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Congo-Kinshasa: After Two Key Deals, What Progress Towards Peace in North Kivu?
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UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
14 May 2008
Posted to the web 14 May 2008
Kinshasa
Two agreements signed since the end of 2007 offer some hope for an end to more than a decade of violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), even if fighting has continued and a lasting solution has yet to be found to the presence in the region of Rwandan Hutu rebels, according to analysts.
Since the DRC government and various armed groups in the chronically unstable North Kivu province signed a ceasefire in January, the truce has been repeatedly violated and the number of displaced civilians in the province has increased.
The ceasefire was one of the highlights of an "Act of Engagement" signed on 23 January in Goma, capital of North Kivu province, where some 847,000 people are displaced.
According to the UN mission in DRC, MONUC, by the end of April 2008 there had been "a few hundred" violations of the terms of the ceasefire. Although all such incidents involved firearms, many were minor confrontations such as cattle theft.
The Act was signed by the DRC government, rebels led by renegade general Laurent Nkunda, and several dozen other armed groups of varying degrees of allegiance and hostility to the government in Kinshasa. The aim was to restore peace to both North and South Kivu, foster reconciliation between hostile groups and promote development in an area rich in natural resources.
Although there has been some progress in the provisions of the Goma deal, there has only been a reduction - rather than a halt - in fighting, while the humanitarian and human rights crisis in North Kivu has seen little or no improvement.
"The security situation has improved since the signing of the Act of Engagement," said Caroline Draveny, head of information for North Kivu at the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). "There have been far fewer clashes, and of a lesser intensity compared to November and December 2007," she added.
"But reports of atrocities, sexual violence in particular, are still very alarming. This latent insecurity is still preventing displaced populations from returning home and prompts some people into displacement," said Draveny.
Civilian displacement
More than half a million of North Kivu's internally displaced people (IDPs) have left their homes since the start of Nkunda's insurgency in December 2006.
Most of the latest clashes, in early May and late April, pitted government forces (FARDC) against the Forces Démocratique de la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu armed group of about 6,000, founded by fugitive perpetrators of Rwanda's genocide in 1994. The presence of the FDLR in eastern DRC has been a key element of the region's insecurity ever since. But because the FDLR is predominantly a Rwandan, rather than Congolese, group, it did not take part in the Goma conference.
Even more civilian displacement is likely in the coming weeks and months because FARDC is moving aggressively into areas held by the FDLR, which was allied to the government during the war that raged in DRC between 1997 and 2003, sucking in forces from more than half a dozen nearby states.
In November 2007, the DRC government made a fresh commitment to disarm the FDLR and send its fighters back to Rwanda, by force if necessary.
Following this agreement, signed with Rwanda in Nairobi, there has been "fighting in the areas of Ngwenda and Kinandonyi, in the north of central Rutshuru district, since 21 April", said Draveny.
Guerrilla war
Some analysts fear military moves alone against the FDLR are destined to fail.
"FARDC has no capacity to fight the FDLR successfully and even for a well-trained and equipped army it would be difficult to fight them since they are in the bush and fight a guerrilla war," according to Henri Boshoff of the South African Institute for Security Studies.
"The only realistic option in dealing with the FDLR is a combination of political negotiations and economic pressure run in parallel with military pressure by FARDC/MONUC, and the continuation of the current demobilisation, disarmament, reintegration, repatriation and resettlement programme in which FDLR combatants are encouraged to voluntarily return to Rwanda," advised Boshoff.
He says the FDLR, which has flatly rejected the Nairobi deal and had no part in its drafting, would only go back to Rwanda if there were a chance it could take part in politics there.
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"The two processes [Nairobi and Goma] should run concomitantly to achieve a better result," said Anneke van Woudenberg, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
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the problem is not the presence of hutus ,the problem is the fact that rwanda must accept the inter conference talk between all rwandese ,why the international commuty still privileging kagame ,the one who is a trouble maker ,just because he is giving them diamonds,colta,cooper golds and so many thing for free of charge stollen in congo to build their electronis and nuclear stuffs? stop the man who killed himself his people and accusing and attributing to innocent people ,all the secret is coming out when the closest person of kagame apeared in the belgium parliamntary meeting where he... [Read Full Text]
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