República Democrática del Congo (Continuación)

Two recent events highlight the scourge of rebel leaders in Central Africa who use child soldiers to commit atrocities — the Kony2012 Internet campaign by the advocacy group, Invisible Children, which supports U.S.-led military action against the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, and the International Criminal Court’s guilty verdict against the warlord Thomas Lubanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Accompanying these developments has been widespread praise for two of the international community’s preferred means of ending mass conflict — military intervention and international justice.

Largely overlooked, however, is the fact that, in pursuing rebel leaders in central Africa, the United States and the I.C.C.…  Seguir leyendo »

Last week in The Hague, the International Criminal Court, or ICC, found the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga guilty of recruiting and using child soldiers in the armed conflict in that country, sealing his fate as the court's first convicted war criminal.

At the same time, the viral video "Kony 2012"has seemingly achieved its goal of making Joseph Kony, another rebel commander facing an ICC arrest warrant, notorious for his alleged crimes, including the abduction of an estimated 30,000 children for his Lord's Resistance Army. Millions of people have viewed the video, with millions more learning about Kony, who is still at large, through mainstream media coverage of the campaign.…  Seguir leyendo »

In northern Uganda, the dry season is used to burn bushes; the fire drives snakes and other predators away. On the Ugandan side of the border with South Sudan, below a mountainous ridge along the Nile, is a village called Odrupele by locals. It is a place teeming with snakes.

Until a few years ago, children walking along the village’s paths were stalked by a greater threat lurking in the bushes — possible abduction by members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, whose leader, Joseph Kony, started a brutal campaign in the late 1980s to overthrow Uganda’s government by using child soldiers.…  Seguir leyendo »

Free, fair, and transparent democratic elections are no longer strangers to Africa. Indeed, they have become a regular occurrence. But the presidential and parliamentary elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the end of November will likely be Africa’s most daunting electoral challenge so far. If the vote comes off successfully, democrats and democratic norms will receive a boost in every corner of the continent.

Geography alone in this vast and poorly connected country constitutes a formidable obstacle to conducting an election according to internationally recognized standards. The DRC is the size of Western Europe. Much of it is covered in thick jungle.…  Seguir leyendo »

It's a long way from the marble halls of Congress to the ailing mining towns of eastern Congo, but the residents of Nyabibwe and Nzibira know exactly what’s to blame for their economic woes.

The “Loi Obama” or Obama Law — as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act of 2010 has become known in the region — includes an obscure provision that requires public companies to indicate what measures they are taking to ensure that minerals in their supply chain don’t benefit warlords in conflict-ravaged Congo. The provision came about in no small part because of the work of high-profile advocacy groups like the Enough Project and Global Witness, which have been working for an end to what they call “conflict minerals.”…  Seguir leyendo »

En 2010, Mike Hoffman, fondateur de l’association Vivere et infatigable militant de l’aide aux plus faibles, m’a approché me demandant de lui signer une lettre de soutien à l’action de justice qu’il mène avec une ONG congolaise.

Il me rappela que la République démocratique du Congo, cinq fois la France, comptant 450 ethnies aux deux cents dialectes, a vu sa population frappée depuis quinze ans par l’un des conflits les plus meurtriers, faisant 5 millions de morts et laissant un peuple victime de centaines de milliers de crimes de guerre impunis.

Il évoqua surtout les «Chambres Foraines», tribunaux itinérants dans les zones les plus reculées du pays, nées de l’initiative d’avocats épris de justice, qui incitent les tribunaux à faire cas des plaintes que des femmes et des hommes osent déposer.…  Seguir leyendo »

Today, millions of people on another continent are observing the 50th anniversary of an event few Americans remember, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. A slight, goateed man with black, half-framed glasses, the 35-year-old Lumumba was the first democratically chosen leader of the vast country, nearly as large as the United States east of the Mississippi, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This treasure house of natural resources had been a colony of Belgium, which for decades had made no plans for independence. But after clashes with Congolese nationalists, the Belgians hastily arranged the first national election in 1960, and in June of that year King Baudouin arrived to formally give the territory its freedom.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ask many Americans to name the bloodiest war since World War II and chances are that most would not know the answer. If you told them it was in Africa, they might guess Rwanda or the ongoing conflict in Sudan. They'd be wrong.

By far, the deadliest conflict was in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1998 to 2003. Eight African nations participated in the fighting on Congolese soil, many hoping to seize control of its vast mineral wealth. Some 4 million Congolese died during the conflict and nearly another 1 million have died in the lawless aftermath from starvation, conflict and preventable disease.…  Seguir leyendo »

Que ce soit la publication du dernier rapport de l'ONU ou les viols de guerres qui s'y déroulent, l'actualité de ces derniers jours nous rappelle la situation dramatique de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC). Celle-ci n'a rien de neuf. La RDC continue, discrètement mais sûrement, à être rongée par le conflit alors que l'ONU (avec la Monusco) y a toujours son plus gros contingent militaire et que la guerre est officiellement finie depuis 2002. Parmi les causes de la persistence du conflit, il y a évidemment des enjeux stratégico-économiques comme les ressources naturelles. Mais il y a surtout la cohésion et l'identité nationale de ce pays fragile.…  Seguir leyendo »

There is no amount of training that can prepare you for the moment when you are in the field and a news report detailing the gang rape of nearly 200 women and four baby boys crosses your desk. Rwandan FDLR rebels and local Mai Mai militia besieged the town of Luvungi in North Kivu, along the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The UN estimates that 154 civilians were assaulted over four days earlier this month, and says the entire town was in effect taken hostage.

This part of the DRC is no stranger to violence, having witnessed some kind of conflict since the pre-independence struggles between the Belgians and Germans.…  Seguir leyendo »

What does the financial reform package recently signed into law in the US have to do with preventing mass rape in Africa? Quite a lot, it seems, but one has to search deeply within the 2,300-page document to find Section 1502, which focuses on "conflict minerals". Conflict minerals help finance fighting and sexual violence on an unprecedented scale in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The US Congress and President Obama have shown great leadership by including this amendment in the final law. It is now time for Europe's leaders to step up to the plate, as a sign of universal resolve to protect the most vulnerable.…  Seguir leyendo »

Today the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is remembering the 50th anniversary of its independence from brutal Belgian rule. But its people have little reason to celebrate, despite the grandiose festivities organised by the Kabila regime.

Eastern Congo remains deeply insecure, with the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of citizens; the vast majority of Congolese are illiterate and deprived of healthcare; and the historic 2006 elections (the first since 1960) notwithstanding, democratic space is shrinking, not widening.

As in other African countries that obtained their political freedom from white domination, Congolese people dreamed of prosperity and dignity through hard work, of internal peace and good relations with the outside world.…  Seguir leyendo »

Alors que le ministre des affaires étrangères français, Bernard Kouchner, entreprend une tournée africaine qui l'amènera au Rwanda et en République démocratique du Congo (RDC), la situation à la frontière de ces pays ne cesse d'être volatile. Longtemps à couteaux tirés, ces deux pays se sont rapprochés en 2009, à la suite des pressions de la communauté internationale. Ce rapprochement s'est traduit par l'arrestation d'un des principaux seigneurs de guerre de la région, Laurent Nkunda, ex-leader du mouvement rebelle tutsi, le Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP), l'intégration de ses troupes dans l'armée congolaise et la traque contre la milice des Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), sinistres héritiers du génocide rwandais de 1994, installés depuis en RDC.…  Seguir leyendo »

I was just raped.

Not just, as in recently, though sometimes it feels like yesterday, but just as in only. I was only raped, not mutilated. I did not have a bottle or stick or gun shoved into my vagina, twisted to inflict maximum injury. Though damaged, I did not have my breasts lopped off, nor did I lose a limb. I was left intact, though far from whole.

I did not feel lucky 4 1/2 years ago, when I was raped, but I do feel lucky today as I read about the unfathomable violence that is being unleashed against women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).…  Seguir leyendo »

In 1995, after the Rwandan genocide, western leaders discussed plans for an armed force for Africa's Great Lakes region to suppress the remnant of the extremist Hutu movement that had fled across the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I asked a British military planner how many men it might need. About half a million was his reply.

He had studied the vast landscape, the size of France; thick forest, huge mountains, no roads or boundaries, only a few airstrips and little idea of how many people lived there or who they were. It is perfect guerrilla country; a few thousand fighters with nothing to lose can move unimpeded throughout the area, living off the land and recruiting as they go.…  Seguir leyendo »

Just over a year ago, in answering whether sexual violence in conflict was an issue that the U.N. Security Council should take on, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proclaimed, "I am proud that, today, we respond to that lingering question with a resounding 'yes!' " With this statement, and with the cooperation of other power brokers at the table, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1820, which finally recognized sexual violence as a widely used strategy of warfare and cleared the path for the council to respond to it worldwide.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to report to the Security Council today on implementation of Resolution 1820.…  Seguir leyendo »

"Chu-ku-du, chu-ku-du, chu-ku-du" goes the wooden scooter as it bumps along the lava-covered streets of this central African city. It's a strange-looking contraption, like a handmade toy for grown-ups: two rubber-covered wheels connected by a board, with a steering handle atop an upside-down fork.

Even the oldest people can't remember when and how the onomatopoeically named chukudu first appeared in this part of North Kivu, an area of eastern Congo between the north shore of Lake Kivu and the heart of the Virunga National Park. But it is to Goma what the bicycle is to Amsterdam and the horse-drawn carriage to New York's Central Park.…  Seguir leyendo »

La situación de los derechos humanos sigue mostrando un panorama desolador en buena parte de los estados del planeta. Ello supone un incumplimiento grave de la Declaración Universal de la ONU de 1948. Que el tema sea muy conocido no lo transforma en menos grave. Pero buena parte de las democracias liberales también presentan incumplimientos concretos en la protección de dichos derechos. De los últimos informes independientes pueden presentarse los casos de RD Congo y España como ejemplos de ambos tipos de incumplimiento.

La realidad actual del Congo es dramática. Y como casi todo lo que se refiere al continente africano su presencia en los medios de comunicación es mucho menor que lo que sugiere la gravedad de los hechos.…  Seguir leyendo »

Durante muchos siglos, la empresa colonial fue transparente: un país, aprovechándose de su fuerza, invadía a otro más débil, se apoderaba de él y lo saqueaba. Nadie ponía en cuestión semejante estado de cosas porque se trataba de algo que se venía practicando desde la noche de los tiempos y todos, colonizadores y colonizados, aceptaban o se resignaban a esta cruda realidad como a una fatalidad inevitable, consustancial a la historia.

El descubrimiento y conquista de América por los europeos introduce una importante variante. Por primera vez y por razones religiosas el colonizador se interroga a sí mismo sobre la justicia de la empresa colonizadora y, en acalorados debates de juristas y teólogos, se arma de razones, humanas y divinas, para justificar sus conquistas.…  Seguir leyendo »

The conflict in eastern Congo over the past 12 years has been as much a surrogate war between Congo and neighboring Rwanda as an internal ethnic insurgency, as a United Nations report underscored last week. The only way to end a war that has caused five million deaths and forced millions to flee their homes in Congo’s two eastern provinces is to address the conflict’s international dimensions. The role of Rwanda — which borders the provinces and which denied the accusations in the United Nations report over the weekend — is of prime importance.

The international community has worked hard to resolve the conflicts among the various parties: the sovereign states of Rwanda and Congo as well as the assorted militias and private armies that are sponsored by these two governments and by opportunistic local warlords.…  Seguir leyendo »