human Rights.

Both ignorance of the law and victims’ fear of exposing their abusers are furthering sexual abuse in the DRC’s capital Kinshasa, and Matadi, one of the main cities in the western province of Bas-Congo.

“Many cases still go unreported because of the victims’ fear and ignorance of their rights. Ignorance is the main reason for the silence kept by victims, who are often intimidated by teachers and other school authorities. It will be necessary, from this point forward, to monitor and punish these authorities,” Dora Zaki, lawyer and vice president of AADHR, a local organisation, told IPS.

The organisation released a report on Jul. 6 detailing approximately 100 cases of rape, which occurred between April and June, in 45 schools in Kinshasa and Matadi. The local police provided statistics for Matadi, while AADHR conducted the survey in Kinshasa.

“Young girls are regularly raped in schools with authorities and the justice system remaining silent,” stated the AADHR report entitled, “School and sexual abuse in DRC: knowledge is power”.

Mado Mpezo, National Police Chief Commissioner in charge of child and women protection and sexual abuse in DRC, warned about the “increasingly frequent cases of sexual abuse in the town of Matadi.”

She reported that “on the nights of Jun. 27–28, a 50-year-old man raped a 14-year-old girl” and that “in the month of June alone, 40 cases of rape were reported in that town.”

Zaki said: “In order to effectively fight against sexual abuse in schools, students need to be urgently made aware of their rights by the publicising of the two laws on sexual abuse.”

According to two DRC laws passed in 2006, sentences for those who sexually assault children are now much harsher. These laws define rape and include classifying sexual relations with a minor under the age of 16 as rape. They also outline procedures for judging these crimes.

But Romain Mindomba, national vice president of the Congolese Association for Access to Justice, told IPS that these laws alone were not enough.

“The government must put in place a mechanism to make school children and even school authorities aware of all sexual offences punishable by law, and the heavy penalties faced by the perpetrators of these crimes.

“It is important to compel students to expose any person who tries to compel them to have sexual relations. Educating potential victims will strengthen their capacity to speak out and lodge their complaints,” Mindomba said.

Dieudonne Baderha, head of Nakiyinga private secondary school in Kinshasa, told IPS that it was difficult when a teacher was accused of sexual assault as in many cases “there is never any proof or actual witnesses.”

“After dismissing a mathematics teacher last year, the school’s management realised that it had been misled by a student claiming to be a victim, who wanted to take revenge on a teacher she believed didn’t like her because she was not doing well in that subject,” he said.

However, according to Thiery Sabi, deputy state prosecutor in the Gombe High Court in Kinshasa, “increasingly, there are cases of sexual abuse of young students being brought to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.”

“On average, the Public Prosecutor’s Office here receives 10 to 15 complaints per week,” he said, adding that among the victims was a 10-year-old girl who had been allegedly raped by a lawyer.

Congolese Minister of Primary, Secondary and Vocational Education Maker Mwangu told IPS: “The government is aware of the urgency with which it must act to put an end to these crimes.”

He added that meetings were organised in May with members of the legislature’s Socio-cultural Commission, to chart the way forward on “improving protection of children from sexual abuse.”

Gabriel Seltoc trekked for three weeks, barefoot, from the DRC after soldiers started shooting inside his house. He fled wearing his precious seven-year-old cowboy hat, a navy jacket, beige t-shirt, and brown trousers, which he bought at a market four years ago. Courtesy: UNHCR/Lucy Beck

By Amy Fallon
RWAMWANJA REFUGEE CAMP, Uganda, Jul 1 2013 (IPS)

If you were forced to flee your home to survive, what would you take? What could you take? Jean Claude “Van Damme” Ndongizimana, 20, escaped from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo with just the bag in which he kept his profits from selling milk and the clothes on his back.

He was forced to flee after M23 rebels fighting government troops attacked his village and attempted to recruit him two months ago. He eventually found his way to the Rwamwanja refugee camp in Kamwenge district, southwestern Uganda, which is currently home to more than 40,000 Congolese refugees.

The youth is one of nine refugees featured in a new photography exhibition being run by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). The photos show the refugees and the possessions they took with them when they fled their homes.

In his photo Ndongizimana sits on the grass with his black bag around his neck. In another shot, Florence Mukeshimana, 30, poses with her five young children and the old saucepan she grabbed before fleeing her home after her husband was blown up by a landmine. “When I found out my husband was dead I lost hope and decided to leave the country,” Mukeshimana says.

The images were unveiled over a week ago and will go on display at the Mish Mash Restaurant and Art Gallery in Kampala on Jul. 2.  The exhibition will run for three weeks and hopes to draw attention to the thousands of people around the globe forced to escape war or persecution every day.“After 20 years of fighting, a latent fatigue with the unceasing plight of eastern Congo means there is not enough funding to meet the needs of more than 900,000 people living in camps in North Kivu.” -- Oxfam International’s Humanitarian programme coordinator for the DRC, Tariq Rieb.

During his interview with IPS, Ndongizimana wears a blue raincoat, oversized brown trousers, and lace up sneakers with tattered soles – the ones he was wearing when he left his country two months ago.  His beloved plaid cap rests on his head and displays a sticker of Arsenal football player Bacary Sagna, acquired from a chewing gum packet after Ndongizimana crossed the border into neighbouring Uganda.

“I love football here,” Ndongizimana, who has been known to kick a ball around Rwamwanja, tells IPS.

According to UNHCR, the security situation in eastern DRC has been precarious since July 2011, causing regular influxes of refugees into Uganda.

Fresh fighting between M23, an armed group started by former Tutsi soldiers who mutinied in April 2012, the DRC army, and other local armed groups, has uprooted thousands more. According to the UNHCR, almost 70,000 people were forced to flee to neighbouring Uganda, and some 2.2 million were displaced internally. Rwamwanja was reopened in 2012 by Uganda to accommodate new arrivals.

In May, hundreds of Congolese crossed the border to avoid being forcibly conscripted into M23’s ranks, according to the UNHCR. It took Ndongizimana three weeks to make the journey.

“We would run, we would sleep somewhere. We would run again, and then it rained on us. We would sleep somewhere, we would wake up. Our clothes were torn,” he says, describing the journey.

Ndongizimana now fears the worst about his parents and siblings back home and says he wants to stay in Uganda.

“If I can learn how to box, I can support myself in the future,” he says. “I will only go home if we have peace.”

Last month South Africa began deploying troops to Goma, a city in eastern DRC, to reinforce the Tanzanian and Malawian contingent that will form the U.N. Intervention Brigade. On Mar. 28, the U.N. Security Council resolved to move its presence in the DRC from a stabilisation and peace-keeping force to an intervention one. The 3,000-strong force should be fully operational by the middle of July.

“The situation will certainly evolve once the brigade is fully operational,” head of the UNHCR office in Goma, Kouassi Lazare Etien, tells IPS.

“If the brigade intervenes against M23 we can expect a deterioration of the security situation in the Masisi and Rutshuru territories (in North Kivu province), which could lead to further population movements towards Uganda.”

As World Refugee Day was being celebrated in Rwamwanja on Jun. 20, the DRC’s government deployed hundreds of soldiers and tanks along the frontier with M23, indicating they may want to attack rebel positions.

Peace talks have been unsuccessfully staged in Kampala, under the auspices of the chairperson of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

“If they fail to reach an agreement and in case the intervention brigade launches attacks against the armed groups, especially M23, one can expect a huge influx of population into Uganda,” says Etien.

Oxfam International’s Humanitarian programme coordinator for the DRC, Tariq Riebl, tells IPS that fighting across several North Kivu territories is forcing people from their homes every week, and the ongoing violence often makes it difficult for agencies to reach those in need.

“After 20 years of fighting, a latent fatigue with the unceasing plight of eastern Congo means there is not enough funding to meet the needs of more than 900,000 people living in camps in North Kivu,” he says.

“People urgently need security and protection, as well as access to basic needs, including clean water, health services, shelter and food.”

Gabriel Seltoc trekked for three weeks, barefoot, from the DRC after soldiers started shooting inside his house. The 75-year-old, who is also featured in the exhibition, made a living back home as a traditional dancer.

Seltoc began the journey to Uganda with his wife and two children, but was separated from them along the way. Now he spends his days alone. He fled the DRC wearing his precious seven-year-old cowboy hat, a navy jacket, beige t-shirt, and brown trousers, which he bought at a market four years ago. He is featured in the exhibition in his cowboy hat.

“The war started when I was putting on these clothes one day,” says Seltoc. “They took all my things. They took my clothes, my cows, my house. Nothing is there. I can’t go back. For what? I have nothing to start (rebuilding with).”

Refugees who early arrived in the morning from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu region, crossing the border to the Nyakabande Transit Centre in search of a better life. Credit: Bastian Schnabel/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo , Jun 21 2013 (IPS)

Tuyisenge*, a former teacher from the Democratic Republic of Congo province of North Kivu, sat on a tree stump watching his fellow refugees go about their lives along the terraces of the hillside Kigeme Refugee Camp in southern Rwanda.

He is one of some 14,000 Congolese refugees living at the camp.

“I decided to flee after my wife and two daughters were raped by the army before my eyes,” he told IPS, his voice choking with sobs.

Ngutuye, 33, lies on a mat in front of her tent. She also fled North Kivu province in eastern DRC, in April 2012, after her civilian husband was killed in the crossfire between the Congolese army and the M23 rebels.

A 20-year cycle of violence in eastern DRC has forced hundreds of thousands of people to seek refuge beyond this Central African country’s borders.

Since April 2012, fighting in North Kivu province has displaced some 2.2 million people and caused almost 70,000 to flee to neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Of these refugees, 24,123 fled to Rwanda.

According to the Rwandan government, this has added to the existing population of 43,000 refugees in the country, 99 percent of whom are Congolese.

The majority of these refugees live in the four Rwandan camps of Kigeme, Gihembe, Kiziba and Nyabiheke. A few urban refugees also live in Kigali, the Rwandan capital.

But the 2012 exodus is just the latest in a mass displacement of Congolese that began almost two decades ago. It first started in March 1993 when thousands fled the DRC after violent ethnic clashes erupted in Ntoto, North Kivu, and spread to rural areas in South Kivu province.

The second group of Congolese refugees, who were mostly Tutsis, left the DRC in 1994 upon the arrival of some 1.2 million Rwandan Hutus in the country after the Rwandan genocide, when an estimated 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis, were killed by Hutus in 100 days.

More people fled the DRC during the First Congo War, from 1996 to 1997, when Rwanda invaded the Central African nation to oust then President Mobutu Sese Seko (1965-1997).

A year later, the Second Congo War began and more Congolese fled the country from 1998 to 2003. According to World Genocide Watch, an international NGO that works to protect people from genocide, more than 5.4 million people died in the two Congo wars.

But returning Congolese refugees to their homes remains a pressing issue. It is a topic that lies at the heart of a number of negotiations and agreements between the Congolese government and rebels in eastern DRC.

On Mar. 6 Ugandan Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga, who is also chair of the Kampala negotiations between the Congolese government and the M23 rebels, said the repatriation of refugees based in Rwanda had not been effective.

Others in the DRC agree. “The return of refugees based in Rwanda has always been a touchy issue,” Emmanuel Kamanzi, a Tutsi community leader in Goma, told IPS.

Kamanzi believes that local communities in the DRC are afraid that if Congolese Tutsi refugees return from Rwanda, it will create competition for land. In 2010, Masti Nots, the head of the North Kivu UNHCR office, predicted that “the land issue will be one of the main obstacles to the return of refugees.”

Jean-Claude Chito, a lawyer at the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Diocese of Goma, concurred.

“The ambiguities of the 1973 Land Act are the source of land conflicts in the DRC,” he told IPS.

The act provides for the co-existence of two land tenure systems, one based on traditional customs and the other on statutory law. Under the traditional land tenure system, a traditional chief, who is the custodian of ancestral lands, is authorised to allocate land to community members. Under the other, the government has the power to appropriate land. However, conflicts arise when both traditional chief and the state allocate land titles to the same property.

The situation is further complicated by a stipulation that allows any individual in the rebel-held area in eastern DRC to obtain a title deed. It has resulted in an influx of people to these areas and created a competition for land with local communities.

But Bahati Kahembe, one of the four traditional chiefs appointed to the provincial assembly in North Kivu, told IPS: “That is not true.”

It seems however that for now, authorities do not have to worry about the competition for land, because the refugees are not returning.

Simplice Kpanji, the communications director at the UNHCR regional office in Kinshasa, the DRC capital, told IPS “the security situation is not favourable for the repatriation of (Congolese) refugees.”

*Name changed to protect identity.

Refugees dig for water in a dried up watering hole in Jamam camp, in South Sudan's Upper Nile state. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Walter García and Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 2013 (IPS)

Yves Norodom, a 21-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo living in Brazil, is one of 45.2 million displaced people around the world – the largest number in 20 years.

In its annual report Global Trends 2012: Displacement, the New 21st Century Challenge, released Wednesday, the UNHCR said 28.8 million of that total were internally displaced persons (IDPs), 15.4 million were refugees outside their own countries, and nearly one million were asylum-seekers.

Some 35.8 million people were under the UNHCR mandate by late 2012 – the second highest number on record.

On average, 23,000 people were forced to flee their homes every day in 2012.

Norodom told IPS that he fled his country, the DRC, for Kenya, and from there to the United Kingdom, before finally making his way to Brazil in 2010 without documents or belongings.

“In Congo, everyone feared for their lives,” he said. “I was struggling to survive, I did the impossible to make it. My job was to save my own skin, and I was 17 years old at the time.”

His father, a member of the opposition, had to flee the DRC nearly a decade ago, and Norodom’s 15 siblings gradually found refuge in other countries, until the family ended up spread out across the globe.

“They threatened us, and six of us landed in Brazil. Others had already found refuge, some in Africa, others in France. We had to split up,” he lamented.

One of Norodom’s biggest challenges has been learning Portuguese. “I had never heard the language before. It took me six months to learn the basics, and a year to speak it a little better.”

He is currently unemployed, but he dreams of one day returning to school and attending the public university in Rio de Janeiro to study chemical engineering.

“I wouldn’t say I’m very happy, but at least I’m alive and I’m ok,” he said.

Norodom is one of 4,715 refugees of 76 nationalities in Brazil, according to figures from CONARE, the government’s national refugee agency. Of that total, 2,012 receive assistance from the UNHCR.

“They are people who belong to ethnic groups fleeing for reasons of thought or conflicts. Our challenge is to offer the refugees better conditions to adapt and integrate,” said CONARE vice-president João Guilherme Granja.

Brazil has adequate laws on refugees and offers them the same public services that are enjoyed by the country’s citizens. But this country of 198 million people receives a far smaller number of refugees than much poorer countries like Pakistan, which currently hosts over 1.6 million refugees.

At the launch of the Global Trends report ahead of World Refugee Day (Jun. 20), UNHCR representative in Brazil Andrés Ramírez said armed conflict was still the main cause of forced displacement.

He said more than half of the world’s refugees came from five countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Syria.

On average, war and other crises drove one person from their home every 4.1 seconds, last year, Ramírez said. “The political will to prevent conflicts has been lacking at a global level,” he added. “The refugee issue is a human tragedy of enormous magnitude.”

As it has for the past three decades, Afghanistan headed the list, accounting for one of every four of the 10.5 million refugees under the UNHCR mandate, or 2.5 million. It was followed by Somalia (1.1 million), Iraq (746,700), and Syria (471,400).

The report says about four-fifths of the world’s refugees flee to neighbouring countries.

The list of countries hosting the largest refugee populations includes Pakistan, the DRC, Kenya, Iran, Syria and Kenya.

In 2012, Brazil received over 1,200 requests for asylum, and the number will be bigger this year, Ramírez said.

“We have more requests now because of the crises around the world,” the UNCHR representative said. “Brazil is a country of continental dimensions and could receive more refugees, but it is far away from the places where the humanitarian crises are occurring.”

The rise in the cost of living in Brazil’s cities and the day-to-day difficulties in making a living faced by a large part of the population also affect the quality of life of refugees, said Aline Thuller, with the Catholic NGO Caritas.

“A majority of the refugees live in favelas (shantytowns) and other poor neighbourhoods. They have the same rights to public services and face the same difficulties as Brazilians. Most of them work in the informal sector,” she told IPS.

“There is still a lot of prejudice” against refugees, Thuller said.

In the past, the refugees assisted by Caritas were mainly Angolan men, who were fleeing forced recruitment during the 27-year civil war in that former Portuguese colony in southern Africa.

But today, many pregnant women and entire families reach Rio de Janeiro as refugees.

The state of Rio de Janeiro, which receives the second-largest number of refugees after São Paulo, is in the final stages of designing a state-wide refugee policy.

Under the new policy, “working groups will be created by thematic area and will organise practical activities, to facilitate refugees’ access to basic rights,” Thuller said.

For the past five years, babies have been born in health centres managed by humanitarian organisations in North Kivu, DRC. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo, Jun 2 2013 (IPS)

“Many hospitals and health centres” that are not run by NGOs “do not meet health standards,” according to Dominique Baabo, provincial medical inspector for North Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The health sector in the DRC faces serious medical challenges including having to deal with obsolete biomedical equipment, the lack of cold rooms for vaccine storage, and a shortage of qualified personnel, Baabo told IPS. He added that a lack of maternity wards in the country posed an obstacle to health care here.

But a lack of maternity facilities is not what the people of Matanda, a region in North Kivu province, have to worry about any longer. Theophile Kaboy, the Catholic bishop of Goma, opened a maternity ward in Matanda’s local health centre on May 15. The local diocesan medical office manages the health centre.

“I am not used to giving birth in a maternity ward since one had to travel between two and three days before giving birth in Kirotse (30 km away) or to Masisi (25 km away),” Jeannette Uwera, the first woman to give birth at the new maternity ward in Matanda’s local health centre, told IPS.

Mado Uwiteka, another Matanda resident, told IPS that in the past she had to be “carried to the maternity hospital in Kirotse on a stretcher by foot to deliver two of my children.”

“My three other children were delivered at home,” Uwiteka said. Two of her three children that were delivered at home died before their first birthday.

“But it was easy to get to the maternity hospital in Matanda because it’s close by,” she added.

However, in North Kivu, where a long-running conflict has raged, civil society representatives point out that humanitarian agencies have replaced the state – which has practically abdicated responsibility in every sector.

For the past five years, babies have been born in health centres managed by humanitarian organisations. Along every road, you can see new or rehabilitated structures fitted out by humanitarian agencies, “in line with the provincial health inspectorate’s programme,” Baabo noted.

The State of the World’s Mothers 2013 report released on May 7 by international NGO Save the Children ranked the DRC last out of 176 countries on its Mother’s Index. It assesses the well being of mothers according to a number of factors, including maternal health figures and under-five mortality.

The report states that one in 30 women in the DRC is at risk of dying from pregnancy-related complications. In Finland, ranked first on the index, only one out of 12,200 women is at risk.

Speaking to health sector representatives on May 10 in DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, Congolese Health Minister Felix Kabange reacted to the report with an admission that this central African nation will not be able to meet its United Nations Millennium Development Goals to reduce infant mortality by two thirds between 1990 and 2015, or to reduce maternal mortality by three quarters over the same period.

The eight MDGs, adopted by all U.N. member states in 2000, aim to curb poverty, disease and gender inequality.

Although maternal mortality has fallen from 1,800 deaths per live birth to 549 since 1990, “if we continue to deal with the situation in the same way, the country will not even meet these goals in 2065,” the minister said.

Kalume Mushaba, an obstetrics lecturer at the University of Goma, believes that the DRC’s problem is one of leadership. He said that health allocations in this country have never exceeded five percent of the national budget.

The DRC is a signatory to the 2001 Abuja Declaration, in which African countries pledged to allocate 15 percent of their national budgets to health.

Together with Afghanistan, Haiti and the Darfur region in western Sudan, the DRC is amongst the world’s most volatile regions, and receives the most development aid. “Despite this, we are ranked last on the human development index,” Mushaba told IPS.

According to a 2009 study by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), health care remains unaffordable for eight out of 10 women. North Kivu has one doctor per 23,328 inhabitants and one nurse for every 1,100 inhabitants. The World Health Organization recommends one doctor per 10,000 inhabitants.

These figures show an overall poor quality of healthcare in North Kivu, the UNDP study said.

In order to improve maternal and infant health, Mushaba appealed to authorities to address the “three delays” that prevent women from seeking or obtaining care. These are the reluctance to use maternity hospitals for financial or cultural reasons; lack of transport to, or knowledge of, existing services; and inadequate equipment or shortages of qualified personnel.

A month ago, the government signed over 12 million dollars to the U.N. Children’s Fund to purchase radiology and ultrasound equipment, generators, operating tables and solar-powered refrigerators, for the 70 general referral hospitals in the DRC. This marks a new start, said Kabange.

Included in the equipment, which was received on May 10, were 200 gynaecological tables, 5,000 hospital beds, 7,200 examination beds, and pharmaceutical products, the health minister said. “We want to save the lives of more mothers and children, and to protect newborns,” he added.

Years of war forced Passion, 13, to live on the street in Goma, eastern DRC. Experts on conflict say that the implementation of non-violent approaches to conflict needs to become a priority in Africa. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI , May 25 2013 (IPS)

“My husband and older son, unable to cope with the war, became mentally ill. Two of my sons became child soldiers and an eight-year-old daughter was abducted – they were never to be seen again,” Mariamu Dong says, referring to the 21-year civil war between north and south Sudan, which are now separate countries.

Her seven children grew up during those years of bloodshed, but only one made it through.

“I move around like one whose limbs have been cut off, having lost my husband and children to the war. Only my last child was able to survive and now lives in Kenya. All this time, the world watched from a distance,” she says.

The south became an independent nation on Jul. 9, 2011 and Dong lives in what is now South Sudan, in Torit, Eastern Equatoria state. But every day she is reminded of the war that the world and the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which is now the African Union (AU), left to continue unabated.“People ask me about what I want for my future and I give them silence." -- Nisa Luambo, DRC rape survivor.

It was the regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), that finally brokered the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the government of Sudan. It eventually led to the end of the civil war and paved the way for South Sudan’s independence. The IGAD currently consists of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.

But experts on conflict say that as the continent celebrates Africa Day on May 25, along with the 50th anniversary since the formation of the OAU, which became the AU in 2001, the implementation of non-violent approaches to conflict needs to become a priority.

“The AU, and the OAU before that, slept through a substantive part of the conflict in Africa. The millions of lives lost across the continent are testament to the fact that the OAU/AU has failed Africans,” Lionel Ibaka, a Congolese expert on peace and security, tells IPS.

Ibaka says one such example is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) conflict that the United Nations estimates claimed about five million lives since it began in 1998.

In March, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that called for the deployment of an intervention brigade in the central African nation to neutralise rebel forces in eastern DRC.

But the intervention may have come a little too late.

“The bloodshed and terror in DRC has been hailed as the deadliest and most destructive since World War II,” Ibaka says.

According to a 2010 report by the U.N. Refugee Agency titled: “DRC: Mapping human rights violations 1993-2003”, violence in the DRC has been “accompanied by the apparent systematic use of rape and sexual assault allegedly by all combatant forces.”

Rape survivor Angeline Mwarusena lives in Bukavu, eastern DR Congo. She is one of the 2.2 million people have been affected by the fighting in the country which started in early 2012. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

The report also states that 30,000 children were used as child soldiers and experienced “indescribable violence”.

Nisa Luambo, 27, from South Kivu province, eastern DRC, lived through this. And while she is alive, the violence she endured has killed a part of her. She was only 12 years old when the war broke out in 1998 and she became separated from her family.

“I have been sexually abused by both soldiers and civilians. I have had four miscarriages during this time, (and I had) no medical attention and little food,” she tells IPS.

“People ask me about what I want for my future and I give them silence.

“Where were they when we got raped and beaten to near death – if we were lucky – because many people died,” she says adding, that the country is still unstable and that there is no end in sight to the conflict.

“I feel no joy when I think about tomorrow. I know that there is no tomorrow for people living in conflict.”

Vincent Kimosop, chief executive officer of the International Institute for Legislative Affairs, an NGO that offers technical support to government departments, members of parliament and other stakeholders in the legislative process, says that poor governance is at the heart of conflict in Africa.

“The AU needs to do more when it comes to supporting the development of governance institutions on the continent since state institutions provide the bedrock for a country to function,” he tells IPS.

Javas Bigambo, an expert on governance, human rights and development in Africa, concurs.

“The AU must refuse to be blind to atrocities and ills committed by African presidents. Regrettably, the AU has rarely ever found any fault with an African leader, or even come up with remedies to Africa’s governance and economic challenges.”

Bigambo says that the continent’s history of violent conflict “points to Africa’s tattered social and political fabric…Africa is perpetually in turmoil.”

Bigambo says the Rwandan genocide, a mass slaughter that claimed an estimated 800,000 lives according to the U.N., and Kenya’s 2007 to 2008 post-election violence in which 1,000 people were killed and 600,000 internally displaced, are all part of the African narrative.

But Julius Mucunguzi, a Ugandan scholar of conflict reporting, tells IPS that things are improving.

“Africa is on a path of renewal. It is getting better. While the OAU was established 50 years ago, the AU is only slightly over a decade old and is already putting good structures in place to enhance peace and security in Africa.

“But, AU institutions such as its Peace and Security Council must invest in early-warning mechanisms to ensure that signs of possible conflict are picked up and actual conflict is averted,” he says.

Nyan Tuch in her temporary home in a camp outside of Aweil where she is living until the government provides her family with land. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

He adds that an independent, pluralistic and vibrant media is critical to Africa’s development and calls on the AU to create an environment that celebrates press freedom and the right to information.

Press freedom remains elusive in many parts of Africa, with Uganda and Somalia being two such examples. Last year, in Somalia 18 members of the media were killed across the country, according to figures from the National Union of Somali Journalists.

In Uganda, state intolerance of the media came to the fore on May 20 when the government shut down the Daily Monitor, the East African nation’s leading daily.

The paper’s printing press, website and two radio stations were also shuttered for reporting on an incriminating letter about President Yoweri Museveni, which stated that he was grooming his son to take over the presidency.

Mucunguzi says the ongoing instability and turmoil on the continent notwithstanding, “Africa is making significant strides.”

Bigambo says that going forward the AU must “strengthen economic blocks” such as the East African Community, IGAD and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.

“Regional trade is a key building block for promoting an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa,” he says.

Over the past decade, EITI is said to have facilitated reporting on nearly a trillion dollars in revenues from natural resources. Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, May 23 2013 (IPS)

Development groups and corruption watchdogs are applauding landmark new standards adopted Wednesday by an international initiative focused on ensuring greater transparency among oil and mining companies operating particularly in developing countries.

Yet some civil society advocates are also warning that the new standards, agreed ahead of a board meeting of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) being held Thursday and Friday in Sydney, don’t go far enough.

“The EITI needs to keep its bite,” Corinna Gilfillan, an EITI board member and director of the U.S. office of Global Witness, an advocacy group, said following the unveiling of the new standards. “It needs to apply and build on its new rules and be prepared to be a driver rather than a follower of governance reform to avoid diminishing relevance.”

EITI has been in place since 2002, created out of civil society discussions over how resource-rich developing countries can escape the “resource curse” – ensuring that income from their extractives industries is used for public-sector funding rather than risk being siphoned off by corrupt government officials or cronies. Over the past decade, the initiative is said to have facilitated reporting on nearly a trillion dollars in revenues from natural resources.

EITI includes governments, the private sector and civil society, currently covering 39 countries and requiring those members to engage in public reporting of revenues from within their extractives sectors. While most of those members are in Africa, on Wednesday the heads of France and the United Kingdom agreed to become members, following a similar pledge made by the United States in 2011.

Other Western countries engaged with EITI in some respect include Norway, where the EITI secretariat is housed, and Australia. When the U.K. hosts the Group of Eight (G8) rich countries next month, transparency is slated to be a central focus.

While there has been much optimism about the aim and provenance of EITI, recent years have offered increasing evidence that its requirements have not been strong enough. According to a 2011 internal evaluation, compliance with EITI requirements was not necessarily “bring[ing] about fundamental changes” in line with the initiative’s principles.

Evidence of this failure can be seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Although an EITI member, Congo’s government “was able to sell in secret five major mining assets to anonymous shell companies,” according to research by Global Witness. “As a result, the DRC may lose out on around 1.36 billion dollars, twice the country’s health and education budgets.”

In mid-April, the EITI board temporarily suspended Congo, citing a failure to ensure “full disclosure and assurance of the reliability of the figures”. Yet the growing evidence of the EITI standards’ potential ineffectiveness also led to the push for the new rules unveiled Wednesday.

“The new EITI Standard will address a number of the recommendations made [by civil society], including requiring more transparency of state-owned companies and natural resource funds,” Jonas Moberg, head of the EITI international secretariat, told IPS ahead of the Sydney conference.

The standards will now impose significant new reporting requirements on EITI member countries, requiring regular project-to-project details, covering extraction licenses, how those licenses were awarded, and companies involved in the sector. State oil companies, too, will now need to disclose how much product they’re selling.

“The EITI has finally recognised that, when it comes to complex industries, merely disclosing payments is not enough,” Daniel Kaufmann, president of the Revenue Watch Institute, a U.S. watchdog group, said Wednesday. “The new Standard could make EITI more effective in addressing the vast governance challenges facing resource-rich countries.”

Safeguarding relevance

The extractives industry can have a “tremendous impact – good or ill” on a country’s development, Robert F. Cekuta, a U.S. State Department official, said at the EITI conference Wednesday.

“Mismanagement of these resources, as we have seen too many times, can impede economic growth, reduce opportunities for trade and investment, divert critically needed funding from social services and other government activities, and contribute to instability and conflict,” he noted.

“At the same time … proper, sound management of the sector means revenues generated from oil, gas and mining can fuel a country’s economic growth, producing jobs and fostering responsible investments in infrastructure, health, education, and other high-impact sectors, as well as appropriate savings.”

While Cekuta expressed his government’s strong support for the new rules, the U.S. has already passed legislation – known as Section 1504 of the financial regulatory Dodd-Frank Act – that would impose stronger standards on U.S.-listed extractives companies than the new EITI rules would require. The European Union is expected to put in place a similar law next month.

For this reason, some proponents of greater transparency have expressed concern that EITI is losing its pioneering role.

“The EITI’s influence rests on its being seen as a totemic reformers club which governments and companies want to be part of,” Global Witness said following the announcement of the new standards. “This attraction will fade if the initiative is seen to be merely playing catch-up with more dynamic reforms taking place elsewhere.”

The group points in particular to a rollback on civil society calls to require that extractives contracts be publicly disclosed, an obligation that the new standards would merely encourage rather than mandate. Likewise, the new standards will only require that full company ownership information is publicised by 2016.

Global Witness and others are also pushing EITI to ensure that the new reams of data are as user-friendly as possible, in order to encourage collation and analysis by public watchdogs.

Two-tongued interests

Meanwhile, an interesting disconnect has cropped up between events in Sydney and Washington. On the one hand, several of the world’s largest oil companies – including ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron – sit on the EITI board and are thus inferred to be in agreement with the newly revised transparency rules.

On the other hand, these companies are currently part of a lawsuit here attempting to dismantle Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act, the legislation on which the new EITI standards are mostly closely based.

“Protection of the law is essential for investors to asses a company’s risk and for communities in resource-rich countries to hold governments to account,” Ian Gary, senior policy manager of Oxfam America’s oil, gas and mining programme, said from Sydney.

“This lawsuit is wholly incompatible with the industry’s transparency commitments and support of payment disclosure through [EITI]. It is unacceptable that oil companies should receive reputation benefits by supporting a transparency initiative while at the same time fighting a landmark payment disclosure law in U.S. courts.”

A Congolese man transports charcoal on his bicycle outside Lubumbashi in the DRC. Credit: Miriam Mannak/IPS

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, May 17 2013 (IPS)

With casualties in the long-running conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) now surpassing every conflict since World War II, U.S. policymakers and advocates are stepping up campaigns to raise awareness and push legislation aimed at encouraging new negotiations, assisting in government reforms, and pressuring the neighbouring countries that have propped up the DRC’s government.

Some advocates say the situation today could be better than at any time in recent years for a durable peace process.

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently preparing to consider a bipartisan bill, unanimously passed by a subcommittee Wednesday, aimed at supporting international efforts to forge a peace deal in the long-running crisis in Congo.

The bill is an “important step forward in raising awareness within the U.S. Congress and among all Americans of this horrific and tragic crisis in the DRC,” Representative Karen Bass, one of the bill’s lead authors, told IPS.

“To date, this legislation has the support of nearly 60 Democrats and Republicans in the House and efforts are currently underway to introduce a similar piece of legislation in the Senate. It has also received significant support from the NGO community.”

Supporters say they expect that number to increase.

Recent months have also seen a strengthening of advocacy on the part of the Congolese diaspora here in Washington, as well as from the rest of the country and Canada. Legislators say this support has been key in helping the House bill gain the legislative backing it has.

One element of the new bill would respond to a longstanding key demand, urging the creation of a special envoy from the president to the DRC and the surrounding Great Lakes region.

“This legislation calls for such an envoy, and Secretary [John] Kerry, in testimony before both the House and the Senate, has indicated his plan to make an appointment,” Bass said.

“I am pleased that this effort is making progress and urge the secretary to move swiftly to make his decision and develop a comprehensive strategy that relies on diplomacy and engagement to address the complex set of issues that stand as barriers to peace and stability in the DRC and the region.”

Conflict-free consumerism

The war in Congo has been running for almost two decades, taking the lives of nearly six million people as several peace processes have failed. Militias engaged in the war have often used rape and sexual violence as a tool of repression and intimidation.

The economics of the mineral trade have also defined this struggle, with armed groups having been able to control mines and trading routes to prop up their actions.

“DRC is potentially one of the world’s wealthiest nations, but has been unable to unlock the potential of the riches above and below the soil due to the ongoing conflict there,” Sasha Lezhnev, a senior policy analyst at the Enough Project, a Washington advocacy group that published a new report on the DRC today, told IPS.

“However, a couple of different policy windows have created the space for a peace process that today has a better chance of success than anytime in the last decade.”

Lezhnev refers to the recent emergence of international pressure on Congo’s neighbouring states – particularly Rwanda – for supporting armed groups within eastern Congo. The World Bank has now withheld 135 million dollars from Rwanda for this reason, and there has likewise been pressure on the Congo to enact greater transparency reforms.

In addition, U.N. Special Envoy to Africa Mary Robinson has been working to establish a more comprehensive and inclusive peace process that addresses the core drivers of violence in the DRC. In February, she and 11 African heads of state established a diplomatic framework to identify reforms that would enable Rwanda, Congo and Uganda to cooperate on the extraction and export of minerals.

“This is a first step, but we think this provides a good roadmap for where we think this peace process should go,” Lezhnev said.

“What needs to happen now is Mary Robinson needs to lead regional negotiations between Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo on economic, refugee and security issues so that all these interests can be put on the table and can be worked out in a transparent and legitimate way.”

Also helping to break the link between the armed groups and the minerals that have in part funded them is new U.S. legislation, enacted over the past year as part of comprehensive financial legislation known as the Dodd-Frank Act. A section of this law targets so-called “conflict minerals”, and is reported to have brought about a 65-percent drop in profits for armed groups from tin, tungsten and tantalum this year.

“The Dodd-Frank Act has resulted in armed groups and their supporters finding it significantly more difficult to profit from an illicit trade, and so there is an opportunity to take advantage of these changing incentives and create structures for legitimate cooperation,” Lezhnev says.

“This shows there is a growing global consumer movement against conflict minerals, and conflict-free products have created new momentum to say that enough is enough when it comes to buying untraceable minerals and turning a blind eye.”

Temporary window

A further sign of the weakening of the armed groups is the sight of one of the chief Rwandan warlords, Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda, sitting in The Hague at the International Criminal Court (ICC) after he turned himself in to law enforcement in Rwanda in March. Analysts say this turn of events has weakened his militia, known as the M23, and increased opportunities for peace.

Meanwhile, countries around the world have increasingly taken notice of the trade and investment opportunities throughout Africa, resulting in greater levels of engagement. However, groups like the Enough Project warn this policy window will not remain open indefinitely.

“We call on the Obama administration to deploy a high-level envoy and to work with Mary Robinson,” Lezhnev said.

“The administration needs to help shape this process, to incentivise the economic cooperation between the countries of the region by setting up a responsible investment initiative for working with the tech companies, metals companies and responsible investors to identify gaps and opportunities for investing in a conflict-free environment.”

Next week, World Bank President Jim Kim and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are slated to travel to Congo and the region.

M23 rebels near Sake, Eastern DR Congo. The rebel group withdrew from Goma on Saturday, Dec. 1. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo, May 16 2013 (IPS)

The “blind and unrestricted” reintegration of M23 deserters into the Congolese army could harm the country, according to Thomas d’Aquin Mwiti, the chair of the North Kivu civil society platform, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to Julien Paluku, governor of North Kivu province, 519 rebel deserters have been reintegrated into the Congolese army, known by its French acronym FARDC, since 2012.

Since Apr. 21, 87 M23 rebel fighters have defected to the FARDC. Deserters who give themselves up to the FARDC are immediately reintegrated into the army at Bweremana base, 50 kilometres from Goma.

But Mwiti told IPS that this “automatic reintegration (of fighters) is simply a rebel infiltration” of the FARDC.

“The government must first put in place a mechanism for the reintegration and monitoring of deserters who could, at any moment, rejoin the rebellion,” he said.

One M23 defector, Colonel Nzala Ngomo, was reinstated into the national army on May 1. Ngomo had been the commander of the 41st commando battalion of FARDC when he joined M23 after Goma fell to the rebel group in November 2012. He surrendered to the FARDC in April.

M23, named after a peace agreement signed on Mar. 23, 2009 between leaders of a former rebel group, the National Congress for the Defence of the People, and the DRC government, started their recent insurgency in April 2012.

It culminated with their occupation of Goma, the second-largest city in DRC, in November 2012. The rebels withdrew from a week-long occupation of the town after Uganda brokered an agreement with M23 and the DRC government. However, the insurgent group has experienced a number of defections recently.

Juvénal Munubo, a legislator from Walikale, North Kivu, and a member of the National Assembly’s Committee for Defence and Security, agreed with Mwiti that the direct absorption of defectors into the Congolese army was risky.

“It’s unwise to reintegrate these deserters into the FARDC without… knowing their real motivation. They must first pass through a transit centre for re-education,” Munubo told IPS.

In contrast, former M23 combatants who surrender to MONUSCO – the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DRC – are enrolled in its Disarmament, Demobilisation, Repatriation, Reintegration and Resettlement programme, which is run in collaboration with the security and intelligence services of DRC.

Since April, 87 combatants from M23, including 12 officers, have surrendered at bases belonging to MONUSCO in Rutshuru Territory, and in Nyiragongo, both of which are north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

MONUSCO’s military spokesperson, Lieutenant-Colonel Félix Prosper Basse, told Radio Okapi – the U.N. radio station – that the number of rebel defections has been growing.

But Mwiti belongs to a section of civil society that believes M23 deserters are trying to avoid international prosecution after being named and accused in U.N. reports of atrocities and human rights violations against civilians.

“On this issue, we will insist on the rigorous application of military justice against those named in the reports,” said Mwiti.

However, the Youth League of Rutshuru, a collective of 24 associations fighting against the recruitment of idle youth into armed groups, has asked the government to unconditionally reintegrate the rebels into the FARDC to “put an end to the war.”

According to Bienvenu Mazirane, president of the umbrella group, many M23 combatants are fearful of fighting the new U.N. intervention brigade, which was formed to neutralise all armed groups in the east of the country.

On Mar. 28, the U.N. Security Council resolved to move its presence in the DRC from a stabilisation and peacekeeping force to an intervention force with a mandate to neutralise some 40 armed groups operating in the country, with effect from early May.

“They were willing to fight against the FARDC, but not against the MONUSCO brigade,” Mazirane told IPS.

Despite the defections from its ranks, M23 is determined to fight the U.N. intervention force.

“As the government in Kinshasa refuses to sign a ceasefire with M23, this brigade means the war can only be ended with victory for (either) the government or M23,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Vianney Kazarama, military spokesperson for the rebel movement.

Kazarama told IPS that the rebellion could count on 4,500 men to “sacrifice blood” to fight for the country’s liberation, and downplayed the recent desertions.

Nonetheless, the rebel group is doing all that it can to prevent its fighters from deserting and surrendering to MONUSCO. M23 has set up an observation post just 30 metres from the U.N. base in Kiwanja, northeast of Goma in North Kivu province. And on Apr. 28, the rebels fired on two M23 soldiers who handed themselves over with their weapons to MONUSCO at the Kiwanja base.

“But they succeeded in entering the MONUSCO base,” said Mazirane.

Paluku welcomed the defections, describing the deserters as “lost children who have returned to the fold.” The governor of North Kivu called on other rebels to follow their example.

The national authorities have not commented on the matter, and simply acknowledged the defections.

Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
Goma, DRC , May 2 2013 (IPS)

The Congolese government is demanding a comprehensive strategy for a lasting solution for the repatriation of 127,537 Rwandan refugees estimated to be in the country.

This is according to Congolese Minister of Home Affairs Richard Muyej. He said the government believes that the cessation of refugee status for Rwandese nationals exiled in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is premature. The DRC neighbours the East African state of Rwanda.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has designated Jun. 30 as the worldwide cessation of refugee status for Rwandese nationals.

The UNHCR accords this status to refugees who fled Rwanda between 1959 and 1998. The cessation clause, which is binding on refugees and their host countries, requires refugees to choose between voluntary repatriation and residency in their host countries. They can also apply for a continuation of their refugee status on an individual basis.

However, the DRC is opposed to the move.

The Congolese government’s position reinforces the stance taken by Rwandese diaspora meeting at the International Conference on Rwandan Refugees held from Apr. 19 to 20 in Brussels. It called upon the UNHCR and asylum countries to consider the safety of Rwandese refugees.

Gervais Condo, the president of the United States-based Rwanda National Congress (CNR), who chaired the Brussels conference, told IPS: “There are no circumstances under which refugee status is a viable long-term solution.”

“But we cannot expect refugees to return home when the reasons they went into exile have not been addressed,” said Condo, an ally of General Kayumba Nyamwasa, the former chief of staff of the Rwandese army and a founder president of the CNR who is now living in exile in South Africa.

Between 1994, when the Rwanda Patriotic Front came to power following the genocide, and February 2013, the UNHCR has repatriated about 3.5 million Rwandese refugees.

While there are no conclusive figures, it is estimated that the 1994 Rwandan genocide claimed the lives of almost one million people, mostly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Meanwhile, Muyej stated that the DRC would only apply the cessation clause after the implementation of the Tripartite Agreement signed between the UNHCR and the Rwandese and DRC governments to ensure that Rwandese refugees wishing to be repatriated are able to return to their country of origin safely and with dignity.

Muyej made these remarks on Apr. 18 at a conference of Ministers of Home Affairs of 11 African countries hosting Rwandese refugees.

However, Rwanda and the UNHCR have declared that there is no justification for extending the status for the refugees after Jun. 30. The Rwandese government has given guarantees that the situation in the Great Lakes country is now safe, and wants the cessation clause provided for in the 1951 Geneva Convention to come into force.

In October 2009, Rwandese President Paul Kagame and Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, agreed that Rwandese refugee status would be terminated in June 2011. But opposition from refugees and NGOs prompted the UNHCR to continue discussions with all concerned parties until June 2013.

Refugees remain worried that the situation of freedom of expression and association in Rwanda has not changed, and feel this concern is borne out by the large number of former dignitaries in exile, including former attorney general Gérard Gahima and former Rwandan ambassador Théogène Rudasingwa.

The arrest and trial of Victoire Ingabire, an opposition party candidate during the 2010 presidential elections who was tried and sentenced to eight years in prison for conspiracy against the country, has been cause for concern. On Mar. 25, Amnesty International called for a fair trial for Ingabire that met international standards. The human rights organisation stated that the court failed to test the evidence of the prosecution.

“A number of high-level officials have indicated that Europe does not consider Rwanda to be safe enough for the return of refugees,” Condo stressed.

Rwanda’s Minister for Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs Séraphine Mukantabana, a former genocide refugee in Congo-Brazzaville who was repatriated in May 2011, declared that Rwandese refugees could not benefit from limitless refugee status when there was peace in the country.

“We have been encouraging voluntary repatriation, as many refugees will find it difficult to remain in their host countries. Those who wish to apply for refugee status on an individual basis will not have grounds to appeal to the UNHCR,” said Mukantabana, who was also the president of the Rwandese refugees’ association in Congo-Brazzaville.

To ease the situation, Rwanda will deliver national passports to Rwandese who wish to stay in their country of asylum after Jun. 30.

M23 have conducted a number of protests against U.N. Security Council Resolution 2098, which enables an offensive combat force in the eastern DRC. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo , Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

When M23 rebels tried twice to arrange a protest march against a United Nations resolution to deploy an intervention brigade with an offensive mandate to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, they had to postpone it because the local population would not participate.

In Kibumba, 25 kilometres north of the provincial capital Goma, not only had the population refused to demonstrate – they had also fled town.

The rebels rescheduled the Apr. 10 march for Apr. 15. But when that day rolled around, the local residents, and especially the young people, had not returned – and once again the protest had to be postponed.

But according to Janvier Nkinamubanzi, a political analyst at the University of Goma, it was absurd for the M23 to expect the local population to march against the U.N. force. The M23 are named after a peace agreement in Mar. 23, 2009 between leaders of the former rebel group, the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDCP), and the Congolese government. The M23 is a breakaway from the CNDCP, and its members are mostly from the Congolese Tutsi community.

”The inhabitants of Kibumba or regions occupied by M23, even those in Goma, have the impression of being victims of a foreign occupation,” Nkinamubanzi told IPS. The U.N. has said that both Rwanda and Uganda supported M23 rebels in their capture of Goma in December 2012. But after a weeklong occupation of the town, M23 withdrew.

According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, since the beginning of the M23 rebellion in April 2012, more than half a million people have been driven from their homes in North Kivu province in eastern DRC.

”Asking them to protest against a brigade that comes to liberate them from this situation is a double humiliation, as the national army is unable to protect them,” he added.

M23 have conducted a number of protests against U.N. Security Council Resolution 2098, which enables an offensive combat force in the eastern DRC. This includes forced protest marches, rallies, and a five-day blockade of 11 vehicles belonging to the U.N. Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) in Rutshuru, north of Goma.

“Our men will not hesitate to retaliate if they are shot at. The blockade of U.N. vehicles is a strong message of how serious we are,” Lieutenant-Colonel Vianney Kazarama, the military spokesperson for M23, told IPS.

Congolese Foreign Affairs Minister Raymond Tshibanda told a press conference on Apr. 1 that the only future for M23 was to disband as an armed movement. If it failed to do so, the intervention brigade would step in and destroy it, he said.

“The government pretends to speak to M23 while in reality it wants to crush the rebels at the earliest opportunity,” Godefroid Kä Mana, the chair of the cross-cultural Pole Institute, told IPS. The institute works across the Great Lakes region.

While M23 were protesting against the U.N. resolution, local leaders, including village chiefs in Masisi, east of Goma, were calling for the Congolese government to integrate soldiers from the Alliance of Patriots for a Free and Sovereign Congo (APCLS) into the Congolese armed forces.

Bahati Kahembe, one of the four traditional leaders in the North Kivu provincial assembly, recognised that both the rebels and army were responsible for human rights violations in the east of the country. However, he told IPS “the APCLS is less violent towards the population than other forces.”

The APCLS is one of the most organised armed groups in the region. Self-proclaimed “General” Janvier Karairi created it in protest against the Mar. 23, 2009 agreement.

According to MONUSCO, there are between 500 and 1,000 APCLS combatants, who mostly belong to the Hunde ethnic group. They specifically target Tutsis, sometimes in collaboration with Rwandese Hutus from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, who have been refugees in eastern DRC since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

The APCLS combatants have also provided support to the Congolese armed forces against the CNDP, and now against the M23, which broke away from the latter party. “We are only defending our land against the invaders,” Karairi told IPS.

But the governor of North Kivu, Julien Paluku, retorted: “There are no good or bad rebels.”

Government police arrive on a boat at Goma's port as U.N. peacekeepers watch on in December 2012 after the M23 withdrew from the town in eastern DRC. The U.N. has changed its mandate from a peacekeeping force to an intervention one starting early May. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Stanley Karombo
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

As the first of South Africa’s troops are expected to begin arriving in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of the United Nations intervention force at the end of April, governance experts have welcomed the world body’s new mandate in the Central African nation.

According to Dr. Ola Bello, the head of the Governance of Africa’s Resources Programme at the South African Institute of International Relations (SAIIA), the bolstering of U.N. forces in the DRC is long overdue.

On Mar. 28, the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolved to move its presence in the DRC from a stabilisation and peace-keeping force to an intervention one.

“The core U.N. force has been too force-shy, as evident in the rebel takeover of Goma in late 2012,” Bello told IPS. The M23 rebels seized Goma in December 2012, but withdrew after a weeklong occupation of the town.

According to the U.N., more than 500,000 people have been driven from their homes in North Kivu, a province in eastern DRC, because of the rebel conflict.

U.N. Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) spokesperson Madnodje Mounoubai announced on local radio station Radio Okapi, which is backed by the U.N., that the resolution gave the 3,069-strong brigade the mandate to neutralise about 40 armed groups operating in the country. This would be done “with or without the Congolese army” with effect from early May, he said.

The neighbouring countries of Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa will be contributing troops to the force.

However, Omar Kavota, the deputy chair of the North Kivu civil society platform, told IPS that they condemned the transportation of South African arms through Uganda. Experts from the U.N. have accused Uganda and Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebels.

According to Radio Okapi, the consignment from the Bloemfontein military base in South Africa was transported to Uganda and then the DRC.

Bello said that there were potential pitfalls to South Africa’s inclusion in the combat unit, as they could be perceived as not being neutral.

He added that South Africa was seen as being close to President Joseph Kabila’s government, “which could be interpreted as being anti-Rwanda and anti-Uganda.

“Confronting the M23 also carries some inherent risk since the rebel movement purports to (and in reality, does to some extent) represent the interest of ethnic Tutsis in eastern DRC.

“South Africa and the other (countries that are) committing these additional combat forces will have to be careful that their actions are not seen as taking sides in what is partly an ongoing internal conflict within the different regional and ethnic groups within the DRC,” Bello said.

However, questions have been raised about the Africa Union’s role in peace-keeping on the continent.

Bello said the AU, through its Peace and Security Council, and Africa Peace and Security Architecture, was in theory charged with the overall maintenance of peace in Africa.

“Performance has, however, been uneven with the modest success in Somalia, for example, (and has been) marred by precipitous failures elsewhere, such as in Darfur, Sudan, as well as with the AU’s marginalisation by Nato in the Libyan conflict.”

In 2003, civil war broke out in Darfur, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. In 2006, a peace deal was signed between the parties through the assistance of the AU and in conjunction with the U.N. And in 2011, Nato assisted Libya with armed strikes during the uprising against former President Muammar Gaddafi (1969-2011). The AU had instead tried to bring a peaceful end to the rebellion and then later delayed recognising the new Libyan rulers.

Dr. Annie Chikwanha, a senior research fellow at SAIIA, agreed with Bello. She told IPS that the AU’s diplomatic approach may be designed to give member states a chance to resolve their own disputes but “experience in the countries where violent conflicts have erupted have shown that this ‘ideal’ solution does not produce the desired results.

“A more energised, collaborative and quick reaction approach is likely to yield better and more sustainable results in protecting citizens from their leaders,” she added.

Chikwanha said that the limitations placed by Chapter VIII, Article 53 of the U.N. charter, that no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without prior authorisation from the UNSC, crippled the AU and made it appear ineffective.

“The AU has thus tended to appear on the scene after much of the killing (has taken place) since its diplomatic appeals would have failed to yield the desired results. Yet it has many other options it can use to prevent such catastrophes,” she said.

A lecturer of political science at the University of Zimbabwe, Professor Eldred Masunungure, echoed her arguments. “Disconnections in the institutional functioning of the different units in the AU system prevent the much-needed collaboration in resolving conflicts in general.

“Reaction time is slowed down by well-known incapacity to mobilise quickly a peace-keeping force to prevent the escalation of the conflicts and minimise civilian casualties,” Masunungure stated in a 2012 journal article, which he co-wrote with Chikwanha, titled “The African Union and Election-Related Conflicts in Africa: An Assessment and Recommendations”.

Chikwanha said that the Peace and Security Directorate within the African Union Commission was directly responsible for attaining the AU’s goal of building peace and security.

* Additional reporting by Taylor Toeka Kakala in Goma, DRC.

The Mai-Mai Kata-Katanga rebel group operating in Katanga, in south eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, say that they are engaged in an armed campaign for the autonomy of the province because they have not benefited from its rich mineral deposits.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Mai-Mai member told IPS: “In 2012 alone, mining companies in Katanga paid out 96 million dollars in royalties. It shows that we are a rich province, but this isn’t reflected in the standards of living in the province.” Katanga’s main minerals are copper, cobalt and gold.

The Mai-Mai fighters hail from a number of Katanga’s ethnic groups native to five territories in the north of the province, though no precise figures are available about their numbers. In Swahili, “Mai” means “water” and “Kata Katanga” means “cut off Katanga.” But the group is called Mai-Mai because its members spray themselves with a “magic” potion, containing water, that they believe shields them from bullets.

On Mar. 23, about 350 Mai-Mai Kata Katanga insurgents launched an incursion on Lubumbashi, the provincial capital of Katanga. Dressed in civilian clothing with green, red and white bandanas, the insurgents were armed with about 30 AK-47 rifles, rockets, javelins, bows and arrows, and charms.

They tried, without success, to seize the seats of the governorate and provincial assembly.

After being routed in armed clashes with the Congolese armed forces, the rebels surrendered to the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DRC. Thirty-three people were killed and 60 were wounded in the conflict.

But according to Alexandre Kawaya, a deputy in the Katanga Provincial Assembly and a member of President Joseph Kabila’s political coalition, talks should have started between the government and the Mai-Mai Kata-Katanga over their demands.

“We have generals and CEOs, who have been rebels. These citizens (the Mai-Mai) once surrounded Lubumbashi to stop an invasion from foreign forces. We should talk to them, hear what they have to say,” Kawaya told IPS. He added that the government is also currently in talks with rebel movements in the DRC, including the M23.

The Mar. 23 attack was not the first Mai-Mai Kata-Katanga strike. In May 2010, they hoisted their flag at the Place de la Poste square in Lubumbashi. They are also thought to be behind a number of other attacks, including two on the Lubumbashi airport and a prison break to rescue their leader, Gédéon Kyungu, in October 2011. The fight for the liberation of Katanga goes as far back as July 1960 when they tried to secede from the rest of the country.

But according to local NGO Justicia ASBL, the rebel group has displaced some 340,000 people from their homes through their sustained conflict.

Fabien Mutomb, from the opposition party Union for Democracy and Social Progress, believes that the impunity enjoyed by the rebels from one attack to the next proves some level of complicity from within the state.

“Each investigation by the powers that be yields nothing,” he told IPS, adding that the investigations were staged productions by leaders of local and national government institutions.

Breaking the impasse

Jean Pierre Muteba, who heads the civil society coordination structure in Katanga, told IPS “the Mar. 23 attack in Lubumbashi is an expression of revolt.” He believes that the solution would be a national dialogue with all the actors.

But Timothée Mbuya, the director of the voluntary organisation Justicia ASBL, gave a different view.

“When we are confronted with such destructive forces that they drive over 340,000 people in Katanga from their homes in the belief that violence is a legitimate form of engagement, we have no option but to focus on reforming the army and security services to remove external agents,” he told IPS.

“The Congolese army and security services have been weakened because they obey orders from different quarters. If these services are rid of external actors, they would be in a better position to secure the country against prospective attacks, both from within and outside,” he said.

For his part, Congolese Minister for Internal Affairs and Security Richard Muyej said he would wait for the results of a government enquiry on the Lubumbashi assault. Those found responsible will be prosecuted.

Two weeks after the Mai-Mai attack, Kabila suspended General Michel Ekuchu, the commander of the 6th Battalion based in Lubumbashi, on a charge of “grave dereliction of duty.”

“That won’t solve anything,” Fidèle Ramazani, an officer in the Coalition for a Referendum on the Self Determination of the Katanga People, another rebel movement in the province, told IPS.

He believes that the Congolese state has become “a repository of unresolved conflicts, where dissatisfaction and despair have become entrenched, and the most effective and sustainable solution is in the reconstruction of the entire state structure.”

By Rousbeh Legatis
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 17 2013 (IPS)

Rape is often perceived as an individual trauma, but in reality its impact extends far beyond a single person and instead affects entire communities, complicating the already challenging task of helping victims of sexual violence.

Thérèse Mema Mapenzi, who works with rape victims in South Kivu of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), adds that in order for victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence to move on, they must have someone to listen to them.

Thérese Mema Mapenzi, who works with rape victims in South Kivu. Photo courtsey of Thérese Mapenzi.

Listening is also important to help devise solutions to deal with rape’s consequences on communities as a whole, explains the social assistant, who works directly with affected populations for the Justice and Peace Commission in Bukavu.

“I give them neither money nor food, but I listen to them and sympathise with them,” says Mapenzi. “What makes me proud is to see that soft words can help to cure the trauma of victims.”

In a conversation with IPS U.N. correspondent Rousbeh Legatis, Mapenzi discusses how rape is used as a tool of war to destroy people, families and communities. Excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: Could you explain the destructive consequences of sexual violence on both individuals and communities?

A: In DRC, rape has been and is used as a weapon of war. Rebels know that in our culture, women are those who protect the culture in their communities. To destabilise the country and help actors of violence reach their goals, they are destroying families and thereby local communities, weakening social cohesion. They raped our sisters, mums, killed our brothers before our very eyes, humiliating and threatening us.

This violence comes with an atmosphere of silence on rape. It is not easy for a survivor of rape to say that he or she has been raped, because in our communities people do not easily speak about sex-related topics, so rape is treated as a taboo.

Many families were and are separated as a result of these experiences; raped women find themselves isolated, the harmony within families broken. Entire communities are weakened and divided, leading to an atmosphere of fear where the rebels become more powerful.If a victim does not speak, the process of healing the trauma cannot proceed.

Q: Often survivors of rape are re-victimised at a community level. Can you explain how that happens?

A: These people suffer terrible treatment from rebel groups. When they return to their communities, they are discriminated against. Until 2010, many victims of rape were not even considered in their communities and discriminated against by their families and neighbours.

Men were often forced to watch their wives being raped and threatened with being killed if they tried to help. Afterwards, it is difficult for men to talk about this experience, because they were supposed to protect the women, so they feel powerless and ashamed.

It also happens that men who were not with their wives when the rapes took place then consider them collaborators with the rebels.

Q: You work with 16 listening centres (trauma centres) in different villages of South Kivu. Why is listening so important?

A: Only by actively listening to people’s problems can one understand them or know what kind of assistance to provide. That is why it is so crucial to listen. By doing so, we contribute to their healing by showing compassion and sympathy. Most of the time, trauma-related secrets that we have to hold back destroy us from within without our even knowing.

For example, many people, especially women, here suffer from stomachaches, tension and headaches because they do not know to whom they can reveal their problems and associated emotions.

Q: Should victims be speaking out as well?

A: Victims must talk about their trauma in order to be healed. In the healing process, one of our goals is to enable traumatised victims to speak out about their situation and where and why they have problems in their daily lives, so they can feel relief. If he or she does not speak, the process of healing the trauma cannot proceed.

Q: What are you concretely doing there to help and support women, children and men?

A: To find survivors of rape, we enter communities to inform people about and make them more sensitive to the physical and psychological consequences of rape. We do that to remind everybody that sexual violence is a community problem.

We also ask them to not stigmatise victims of rape and explain what help our listening centres provide, so they also can tell others about our programmes.

How we then assist them differs from person to person. Sometimes it requires legal assistance, medical care, psychological or economical support. We provide counselling by showing that he or she is not responsible for the rape. If they have never been to a hospital for medical care, we refer them to one.

We also do family mediation, which aims to restore peace within families destroyed by rape. And if the rapist is known or if a child is born from rape – often the most mistreated among victims – we help bring them to justice.

Q: What support does your work need so that you can continue to help others?

A: The first thing I need is security. Sometimes we help a survivor of rape and she reintegrates well. After a while, however, the rebels come back to the village and rape her and others again. This disappoints me so much and makes me feel discouraged.

Another thing is the lack of sufficient financial means. Sometimes we listen to survivors of rape who have gone two days without eating, or to a refugee with children, a pregnant woman or an orphan of three years. Without the financial means to help them, it is difficult to cure their trauma.

Excerpt:

The children of deceased police and army officers in North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, are finding themselves forced to adopt their late fathers’careers in the armed services to help their families survive.

Children have been adopting their parents’careers in defence and policing for fear of losing the benefits enjoyed by soldiers and policemen in the DRC, particularly health care and accommodation in the army barracks.

“My father was a policeman and when he died they wanted to evict us from the house at the camp, but we had nowhere to go. We had to find a way to keep the family together, so I decided to become a policeman to help provide for my family,” said Pistchen Kalala, who became a policeman at the age of 20.

“Otherwise we would have been homeless and without health care,” he told IPS.

Congolese soldiers’ income of around 80 dollars a month is very low, and few of them can afford to own even a small home.

Following the death of his father, and his mother’s remarriage to another solider, Dibwa Ntambwe, aged 24, joined the army. He decided to become a soldier so that his brothers and sisters could continue to have access to the benefits accruing to his late father.

Around three quarters of Congolese soldiers are army children, according to Augustin Lukubashi, the chairperson of local NGO Integrated Development Association for Police and Army Children. He is also the child of a deceased soldier.

Lukubashi’s estimates are based on information from the policy and army communication departments in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

“Often, when a military parent dies, the children receive their monthly salary, which encourages them to follow the same career,” Lukubashi told IPS, adding that it was policy for children to receive their deceased fathers’ salaries, sometimes for up to two years after his death.

He added that “living in a military family means living a military life where you grow up in hardship. Army children are well prepared for life in the military.”

Sometimes, against their better judgement, army widows encourage their sons to join the army or police at 18 in order to protect their families.

“When my husband died, they wanted to throw us out of the house we lived in because when a soldier dies, there is a tendency to forget his family,” said Sifa Nyota, an army widow in Goma.

“To continue to receive benefits—health care and accommodation—we decided that our oldest son should take his father’s place (and join the army). That’s how he became a soldier,” she explained to IPS.

Human rights NGOs in North Kivu have protested that this is a violation of the rights of the child, as many of these children have no choice but to become soldiers just like their late fathers. NGOs say that the government should assist these children to further their studies and to embrace other careers.

“The situation these children find themselves in is unacceptable. They should be taken care of by the Congolese government, who should take responsibility for their basic needs and safety,” Duffina Tabu, the chair of the Volunteers Association of Congo, a local NGO, told IPS.

Similarly, Flavien Ciza, a member of the provincial coordinating group of civil society organizations, told IPS that “the precarious living conditions, poverty and unemployment experienced by these children, and their neglect by the government, is at the root of this social trend.”

According to a study in 2011 on poverty in the DRC, “70 percent of households live below the poverty line of less than a dollar a day.”

“The Congolese government should think about educating these children and provide them with a minimum income so that their futures are safe,” Ciza said.

Tabu said the current situation has negative consequences for the army. “This phenomenon weakens the Congolese army, which is sending untrained and inexperienced men into the field. The youth stay in the army out of desperation or to take revenge, rather than out of personal conviction.”

Lukubashi wants the government to pay for the education of all army children. “The unemployment rate and lack of support for these children is the reason for this forced inheritance.”

Opposition parties questioned the move to deploy the South African National Defence Force to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Credit: GovernmentZA/ /CC by 2.0

By Stanley Karombo
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 12 2013 (IPS)

Kholekile Dlamini has been devastated by the death of her son Xolani Dlamini, a South African National Defence Force soldier who died in the Central African Republic. Like many South Africans, she had not even been aware of the SANDF deployment to the resource-rich nation.

Xolani Dlamini, 27, was killed by Séléka rebels in the Central African Republic (CAR) almost three weeks ago during a Mar. 24 coup d’état that left 13 SANDF soldiers dead, 27 wounded and one missing.

Sobbing, his mother told IPS that the surviving members of her family were “saddened and shocked” by the untimely death of “Rifleman” – as Xolani Dlamini was affectionately known.

And as the SANDF announced on Tuesday Apr. 9 that all soldiers had been officially withdrawn from CAR, the South African government has kept a tight lid on information about the controversial deployment that was allegedly carried out to prevent former President François Bozizé from being ousted by rebels.

But as South Africa’s public still remain largely unaware of the activities of the mission, news broke on Sunday Apr. 7 that the country would soon be sending troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Opposition parties questioned the move and demanded that President Jacob Zuma inform parliament about the details of the deployment.

Professor Shadrack Gutto, a constitutional law expert at the University of South Africa, told IPS that with the events in CAR “still fresh in everyone’s minds, the rebels in the DRC will take advantage of this.”

South Africa agreed to send the troops after a March resolution by the United Nations Security Council called for the deployment of an intervention brigade in the DRC. The offensive aims to neutralise rebels, including the M23 rebel group, in eastern DRC.

“The president should come clean on the issue. He is obliged to tell the public the reasons for the deployment of the SANDF in CAR, rather than hide behind the facade of protecting national interests,” Gutto said.

However, South African presidential spokesperson Mac Maharaj told IPS that parliament had been informed of the CAR deployment, and that the public’s right to know was taken into account. He said that on every occasion when deploying the SANDF, the president did so in line with constitutional requirements and informed parliament. He added that the president would continue to follow the constitutional requirements when deploying South African soldiers.

While SANDF spokesperson Brigadier Xolani Mabanga confirmed to IPS that South Africa would deploy more troops to the DRC by the end of April, he would not disclose how many.

But the military-hardened M23 rebel group tweeted that they would retaliate if they were attacked by the SANDF. Mabanga responded, saying that the SANDF would not be “deterred to carry out their international obligations because of an internet message. The SANDF will be ready to execute any task assigned to them.”

Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports by opposition parties have suggested that the CAR deployment was initiated to guard the ruling African National Congress’s (ANC) mining interests. The ANC has denied the allegation.

For five years, undisclosed numbers of SANDF soldiers assisted in propping up the fragile CAR government. The South African government said that this had been part of a bilateral agreement with the CAR government, signed in 2007 and renewed in 2012, to provide training to the CAR presidential guard.

David Zounmenou, Central Africa specialist at the Institute for Security Studies, told IPS that many observers believe “this is far from reality” and accused South Africa of deploying troops because of mining concessions.

“It is still difficult to verify the accuracy of these observations. The context in which the deployment took place was problematic. Bozizé was attacked by a coalition of rebel groups. And even though regional partners such as Chad, Gabon and Cameroon moved in early to stop the progress of the movement and forced them into negotiation, Bozizé had lost confidence in the regional mechanisms,” said Zounmenou.

“His initiative to invite South Africa in (to defend against the rebels) was not well appreciated. Indeed, with South Africa’s presence, he thought he was no longer vulnerable, became arrogant and disregarded the peace deal concluded in Libreville.”

Séléka had launched an offensive against Bozizé’s rule last December. It resulted in the Libreville Agreement, a peace accord signed in January between Séléka and Bozizé’s government.

However, Zounmenou believes that South Africa still has a role to play in peace-keeping missions on the continent.

But he warned that the country should always seek an international mandate from the U.N. before deploying and should operate within regional arrangements.

“South Africa also has to make sure that there is a peace to keep and that soldiers are sufficiently equipped to protect themselves,” he said.

But a question remains: What is the way forward for CAR?

Zounmenou said that CAR has an opportunity to chart a new course that breaks with the past remedies of electing coup leaders into democratically-elected governments.

On Apr. 4, the regional body, the Economic Community of Central African States, refused to recognise CAR coup leader Michel Djotodia as the country’s self-proclaimed president and made proposals to return the country to democratic order. The African Union (AU) also refused to recognise Djotodia’s power grab.

There is likely to be an 18-month transition period, which could see Djotodia filling the role as transitional president.

Alternatively, he could be elected as the transitional president and required to give up power after the period ends. According to the AU, coup leaders and leaders of transition governments should not be part of the electoral process.

But Zounmenou doubts if the latter will take place.

A group of men work a surface gold mine deep in the forest in Gbarpolu County, northwest Liberia. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Mar 27 2013 (IPS)

Congolese small-scale miner Elizabeth Tshimanga has made a successful living from prospecting. But like many artisanal miners in Africa, hers has been a long and tough journey marred by harassment and disputes over her legal status as a miner.

The 50-year-old started working in Kasai region in central Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at the age of 25, before moving to neighbouring Angola where she continued mining diamonds.

“I encountered my biggest challenges in Angola, where security forces and officials harassed miners and dealers, detained us, and forced many women to have sexual relations with them to avoid trouble – they even took women to the bush to gang-rape them if they refused their sexual advances,” she says.

“But life goes on. You just tell yourself it’s all part of life,” she tells IPS, before boarding a plane from Dakar to Brussels, where she was due to sign some business deals.

Tshimanga does not mine any longer. But she employs 10 small-scale miners – six in the DRC and four in Angola – and says the harassment and inability to obtain mining licences continues.

The incidents of rape continue too, she says, adding she witnessed one incident only a few years ago in Angola. But as long as governments refuse to recognise artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) as a job, she says, the problems and challenges will not go away.

According to the South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIIA), a non-governmental research institute, ASM activities in Africa engage over eight million workers, who in turn support about 45 million dependents.

The institute says that artisanal diamond miners in the Marange diamond fields of Zimbabwe increased from a handful in 2004 to an estimated 35,000 in 2007. In Ghana, ASM contributed nine percent of total gold production in 2000, but by 2010 this had risen to 23 percent, with over a million Ghanaians directly dependent on ASM for their livelihoods.

Cultural anthropologist Marieke Heemskerk, who has over 30 years of experience researching the ASM sector and working with artisanal gold miners in Latin America, Nigeria and Senegal, among others, says the biggest challenge facing small-scale miners is their legal status.

“It is difficult to invest in a proper mining business without a mining title because banks will not give out loans and the miner himself has no certainty that he will be allowed to stay at a certain place.

“In many countries, the licensing process is lengthy, bureaucratic, complex, not transparent and even corrupt. As a result, wealthy and powerful people may obtain mining titles, but poor people in the hinterlands without the necessary political connections cannot.”

It is an obstacle that Tshimanga still comes across. “The other problem is mining licences, it is too complex and complicated to get one. You have to be politically connected or, if you are a woman, you have to become a girlfriend of one of these high-ranking officials before you get one,” she says.

According to the SAIIA, artisanal and small-scale mining is a thorny issue for both governments and large-scale mining (LSM) companies because often the artisanal miners operate in remote, unregulated and environmentally sensitive areas, are difficult to tax and pose a security challenge as they operate on the verge of LSM sites.

Heemskerk, who is based in Suriname, in northern South America, adds: “In many places we see government actions against untitled miners, ranging from bombing them to burning their equipment to simply chasing them away with the military.”

Adama Dieng is an uneducated, small-scale miner from Senegal who made a small fortune in Angola. He owns a three-storey building, has opened three mini-supermarkets in Dakar and has business interests across West Africa. He has even sent four of his children to Europe and put five of them through school.

But his wealth has come the hard way, from small-scale mining in the midst of Angola’s civil war, which began in 1975 and continued on and off until 2002.

“We went through all sorts of dangers, including regular detention, beatings and extortion by the army and rebels, and we faced death.” It is no wonder that he says small-scale mining is “one of the most dangerous but lucrative sources of livelihoods.”

“I still have a lot of respect for the sector for providing jobs to millions and taking many people out of poverty globally, despite its risks,” he tells IPS.

But he criticises the negative attitude of African governments and large mining companies towards ASM.

“The soil of a country and all its resources belong to every citizen of that country, but politicians and big companies just want everything for themselves. Most people in Africa are poor, and these guys are doing nothing for us. We are suffering while the politicians and LSM bosses are living like kings and princes. Why don’t they give us a chance to try improving our lives?” he asks.

Sarah Best, a senior researcher at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a non-profit organisation promoting sustainable patterns of world development, tells IPS that instead of suppressing ASM activities, which often makes the situation worse, governments and big business should change their mindsets and recognise ASM as both highly productive and as a legitimate part of the mining sector.

“Governments have largely left small-scale mining on the margins. The first step to cooperation is building knowledge and a shared understanding of the sector,” Best says.

She also says IIED’s recent research on ASM has pointed to three major gaps in how knowledge shapes policy. “First, the knowledge that does exist is poorly shared. Second, the experience of small-scale miners and local communities is largely overlooked.

“Third, there is no multi-stakeholder space where committed individuals and organisations from different parts of the sector can come together to build trust, learn, innovate and find shared solutions,” she says.

Cultural anthropologist Heemskerk says that the legalisation and formalisation of small-scale gold miners would be a good first step to address many health, social, and environmental problems faced in the sector.

“You cannot regulate people who are considered illegal. We also must not forget that small-scale gold mining offers a job to millions of poor people, who may not have many alternative income-generating options.

“As such, it is an outlet for socio-economic problems. It reduced rural-urban migration (thus preventing the growth of huge shantytowns around the large cities) and increases consumption – as virtually all the money earned by local small-scale gold miners is spent in the country.”