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:

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.

The M23 rebels are among the other rebel groups and Congolese army who have been accused of extorting money from locals to pay their soldiers. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA , Mar 15 2013 (IPS)

On the way to his fields, Denise Mambo, a resident of Kitshanga, North Kivu in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, stops at a rope laid across his path.

“No one is allowed to go past this rope without paying the ‘lala salama’,” a Congolese army (FARDC) sergeant known only by the nickname Django tells IPS.

The “lala salama”, Swahili for “sleep in peace”, is an illegal tax often imposed by the army and rebels in the eastern DRC battlegrounds of North and South Kivu, Maniema, Katanga and Eastern provinces — and particularly in the Ituri region in the northeast.

Initially, “lala salama” was the name of a radio programme broadcast by Kisangani-based Radio Liberté, in northeastern DRC, in 2000. At the time, the programme was run by an officer belonging to a Congolese political grouping allied to Uganda, which accused Rwanda and its allies within the DRC of causing the country’s misfortunes.

Now “lala salama” is more about money than ideology.

Each person on their way to harvest their fields must pay a tax of one dollar or an equivalent of two to three kilogrammes of harvested crops to the men posted at the informal checkpoints. This illegal tax is sometimes called a “security contribution.”

“Sometimes the army and the militia will start fighting just to control a market or a path leading to the fields,” Jean Ngoa, the traditional leader for Kitshanga, North Kivu, told IPS.

The armed groups have also levied a tax parallel to the local authority taxes in market places. The tax ranges from 20 cents to 10 dollars, depending on the quantity of a vendor’s merchandise. This money is payable on market days, usually twice a week, and mirrors the rates of local authorities, who also collect them at similar times.

Ever since the failed integration of former rebels into the Congolese army in 2009, which led to the M23 rebellion or army mutiny in April 2012, the civilian population has become one of the main sources of income to feed the FARDC, armed rebel groups, and Rwandese militia such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.

Today, all five provinces of eastern DRC abound with militia, and thousands of civilians have been victims of looting, rape and murder, according to Juvenal Munubo, a parliamentarian for Walikale, North Kivu, and a member of the National Assembly’s Committee for Defence and Security.

“But civilians are also subjected to unbearable financial exploitation,” he told IPS.

General François Olenga was appointed chief-of-staff of the FARDC in November 2012, following accusations in a United Nations report that his predecessor, General Gabriel Amisi, was selling arms to the rebels. Olenga acknowledged the inefficiency of the army and tried to reassure his troops. “I will personally make sure that every soldier receives his pay,” he promised at the time.

Although army chiefs say the average salary of a soldier increased from 10 to 60 dollars a month between 2006 and 2013, soldiers say their pay is inadequate and irregular. Civilians have been the easiest prey for racketeering.

“If we are lucky enough to receive money, we get 60,000 dollars to pay one thousand men, including officers,” Captain George Sakombi of the 810th regiment in Masisi, North Kivu told IPS.

“We were in an army with no pay,” Lieutenant-Colonel Vianney Kazarama, the spokesperson for the M23 rebels who took control of Goma during November 2012, told IPS. The M23 rebels are from the former National Congress for the Defence of the People, which signed a peace accord with the Congolese government in March 2003.

The “lala salama” tax has encouraged the creation of armed groups. In North Kivu, for example, between 2008 and 2013, the number of armed groups increased from 12 to 25, according to civil society organisations. In South Kivu, the number of armed groups has risen from 11 in 2008 to some 20 in 2013.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a teacher from the market town of Kashuga, North Kivu told IPS that his village was attacked 12 times between April and July 2012 by the Congolese armed forces, the rebel Alliance of Patriots for a Free and Sovereign Congo, and the M26 group. The latter is a new rebel group, which is demanding the full implementation of the March 2009 peace accord between the government and the Congolese Patriotic Resistance, which is now a political party.

“When they took over Kashuga, the M26 forced every person over 13 years to pay 1,200 Congolese francs (just over a dollar),” he said. The tax is called “rengera buzima”, which means “protect life” in Kinyarwanda, the local language.

Unlike the “lala salama” where no one asks for proof of payment, “the M26 militia go through the IDP (internally displaced persons) camps, schools and churches to force everyone to show their ‘rengera buzima’ receipts,” the teacher said.

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

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Dec 11 2012 (IPS)

President Barack Obama’s top diplomat on African affairs on Tuesday defended the U.S. administration’s response to the continued crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in the face of stepped up criticism from both civil society and U.S. lawmakers.

Since April, violence has spiked in the eastern part of the DRC, perpetrated in part by an armed group known as the M23 – a group that three U.N. reports this year have found to be receiving support from the Rwandan government, a key U.S. ally. Over the past eight months, the renewed conflict has displaced some 2.4 million people, culminating in the recent fall of Goma, the largest city in the eastern part of the country, to the rebels.

Although the M23 leadership has now pulled out of Goma and entered into difficult peace talks, many analysts worry over the fact that these are being sponsored by Uganda, thought to be hardly a neutral player, and the lack of Rwanda’s representation in the negotiations.

Speaking before a subcommittee hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives, Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson said he rejected the notion that the U.S. administration has failed to speak out against the M23 rebels. Carson also noted that a “credible body of evidence” does indeed implicate Rwandan government support for the M23, “including military, logistical and political assistance”.

“Based on this evidence, we have repeatedly pressed Rwanda to halt and prevent any and all forms of support to Congolese armed groups,” Carson stated. Later, however, he admitted that, beyond closed-door talks, the only direct action Washington has taken has been to suspend a token amount of around 200,000 dollars in military aid to the Rwandan military earlier this year.

As the conflict drags on, that low-key approach has been increasingly criticised, as other Western countries, including the U.K., E.U. and several Scandinavian countries, have moved to impose sanctions on Rwanda. Indeed, back in 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama sponsored legislation that would have followed a similar route, an approach recently approved by a U.N. group of experts.

Non-constructive diplomacy

Eastern DRC is an area rich in natural resources, including diamonds, oil, timber and a host of minerals. Longstanding competition and animosities have led Congo, Rwanda and Uganda to battle over these resources for years, with some analysts suggesting that Rwanda’s support for the M23 is part of an open plan to annex part of the eastern DRC.

At Tuesday’s House hearing, Subcommittee Chair Christopher H. Smith stated that the U.S. government “must overcome our regret to what happened 18 years ago,” referring to the genocide in Rwanda that shook many here in Washington and beyond.

Smith also referred to a letter sent on Monday to President Obama by a coalition of 15 international civil society organisations. That letter warns that a decade and a half of “quiet diplomacy” by the United States in the Great Lakes region of Africa has failed to deter Rwandan support for armed rebels operating in the DRC.

That failure, they contend, has contributed to the current crisis.

“The U.S. response to the crisis has patently failed and is out of step with other Western nations,” the groups, including the Open Society Foundations, Refugees International, Africa Faith & Justice Network and others, said in the open letter.

“Since the M23 was created in the spring of 2012, U.S. officials continued to place faith in engaging Rwanda in a constructive dialogue. This approach has clearly failed to change Rwanda’s policy, as evidenced by the direct involvement of the Rwandan army in the recent takeover of Goma, as documented by the United Nations Group of Experts.”

The NGOs are calling on President Obama to name a special envoy to lead the U.S. response to the situation in the DRC, to support the naming of a similar U.N. envoy and a U.N. arms embargo on the DRC, and to suspend all non-humanitarian aid to the Rwandan government.

In testimony on Tuesday, Carson did express support for the appointment of a U.N. special envoy.

Yet he rejected the need for a presidential envoy from the U.S., stating that such an official already exists, albeit with a broader mandate for the entire Great Lakes region. Carson also stated that further punitive actions squeezing U.S. aid to Rwanda were unnecessary, noting that the U.S. government has no proof that any aid given to Rwanda has been “misused or rechanneled into the conflict in DRC”.

Over the past fiscal year, the United States gave some 195 million dollars in development assistance to Rwanda, primarily for use in health and agriculture programmes.

Band-aid solution

“The U.S. government seems content to simply work behind the scenes based on its own relationships in the region, but this isn’t yielding results in peace or bold ideas for resolving the longstanding issues in the region,” Aaron Hall, a policy analyst with the Enough Project, a Washington-based anti-genocide watchdog that spearheaded the recent open letter, told IPS.

“We think there needs to be stronger support for dealing with the interventionist policies of Rwanda and Uganda and stronger support for institution-building in Congo in order to get down to the root of the issues that have plagued these areas for decades.”

Of the current peace talks between the M23 and the Congolese government, Hall says they only constitute a “band-aid solution”.

“First off, it’s being chaired by Uganda, which has been implicated for supporting the M23. Second, the talks are only being held between the Congolese government and the M23 rebels, when clearly other groups have stated that they understand the involvement of Rwanda, which is not at the table,” Hall says.

What’s needed instead, Hall and many other analysts suggest, is to finally address long-term, systemic issues. This would include tackling not only Rwandan and Ugandan policies and actions, but also the inability of the Congolese government to create viable judicial and political institutions in the east.

“But the leaders currently appear interested only in the cosmetic issues,” Hall says. “What we need is a commitment from the international community to create a comprehensive framework to move towards the resolution of underlying issues that bubble up every few years but never actually get resolved.”

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

By William Lloyd-George
GOMA, DR Congo, Dec 1 2012 (IPS)

Lined up along a dirt path that meanders its way up into the lush war-torn mountains surrounding the small town of Sake, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, hundreds of young rebel soldiers sat on the road banks in the baking sun.

As villagers causally walked past, the battle-hardened rebels clutched their weapons. Some held machine-guns, others grenade launchers, a few even had spears, symbolic of their warrior like reputation. Their tired faces and faded fatigues served as evidence of the gruelling seven-month insurgency they had waged against the Congolese government since April this year.

The sound of car engines in the distant brought all the men abruptly to their feet. A four-car convoy zoomed past, each vehicle packed with heavily armed rebels. General Mekenga, the leader of M23, stood out. “We are going to withdraw within the next 48 hours,” he announced. “We will leave Goma at 10am on Saturday.” Goma, 25 kilometres away, is the second-largest city in the DRC, and since Nov. 20 has been held by the rebels.

Despite the rebel leader’s assurances of a swift departure, which was agreed with regional leaders in Kampala, Uganda, many are concerned the withdrawal will not go as smoothly as hoped. 

The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC, MONUSCO, has a store at the airport full of weapons and ammunition left by the FARDC, the acronym for the Congolese army, which the U.N. agency plans to return to them. This has infuriated the M23 leadership, who want to take the arsenal with them.

Government police arrive on a boat at the Goma port in eastern DRC as U.N. peacekeepers watch on. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

However just before 11am on Saturday Dec. 1, trucks packed with M23 rebels drove out of Goma.

Military hardware has been seen being transported to their headquarters in Runshura north of Goma. Five trucks packed with countless weapons were parked outside one of the M23 headquarters in Goma, the former FARDC headquarters. On Friday, hundreds of government police were allowed to arrive at the city’s port and enter to the city to provide security during the handover period.

The withdrawal marked the end of over a weeklong occupancy of Goma. The M23, named after a peace agreement in Mar. 23, 2009 between leaders of a former rebel group, the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), started their recent insurgency in April this year. The rebel leaders said the government did not stick to the agreements made and claim to fight against the corruption and bad governance of the Congolese government.

The M23’s claims have been met with scepticism by many. Residents of Goma told IPS that they believed the main driving force behind the recent rebellion was Rwanda. The same allegations have been made by the U.N., which said that the government in Kigali is supporting them financially, logistically and with weapons. There have been unconfirmed sightings of Rwanda Defence Forces assisting M23 units on the ground. Rwanda has long desired the resource-rich state of Kivu, which is home to countless gold and coltan mines.

Another theory is that Kigali increased attempts to arrest ICC indited CNDP leader Bosco “Terminator” Ntaganda which led him to desert the Congolese army. While M23 leaders have vehemently denied any involvement with Ntaganda, it is believed that he was the catalyst for the desertion of leaders from the CNDP, and for the M23 subsequently being formed.

Since the M23 took power in Goma, many residents reported feeling an increase in security around town. “Although it was a war zone in the beginning, it definitely felt safer than before M23 began to rule,” Robert Minuni, 32, a local engineer, told IPS. “No one knows what the M23 would have started to do, but just for a few days there was no kidnapping, no looting, no killings.”

Before the M23 took over the city, the rebels and the FARDC were playing dirty tricks, impersonating the other to ruin the other’s public image. A bomb in a market; a grenade thrown into hairdresser; and the kidnapping of a famous musician were a few of the horrors inflicted on the city while the two sides vied for public support, or, to simply discredit the other.

As a result many are fearful of the M23’s departure. Standing on a mountain in Karuba near the frontline, a group of villagers told IPS they did not want M23 to leave.

“I am not sure which group is better but I can say one thing, for the first time in a long time nothing has been stolen from us,” said Nelson, who goes by one name. “We really do not want the M23 to leave.”

All the villagers gathered around nodded their heads in agreement. “We do not want the FARDC here, they only cause problems and rob from the people,” said another villager wishing to remain anonymous.

Not everyone, though, is so supportive of the M23 including soldiers currently in their ranks. Speaking to IPS in Goma, one young soldier who had been working for M23 for a  couple of months said he was not sure they would do much better. “All armed groups are the same in Congo,” he said. “It is just for money; which ever side wins I’ll join, most the groups are like this.”

Local human rights groups have accused the M23 of executions, rapes and harassment for anyone seen to be an enemy of the group. The possibility of a power vacuum has further increased fears. And for the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons who have been forced out of their homes by the conflict and forced to languish in terrible conditions the M23 are seen as a root of the problems, not a solution.

“We do not want the rebels, they only cause more problems and grief for us,” said one young man who shared a tiny straw shelter with five children and his wife. “Like everyone here, we just want peace.”

Rebels in eastern DR Congo say they have started withdrawing from territory they have captured from government troops, days after a pullout deal was reached in neighbouring Uganda.

Amani Kabashi, deputy spokesman for the M23 group, told Al Jazeera that rebels were starting to withdraw from the town of Mushake, 50km south of the provincial capital, Goma, on Wednesday.

Diplomatic efforts to end violence in eastern Congo have been ongoing since the M23 group captured Goma in fighting with Congolese troops and advanced across the east of the country last week. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by fighting between government troops and the rebels.

Colonel Vianney Kazarama, the M23 military spokesman, later said rebels were to withdraw from the city of Sake on Thursday and Goma on Friday.

Herve Ladsous, the U.N. peacekeeping chief, told reporters on Tuesday night that rebels’ advances had stopped.

Al Jazeera’s Nazanine Moshiri, reporting from Goma, said there were no indications of a withdrawal from the city on Wednesday.

“The big question everyone is asking here is what happens next, if M23 withdraws,” she said.

“M23 themselves are saying they want a demilitarised zone around Goma. They’re very concerned that people who’ve been working with them in the city will be targeted once they leave, if the Congolese army comes in.”

Transferring weapons

M23 military leader Sultani Makenga said on Tuesday his men would leave Goma “in three days at the latest” and pull back 20km under a deal struck in Uganda the previous day with an east African regional group.

Makenga said the rebels had begun transferring arms, provisions and medical supplies from Goma to the Rutshuru territory north of the city, an area along the Ugandan and Rwandan borders.

Rutshuru has been the rebels’ main stronghold since they launched their uprising in April.

Reports from residents and the U.N. peacekeeping mission appeared to confirm the announcement that the rebels were transporting weaponry out of Goma.

Meanwhile, the M23’s political leader, Jean Marie Runiga, said the group was not against withdrawing from Goma, but would only do so if certain conditions were met.

He said demands included the release of opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, a former prime minister who has been under unofficial house arrest since declaring victory in flawed elections last year that were officially won by President Joseph Kabila.

The rebels also demanded direct talks with the president and the dissolution of the electoral commission.

Pro-rebel demonstration

About 300 people marched through the streets of Goma on Wednesday in support of M23, Al Jazeera’s Azad Essa reported from the city.

They were carrying posters and banners calling for Kabila to step down and played music as scores of bystanders looked on from the roadside. A handful of police monitored the demonstration as the march brought traffic to a standstill.

M23 took over Goma on Tuesday last week after Congolese soldiers withdrew. U.N. forces did not intervene, saying they lacked the mandate to do so.

African leaders are scrambling to contain the latest violence in the region where nearly two decades of conflict has been fuelled by political and ethnic rifts and competition over vast minerals resources.

Kabila met M23 rebels for the first time at the weekend after a summit in the Ugandan capital Kampala.

Monday’s pullout agreement would allow the rebels to stay in their home region of Kivu, which is believed to hold up to three-quarters of the world’s reserves of coltan, a mineral used in the manufacture of many electronic products.

‘Neutral zone’

Ladsous said the U.N.’s main military adviser, General Babacar Gaye, would head for DR Congo and other East African countries to work out details of the withdrawal deal.

He said this would include the working of a proposed neutral zone, who controls Goma airport, which is currently in the hands of the U.N. mission, MONUSCO, and how to set up a proposed international neutral force for DR Congo.

The rebellion erupted in April when the M23, which U.N. experts have said is backed by neighbouring Rwanda, broke away from the DR Congo army, complaining that a 2009 deal to end a previous conflict had not been fully implemented.

The full name of the M23 is the March 23 Movement, which refers to the date when peace accords were signed in 2009 between the Congolese government and the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), a rebel group.

Under the agreements, former CNDP fighters were to be integrated into the national army, but some of them say they were not treated fairly and that the peace treaty was never fully put into effect, forcing them to commit mutiny and form the M23.

Since April, more than 475,000 people have been displaced in the country and more than 75,000 others have been forced to seek refuge in neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda, according to UNHCR.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Humanitarian agencies working in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been overwhelmed following a massive displacement triggered by fighting between the Congolese army (FARDC) and rebel movement M23 in North Kivu.

“The situation is truly precarious. There is no medicine, no food. Children could die. People are spending the night outside, each one beside their baggage, and it is very cold,” says Roger Manegabe, head of a family who managed to reach Bukavu from North Kivu.

“We’re missing school. We’re hungry, there’s no drinking water, there’s no electricity. I’m 16 years old and war is all I’ve known from the time I was born. What will become of us?” said Fiston, Manegabe’s son.

Since the start of the year, conflict in the two Kivu provinces — militias in South Kivu have also clashed — has exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation and uprooted nearly 650,000 people, according to U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesperson Adrian Edwards.

Manegaba’s family is among some 250,000 civilians newly displaced since April in North Kivu, and a further 339,000 in South Kivu. According to Edwards, during this period more than 40,000 people also fled to Uganda and 15,000 others to Rwanda. And since August, Burundi has received nearly 1,000 new Congolese refugees.

Rebel fighters captured Goma, the province’s largest city, on Nov. 20, and Sake the following day, before their advance stalled.

M23 was launched on Mar. 12 with a mutiny of Congolese army officers and soldiers. It is now putting forward a broad set of demands covering politics, social issues, human rights and governance. The movement is demanding direct talks with Congolese President Joseph Kabila as a precondition for retreating from Goma.

The group’s political spokesperson, Jean-Marie Runiga Lugerero, held a preliminary meeting on Sunday Nov. 25 with Kabila in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, following a regional summit on the crisis in eastern DRC.

More than 30,000 people who fled the Kanyaruchinya sector in North Kivu have found refuge at a camp in Mugunga, swelling the total numbers there to 40,000. They told the UNHCR representative in the province, Lazard-Etienne Kouassi, who visited the camp on Nov. 22, that they had not received food since their arrival and that they were eager to go back to their villages.

They asked UNHCR to make vehicles available to help the most vulnerable displaced people, such as children and the elderly, in order to quickly return home. Kouassi promised to respond to the request in line with the agency’s capabilities.

Conditions are similarly precarious at Sake, some 27 kilometres south of Goma. Here, some displaced persons are living in classrooms or churches, while others are forced to sleep in the open. Due to a lack of humanitarian assistance, they have had to beg or work for residents of the town in order to survive.

World Vision estimates that there are 200,000 children at risk from Goma alone. According to the international charity’s reports from partners on the ground, many children have been separated from their parents in the confusion surrounding the fall of the town that began as M23 approached Goma on Nov. 12.

Many of these children are now being exploited by families in Goma, according to Junior Alimasi, head of cooperation at the children’s parliament of North Kivu. “They have gone to work for these families in exchange for food and shelter. In November, we’ve already recorded complaints of abuse from two dozen children,” he told IPS.

“We have opened the doors to several thousand refugees, mostly women and children,” Father Piero Gavioli, director of the Don Bosco Centre, which shelters children at risk, told IPS by phone from Goma.

“We’re carrying out a head count, which suggests there are around 2,500 households, with an average of two children per household, which means 6,000 or 7,000 refugees.”

The ad hoc camps for displaced people fell short of what’s needed even before the latest advance by M23, according to a report published in October by the European Union’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in South Kivu.

OCHA said the province has been affected by a deteriorating security situation which threatens thousands of civilians and has caused the reduction or even suspension of humanitarian efforts in the region.

“The creation of ad hoc camps spreads cholera, measles… the overcrowded camps include many children who have not been vaccinated and are now exposed to brutal epidemics,” the report says.

Maxime Nama, information assistant for OCHA in South Kivu said: “Children are recruited against their will, used as porters or even as combatants, and in the case of girls, sexually exploited. The violence and the fighting put them at grave risk of being injured or killed.”

Father Piero said that Western countries were guilty of failing to help the thousands of people in danger. “Today,” he told journalists during a Nov. 22 videoconference, “I will repeat my accusation, even if it goes unheard.”

After weeks of delay, the United Nations released Monday its full annex by the U.N. Security Council condemning the Rwandan government for its support of Congolese rebels.

The 48-page annex, which was leaked partially last week, claims that the Rwandan government was instrumental in the militarisation of M23, a mutinous movement that is allegedly led by, among others, Bosco Ntaganda, a military official wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes relating to the recruitment and use of child soldiers.

Officials say 19 people died and thousands more were displaced from their homes in June, a byproduct of fighting between the M23 and government militia in the eastern Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“The war in Congo is bursting into flames, sparked by a new rebellion that Rwanda appears to not only have aided, but that it helped create,” Sasha Lezhnev, senior policy advisor at the Enough Project, a humanitarian group focused on the Congo, told IPS.

“There was a drive to cut off Rwanda’s access to the conflict minerals trade, and the new M23 rebellion was created in large part to retake control of it.”

The main group of Congolese rebels have called themselves M23 -otherwise known the March 23 Movement – after the date of a 2009 peace treaty between the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) and the military.

The CNDP, which was the first incarnation of the M23, switched from a rebel group into a political party after the treaty, and temporarily aligned with the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC). The M23 movement started in March after former CNDP members complained of the conditions in the military.

The U.S. had been accused by Congolese officials of protecting the Rwandan government by delaying the release of the U.N. report.

“There is a risk of the Security Council losing any credibility. We don’t understand the position of the U.S.,” Atoki Ileka, a senior Congolese ambassador, said at the time.

“This will do nothing to protect the people of eastern Congo and will not bring stability to the region. The path they are taking is not intelligent.”

Victoria Nuland, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, said in a statement Saturday that the United States is “deeply concerned about the report’s findings that Rwanda is implicated in the provision of support to Congolese rebel groups.”

Nuland said the U.S. had “asked Rwanda to halt and prevent the provision of such support from its territory”.

The war in these Central and Eastern African nations has also been rife with conflicts of interests, according to some.

“At the same time, the U.S. is training some units of the Congolese army … (while) other Anglo-Saxon companies enjoy the lion share in all mining contracts in Congo,” Antoine Roger Lokongo, a London-based Congolese investigative journalist, told IPS. “But still the U.S. supports Rwanda against Congo.”

Nevertheless, the U.S. gave the DRC more than 350 million dollars in combined aid in 2010, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The U.S. also has strong financial ties to the DRC through a bilateral investment treaty, one of 41 investment treaties the U.S. has in total, meant to strengthen economic ties between the two countries.

Human rights groups had been pushing for more sustained pressure on the Rwandan government by major global players. “The UK and U.S. governments are the two largest bilateral donors to Rwanda,” Sophia Pickles, an activist at Global Witness, said in a statement Friday. “This gives them significant influence and in cases like this they have a responsibility to use it.

“They cannot stand by and watch a regime they bankroll orchestrating a new war in Congo. The lives of thousands of Congolese civilians, as well as the stability of the region, are on the line.”

The Rwandan government, which is vying for a seat on the U.N. Security Council, has been quick to deny the allegations in the report that they have supported the rebels.

“Of course, Rwanda’s top army leadership in no way would be involved in destroying the peace they have been working very hard to build,” said Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo.

Diplomatic relations between Rwanda and neighbouring DRC have soured following the U.N. report, which also stated that top Rwandan government officials, including General James Kabarebe, the Rwandan minister of defence, were behind the recruitment and mobilisation of Rwandan citizens who back the rebellion.

In June, Lambert Mende Omalanga, the DRC’s minister of communications, stated that 200 rebel soldiers had been
killed since March, and more than 370 had surrendered – including 25 Rwandan citizens.

According to Human Rights Watch, Rwandan military officials provided weapons, ammunition, and an estimated 200 to 300 recruits to support Ntaganda and his militia. They also published eyewitness testimony attesting to the execution of recruits who tried to escape.

“I saw six people who were killed because they tried to flee. They were shot dead, and I was ordered to bury their bodies,” an unnamed Rwandan soldier, who was forced into Ntaganda’s army, told Human Rights Watch. “All of us wanted to flee to the government troops, but many of us didn’t know how and we were scared.”