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Dr. Glenys Babcock, President of Pragmora and conflict resolution specialist, has just returned from a 10-day research trip to the DR Congo. Glenys was in Kinshasa, the capital, and in Goma, a town on the eastern border of the country which has been the centre of the conflict zone.
Glenys held in-depth discussions with diverse Congolese and international organisations. The purpose of these discussions was to gain a local perspective on the still simmering conflict and on potential peace stabilisation measures, including military, economic, social and political options. Meetings were held with the UN's top representative in the country for MONUC (the UN peacekeeping mission), The Honorable Gerardine Kasongo Ngoie, Secretary General of the national women's lawyer association, and representatives of various NGOS, such as International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Search for Common Ground and Norwegian Refugee Council. |
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The simmering conflict in the DR Congo today is very complex with many players with diverse, or unknown, agendas. Since the war ended in 2003, the country has been considered stable and the ongoing violence in the eastern provinces has been gradually diminishing. Over the past 6 to 8 weeks, however, there have been outbursts of violence not only in the eastern region, but also in areas of the country that had been considered stable and peaceful.
The prospects for the next 12-24 months are alarming. It appears highly likely that the conflict in the DR Congo will spiral out of control, and possibly draw in its neighbours, Rwanda and Sudan.
There are two looming changes that account for this bleak outlook. At the insistence of President Joseph Kabila, the UN will withdraw 2000 peacekeepers in the next few weeks, prior to the DR Congo's June 30 celebration of its 50th Anniversary of Independence. A full pull out of the MONUC peacekeepers is to be completed in 2011. (MONUC is the largest peacekeeping mission in the world with about 20,000 members). It is almost impossible to imagine how the Congolese army alone can maintain peace, especially when the army itself has been blamed for many incidents of violence against civilians, looting, rape, and minerals trafficking.
The second potentially destabilizing factor is the planned return of tens of thousands of people who became internally displaced in the Congo or refugees in Rwanda as a result of the war. Such post-conflict resettlements are typically filled with tension. In the case of the DR Congo, resettlement will put conflicting tribal groups together again, including resettling refugee Hutus into Tutsi-dominated communities.
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